Ed Gemmell, fellow J-block resident, was a young man with the personality of a cinnamon roll and the spine of partially cooked spaghetti. He was inoffensive and perfectly tolerable, and Daisy and Esther greeted him with the kind of delight Susan reserved for finding a lost pack of cigarettes.

Nodding, Esther waved majestically at the smoke billowing from the window. “Behold the consequences of crossing a dark princess, a baby giraffe, and sarcasm personified . . .”

“I’m the giraffe, right?” Daisy whispered.

“No, Daisy. You’re the dark princess.” Susan rolled her eyes and blew smoke out of the corner of her mouth.

“Cross us, and you shall burn!” Esther dropped to her knees and cackled demonically, raven hair cascading down her back as she tipped her head up to claw at the sky.

Her friends took a step away.

“Should you really be confessing to arson?” Ed Gemmell asked as everyone turned to stare.

“It’s not arson if it’s an accident,” Susan said. The three exchanged complicit looks: Esther’s, guilty; Daisy’s, strained; Susan’s, reassuring. No one was going to prosecute over a self-combusting baked potato. Even if it had self-combusted because of Esther’s extreme microwave negligence.

“Anyway . . . No one’s allowed back in yet, so I’m going to the library to”—Ed Gemmell edged a little away from Susan and shot her an inexplicably cautious glance—“um, to get some books out.”

“I hear the library’s a good place for that.” Susan watched him closely, noting the irregular bob of his Adam’s apple and the way his moley little eyes darted about behind the rectangular lenses of his wire-rimmed glasses.

If she wanted to, she could crack him like an egg.

Unnerved by such scrutiny, Ed Gemmell turned to Esther with a hefty dose of desperation and zero optimism. “I take it you, er, wouldn’t fancy coming with me?” Like Esther, Ed was an English Literature student. Unlike Esther, he seemed to understand that this involved reading books.

“Why would you think that?” Esther said, getting up from where she was still kneeling on the ground and dusting off her knees.

“Because you never do any work?” Susan suggested.

“Because we need to stay here in case the Fire Monitor does another head count?” said Daisy.

“Because you’re still dressed for bed.” To his credit, Ed Gemmell was clearly doing his best not to acknowledge the expanse of long, lean, bone-white limbs that emerged from Esther’s shortest of skull-print bed shorts. These were accompanied by a T-shirt bearing the slogan Die God Botherers, which may or may not have been a reference to the lyrics of an obscure German grindcore band, and a pair of fleecy slipper socks that belonged to Daisy.

“Counter proposition!” Esther extended an imperious finger. “We all go to the student bar for a remedial beverage.”

“Ooh, they do a lovely hot chocolate,” Daisy said.