‘It wasn’t,’ she says, and I deflate. Of course I don’t want Lucas to have killed me, but it would have been the beginning of the end. She sits next to me and I look into her eyes, searching for the tiniest sliver of doubt, but there’s nothing. ‘It wasn’t,’ she says again. ‘He was nice. He had a lot to say, though he was really nervous of us being young and him looking inappropriate. He’s still really cut up about you. He has a folder of photos of you on his phone. Look. He sent them to me.’

I stare at the pictures as she scrolls through them. I look exactly like that now, except that I don’t. These pictures show a different boy. I see now that I haven’t been that version of myself for a long, long time. He’s a stranger. The gulf between me and myself is far bigger than I’d ever realized. I know Ariel sees it too.

‘And this is Lucas now.’ She flicks through the pictures on her phone. ‘Izzy took them. She told him it was for the article. I didn’t even think of that.’

Lucas is a thirty-five-year-old guy, broad and muscular, with greying hair. He’s smiling at the camera, in a cafe, with people sitting at tables around him. He looks comfortable in the world in a way he never used to be.

I stopped him being comfortable, and now I’m not there.

The room fades around me. This is what my classmates are like. They have moved on. I’m stuck.

I imagine the scene. A cafe in London, the three of them sitting at a table with their cups of tea, existing in the same space and time. I want to break things. I want to charge into that cafe and throw everyone’s drink on the ground. I want to smash the windows, turn the tables upside down, destroy every bit of it, to stop people having fun without me.

I decide to give up. Just for a moment. I need a break.

‘Ariel,’ I say. ‘Can we have a day? Can we have just one lovely day when we forget all this? Another date, but not at school? Shall we do something different?’

She looks at me and I see her face change. She smiles slightly.

‘What do you have in mind?’

As soon as I wake up I take the books out of my schoolbag and replace them with a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, a T-shirt and my favourite trainers. Then, even though I don’t need to eat or drink, I add that packet of Club biscuits from the cupboard and a litre of orange juice from the fridge, just because I like feeling normal. I say goodbye to Dad and Gus for the last time, as usual, and leave a little bit early.