‘I freaked when I got that message,’ Troy says. ‘I was just a bit, how dare you rake up what happened for an entertaining little article? It never gets better, you know? And the idea that some kids were trying to investigate for a magazine, thinking they might be able to solve it after all these years, like it was a game? It made me angry and I wrote back to Lucas without stopping to think. Honestly. I could picture him lapping up the attention from a couple of teenagers and it riled me right up.’

‘That’s OK,’ I say.

I can feel Troy’s energy. He has grown up and I never will. Everything’s different. I sense the chasm; I feel everything I’ve lost in a way I never have before. I know who Jemima and Lucas and Troy became, but not me. I didn’t grow up into anyone.

Ariel knows what I’m feeling. She knows me. She knows she needs to move things on quickly before I collapse.

‘Troy,’ she says, ‘how come your football trophy is in the background of one of your pictures?’

It hangs in the air. This is the key. It’s everything.

‘Oh,’ he says. He looks at us both in turn. ‘The trophy. You took it from me, didn’t you? You never admitted it, but I knew you’d done it, and I felt so shit because I was grumpy with you about it and who gives a crap? I fell to pieces when you disappeared, and part of it was because I was mad at you, and then I never saw you again.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ I say. ‘I’ve been through the day again and again and again, and I’ve tried to say sorry and give it back so many times. It never works. Me having the trophy is one of the unmovable things.’

‘Maybe it was to get me here now,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry I gave a shit about something so meaningless.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry I was such a tosser. I’m pretty sure I was going to present it to you on the coach, in front of everyone. I thought it’d be funny. No idea what I was thinking.’

‘I was always in your shadow,’ Troy says, looking at me with the most intensity I think I’ve ever seen. ‘Always. I was your funny friend, the ginger one, the tall one who looked odd. Girls would try to set their best friends up with me so they could get their hands on you. And then I won that stupid thing and it felt like the first time I’d actually been better at something.’