I’ve not told Sophia about the file I keep under my bed – a dossier I’ve been compiling since we first met by the pond. Print-offs of the news story from the internet. An original four-year-old local Herald, searched out from the bundles of them Gramps keeps in the shed and forgets to take to the tip. There are the Facebook screenshots from the In Memory of Kenny page: group discussions of his untouchable legacy, musings on the likely killer, poems his mum posts on his birthday. I even have a smudged condolence card recovered from a decomposing bouquet left at the murder scene on the last anniversary. I browse the file every night. Being close to the man Sophia loved brings me closer to her. He is simultaneously everything I wish to be and everything I mustn’t be. I have not forgotten about Kenny.

‘He was kind, just like you,’ she says. The comparison calms me. ‘And now he’s in the ground. It’s what these people do.’

‘It wasn’t my class that killed him.’

‘Their kind did. They’re all the same, Ollie. Pure evil. You know that.’

I do. But I’m out of ideas.

‘Don’t you want me any more?’ she asks. ‘When they’re done with you, they’ll come for me. You know the word they keep using? Ruin. That’s what they say. They’ll ruin me. They’re gonna take it in turns and ruin me. You know what they’re capable of. Please don’t let them do that, Ollie.’

My intestines twist round themselves. The word is familiar. A girl, naked and kneeling, her pout not masking her fear. Ten men, maybe more, in a circle around her. They are all naked, well endowed, aroused. Ruin Me is scrawled on her navel in marker pen, an arrow pointing to between her legs. The camera pans round. The same message is daubed on her lower back, this time the arrow pointing to her bottom. The video’s on my laptop, sent by Amit last summer. I wish I’d never seen it. I wish I’d not watched it so many times.

‘You know I love you,’ she whispers. Even now my mouth curls into a smile when she says it, like it always does. ‘Only you can stop this. Make them pay.’

I nod. There must be a way.

‘You’re doing the right thing,’ she says. We both know this. ‘For you, for me, for your grandad, for whoever they turn on next.’

My gaze rests on the ground between my legs. There has to be a solution. I can’t entertain the idea of there not being a solution. Because I know that no one ever finds an answer if they accept that one might not exist.

‘By this evening, this’ll all be over,’ she tells me. ‘God, I can’t wait to be with you tonight.’

‘Me too.’