The three of them walk up and down the wide beach, shouting. Then they walk along the dunes, shouting down into the sandy hollows and kicking at the tussocks of long grass. The sun is almost gone, leaving a deep blue sky and the pink light of dusk. Rose moves like she is asleep. Her head sways above her long body. Graeme holds her by one thin wrist.

After an hour, Jack finds Aaron in a bunker, concrete, listing in the sand. He sits in one corner, blissfully stoned. Jack calls out, laughing. Graeme lets go of Rose and she runs towards him. She doesn’t hug him, but she holds his head in her hands, gently, like it might break, puts her mouth to his ear, and whispers.

Later, Graeme twists in front of the mirror to see the two livid marks that Rose has made on his white back.

When they hit sixteen, Rose enrols at sixth form, and Jack leaves school. He gets a job at the timber yard. Caz tells him he can’t stay at Graeme’s anymore if he’s not in education.

On the last day, Graeme stands at the door. He holds out a hand to shake, but Jack just looks at him. Jack’s eyes are black and still, the iris dark and fuller than seems normal. They glisten, as if with the hint of tears, but that can’t be right. They have something in common with the eyes of an animal, Graeme thinks uneasily. Halfway between soulful and soulless.

‘Fuck off,’ Jack says, with a flash of teeth.

And he’s gone.

September.

After school, on the first day of sixth form, Dillon and Alisha walk home together. They talk about their new subjects, about the teachers. About what was boring and what not. They both carefully pretend not to be overwhelmed with the sudden closeness of adulthood.

The conversation drifts off. They walk on. The street is familiar. The stone walls, the concrete paving, the thick yellow paint in fading lines. Only, Oni isn’t here. No one has heard from her. She hasn’t enrolled at sixth form.

Her absence sits oddly between them. Things will be different without her.

‘What do you want to do?’ asks Alisha. The air is clean and fresh inside her, and she feels a little scared, a little excited.

They are into Dillon’s estate now. Most of the houses are the same. Neat but boxy. Grey, pebble-dashed, three small bedrooms. As you go down towards the river, there’s a bigger block, with ten houses terraced together. But they aren’t houses, they’re flats, each with its own front door, apart from the last door, which is missing. The windows are boarded up, so it looks like a face with eyes closed and mouth open.