‘She’s the one!’ Britta Sayers swung herself towards each of her friends in turn, hair whipping. ‘I told you someone was reporting back.’

‘It’s not me!’ The coycrock girl’s voice grew desperate. ‘It’s not me! I would never!’

Anna came closer, her tone cool, analytical. ‘Why should we believe you?’

‘Because…’ The coycrock girl was trembling, close to tears. ‘Because who would trust me?’ The Eldest Girls fell quiet at this. ‘They doubt me,’ she added, ‘more than they could ever doubt you.’

Jade-Marie spoke gently, wary of another of Britta’s slaps. ‘She’s from the mainland.’

‘We know!’ Anna sighed. ‘We get it! We understand what she’s trying to say!’

‘No, I mean…’ Jade-Marie adjusted her nightgown where it pulled at her throat. ‘I mean, she will know. She will know things. Just like we thought Mr Hailey would. We can ask her if he’s telling the truth.’

Anna and Britta looked to Jade-Marie, then slowly back at the girl. They bit their lips.

‘Who is Mr Hailey?’ asked the coycrock, nervous under their stare.

And this is where the tone changes, as if a new roll is loaded in the projector, belonging to a different film. The same actresses perform, in wholly different roles.

Accounts have the girls going limp at the knees as they describe the new teacher; they giggle, groan, their language a little oily, maybe hysterical. Oh, his eyes! they say. Oh, his golden hair! Have you seen the muscles in his stomach, and the size of his … Their tongues go sibilant. They are in a trance with their thoughts, reaching for the mounds of their own private parts through the cloth of their gowns.

They start talking of other men in a similar fashion. They grasp at the swell of their breasts, and even though they are wearing layers of school uniform beneath those nightdresses, the detail of their hardening nipples finds its way into the story as it is passed around.

I wonder, says one girl – Britta in some accounts, Anna in others – if that boy with the gun has something else as long and powerful as his rifle.

The girls scream at the idea, urging the coycrock girl to come nearer, to join them in their quivering huddle.

Have you ever done it? they want to know of her. Have you? Have you?

They reach out to touch the strange redness of her hair and stroke the freckles of her cheeks. At this juncture, some listeners want to know if the girls kissed.

‘No,’ says the teller, ‘because they didn’t know they were being watched. Girls only do that when they’re being watched.’

The coycrock girl was pulled into the Eldest Girls’ circle, subsumed by them.

This part of the story seems to hold up, even among its participants.