But Shannon was always there in the background. He’d be laughing with similarly handsome young men, or playing Ultimate Frisbee on the lawns, and then he’d notice her looking at him, and wave. She’d wave back, and then pretend to be on the phone so he didn’t notice that she was alone, and that she had no friends here.

Her dad sometimes suggested having lunch together on campus. She always turned him down, saying she was too busy. She wanted him to think she was having the time of her life at college, just like he had.

Then there was the party. It was Kira Schwabe who invited her. Kira was a first-year English-lit major with an empty birdcage tattooed on her wrist. She was in one of Hope’s media tutorials, which she spent scrolling through Twitter on her laptop. Without looking up, she had said, ‘You know the party at Natasha’s house?’

It was the first time they had ever spoken. ‘No,’ Hope replied.

‘Oh.’ Kira looked taken aback. ‘Really? I was hoping you could give me a ride.’

It was that stunned look which made Hope say yes. Kira was surprised that Hope hadn’t been invited. Hope wasn’t fitting in at Braithwaite, but Kira had thought she was. If she didn’t go, she would be exposed. Loner. Weirdo. Target.

The party was held in a sprawling three-storey McMansion just off campus—four levels if you counted the basement, where giant speakers made rhythmic thumping sounds which filtered up through the whole house, making the walls vibrate and the double-glazed windows rattle. Conversation was impossible. Every now and then the basement door would open and the volume would become deafening. Laser beams and smoke would pour out, and a drunken teen would emerge from the haze like a visitor from the future.

A stranger handed drinks in red cups to Kira and Hope. ‘Wooo!’ he said simply.

Kira downed hers in a single gulp. Hope sipped with more caution. She couldn’t identify the ingredients. Maybe Mountain Dew spiked with vodka.

‘Two parts battery acid, one part hand sanitiser,’ she said. But Kira had already vanished somewhere into the throng. Another young woman, walking past with a bottle of rum, topped up Hope’s drink. Hope sipped it, just because it was in her hand and it was something to do. Standing there doing nothing made her feel conspicuous. Vulnerable.

She went upstairs, where she thought the volume would be more bearable. She saw two men rolling blunts in one bedroom. Through the next door she saw a woman on her back on the bed, either laughing or crying. A man’s head was up her skirt. In the same room, another woman was blowing one guy and getting fucked by another, trapped between them like corn on cob-holders. Hope averted her eyes and started to walk back down the stairs.

She bumped into Shannon Luxford coming up.