She doesn’t know what she says, but she feels her words tumbling out, pebble smooth and northern, and she hears him hearing her, and her difference, and her age, and the others go somewhere, and they return, and he has been speaking to Rose, just Rose.

The bar is full. Words rattle and hang, fast and warm and sweet with wine and coke. The lights are sharp and dazed, the people tall and slick, the room full, with arms and shoulders and damp tabletops sticky with someone else’s spillings.

On the train, the window is big enough to hold the sky. Her forehead touches the glass, her nose presses against it. The golden fields blur into wide emptiness.

She doesn’t know if she is happy. She is not fully happy. She has tasted more than she has tasted yet, but she is not full.

They sit at the table. Jacqui and Rachael dance. He touches her hand with his. And she puts her hand on his thigh. And he kisses her, and it’s a hard kiss, a kiss just on the edge of what she wants, and she feels the spinning start, there, as she kisses and thinks why did I do that, and his stubble scratches her, and his hand slides up her thigh.

The train swoops over a bridge, and a gap opens below.

She likes him. She thinks she likes him. He feels like a missed meal, a lack, a hole in her. She remembers his fingers, the flicker of them at the edge of her pants. She imagines him pulling at her more. Taking her somewhere. She remembers the nugget of fear, the click of his teeth on hers as she mishits the kiss. She does it like it seems it has to be done, but it feels almost violent, too, like a blow.

Forests rise on either side, then fall away.

She saw Rachael in the toilet at work later that next day. Rose washed her hands. Rachael stared at herself in the mirror as she fixed her mascara.

‘Did you have fun?’ Rachael asked. Her face was tight as she concentrated. No smile, no frown.

Rose shrugged.

‘Make your fucking mind up,’ said Rachael.

The trolley passes. Rose eyes the chocolate.

On Monday, the first day of the penultimate week of the summer term, Dillon has Media last lesson of the day. The sun is bright, the classroom muggy and soporific. On the desk his hands are smooth backed, boyish, until he clenches and the veins stir and pop. He turns his arms, tries to trace the muscle in his wrists and forearms.

His dad’s hands are wide and meaty. Same thumbs, though.

‘Dillon?’

He looks up. He focuses again on the board. An image of a smiling woman washing up.

‘Connotations?’ asks Mr Bradman.

‘Washing up?’ he tries.

The class laughs. Mr Bradman smiles.

‘Anything else?’

‘Clean?’

Laughs. Mr Bradman smiles less.

‘Come on.’