Aaron looks like he always does, off kilter and at odds with his own limbs. His trousers are too short and you can see thin ankles above his trainers.

‘I saw my gran.’

‘In hospital?’ asks Alisha.

He shakes his head. ‘On the sofa.’ The end of the shake has left his head at the wrong angle. ‘We had to throw it away.’

He draws on his joint while everyone watches. Alisha waits for Jack to ask another question, but he doesn’t. No one does.

Aaron flicks the butt into the river.

‘Shall I skin up?’ Alisha says.

Jack nods. Her fingers sift through the weed as it sits in the paper, mixing it with tobacco. She likes to see the deftness of it, the skill she has acquired.

‘Do you remember when you fell in the river?’ Jack says.

She looks up. He’s smiling.

‘Yes,’ she says.

‘This river?’ says Callum.

Jack laughs. ‘It was fucking hilarious.’

‘It was your fucking fault,’ says Alisha, but she’s laughing too. She doesn’t say, You pushed me. She doesn’t say, I thought I would drown.

‘She properly went in. Absolutely soaking,’ Jack says. ‘You should have seen her face.’

Alisha licks the line of gum carefully.

He puts his arm round her. ‘I am sorry, though.’ He squeezes.

She curls the paper round, presses it down, twists the end. She puts it in her mouth, burns the paper tag with a lighter.

Draws in.

It was when they went out, last year. They were down at the arch, and they were mucking around, and she said something he didn’t like, and he was pretend angry, but also angry, and she was pretend fighting back. But also scared she was going to get hurt. And then he paused, and she paused, and he smiled, and she smiled, and he shoved her in the chest – the heels of his palms at the top of her breasts, so there were bruises the next day. He shoved her, and she fell back, and into the freezing water, and everyone gasped and laughed and shrieked, and they pulled her out.

She lay there, soaking, on the grass, her heart racing, her breaths coming so fast she thought she was going to pass out. Everyone was round her, and they were staring, and you could see it was one of those moments where no one knew what had happened – if it was funny, or bad, or whatever. And she knew – it was in a fraction of a second, but she knew – that she had to laugh. She could barely think, but she knew she had to laugh because if she didn’t laugh then he’d just tried to kill her.