And the bluff wall of Range Rover exploded in my face again. There was the certainty of immediate death. The scream of Fuck. It played over and over again. Squashed into the corner of the room, my head jammed against the cold iron soil pipe, I poured with sweat. I fought for every breath.

The park fell quiet. Everything was calm again. My ears rang and my eyes stung. It might have been an hour before I dared to extract myself. I paced about upstairs. I took a shower and changed.

But the image of Aunty Kaye’s face, so much more vivid than I’d remembered, was unshakeable. It waited for me in darkened rooms. It was etched on the reverse of my eyelids. It punished me if I dared to fall asleep.

But it was just nerves. It wouldn’t happen again. That’s what I told myself every time it happened.

2.16 p.m.

Close to her, everything is different. I am different. It’s like those pictures of atoms Ms Choudhury draws: an electron in orbit round a nucleus. Without Sophia, without that nucleus, I am useless, tiny, bouncing around. But I am back now within her energy, and I belong. I’m a part of something. Everyone else – they are part of something separate.

‘You need me, don’t you, Ollie?’ she says.

I sink into the bed of cool ivy on the floor of the wood. My view of her is limited to a handful of jigsaw fragments of her face, the rest blocked by foliage. Maybe I could push partway through the ferns, get closer to her. But to hear her and smell her is enough. I can’t look her in the eye and tell her how I’m failing. I don’t say anything. I know that I don’t need to.

‘You’ve lost your way,’ she says. It’s not an accusation. Her voice is laden with understanding. With sympathy.

‘Have you been waiting here for me?’

‘Maybe.’ I can hear the smile in her tone. ‘What’s happened, Ollie?’

‘They’ve left the classroom. It’s over.’ I look only at my feet. Saying it makes it real. It signs off my decision. There’s no relief, as minutes ago there might have been, just the collapsing of my organs, crushed under the weight of a dying dream. ‘I think maybe they’ll leave us alone now.’ As the words come out, they sound like a lie. They feel like a lie.

‘No way,’ she whispers.