‘That’s not her!’

‘Fuck off!’

But like everyone else, they love the story.

When she arrives, the conversations are all about her. She buzzes in at the door to the sixth form café, and talk stills for a second, before someone wolf-whistles, and then someone else shouts, ‘Shut up, dickhead!’

And then another person claps, and more do, and people whoop.

Rose shrinks. Her head goes down and she walks hurriedly down the corridor. She leaves at lunch, and isn’t seen until Friday.

In the corner of the café, Dillon is sitting alone. He hears the noise, but doesn’t look up, doesn’t see Rose. Alisha steps over. She pushes him on the shoulder.

‘Hey!’

He raises his head. His face is strained.

‘You OK?’

He nods. He frowns.

‘What was all that about?’

‘You’re joking me,’ she says. ‘Are you some kind of social retard?’

His expression doesn’t change. Alisha feels a flicker of worry, but she is too excited to pay it any attention. She taps her phone. Dillon leans in.

A beautiful girl on a red carpet. She’s turning, and her dress is lifting. The dress is short, glittering, and her legs are long. One sandalled foot rests lightly on the ball, the other rises from the carpet as she turns. Her eyes meet the camera. She’s wearing makeup. Not enough that she’s unrecognisable, but enough that it takes a moment before Dillon says, ‘Rose?’

It’s an answer, of sorts, to that old question. Yes, she is beautiful. She looks effortlessly glamorous, but her wide eyes stare back with the same disconcerting blankness that they’ve always had. Only, under mascara, on that face, in that dress, it’s not the same. She has a coolness – strange, mocking and aloof.

She’s there. He has to say it to himself. It’s hard to believe. This is her. He can look. He is allowed to look. He can see the line of the skirt crossing her thigh, the shadow of her collarbone. He can see more than he ever has, and yet she seems to recede before him.

He shivers. He closes his eyes for a second and smells sweat, heather, peat, unwashed hair.

He opens again to look. She looks back.

Did you think it was that easy? she seems to ask. Did you think that was real?

Underneath the image it says, simply, #whosthatgirl

Underneath that are a string of replies and comments. The names are familiar. The numbers are astonishing.

‘Do you see that?’ says Alisha, her eyes blazing with excitement. ‘She’s fucking famous!’

‘She’s fucking full of it.’

Gracie is having a cigarette at the bottom of the drive.

‘She won’t fucking talk to anyone.’

There’s a knot of them. Alisha is there too, but she isn’t friends with these girls. She listens.

‘How did she get on the fucking red carpet?’