‘Maybe. Anyway, a few weeks ago I’m stacking the cereal shelf in Bradbury’s. I feel something on the inside of my leg. I freeze. It’s a hand. Before I can move away, it’s touching me somewhere no one’s hand should be without a very clear invitation.’

‘You told someone, right?’

‘No, Ollie,’ she snapped. ‘I did fuck all. Went out the back, cried, had a smoke, got on with my day. That’s how it works.’

‘Why are you not reporting this stuff?’

She gave me a lopsided smile. ‘Why don’t you report the shit they do to you?’

I thought about the now-daily death threats and Nate’s new favourite: burning the house down. I’d not even considered reporting it.

‘Because no one believes me.’

‘Exactly,’ she said.

I held my knees to my chest, my biceps tensed so tight they burned, as she told me everything. It happened the Monday after we’d vandalized my classroom, the evening of that day Joey and Nate cornered me in the Hole. I’d been waiting by the pond for her, expecting some force of poetry to guide her to me, so she could confirm or deny the stories I’d been told. She, however, had been set upon as she headed to work for a stock-take shift. While I’d been getting steadily madder at her, she’d been enduring hell.

Nate and Joey, and a number of other guys – she couldn’t be sure how many – blocked her path as she cut through the alley from the park. It was just what she termed the usual at first. Invitations. Suggestions. Then my name got mentioned – they’d seen us together. Joey asked if she wanted a real man. He pushed her against the wall, held his mouth against hers. Sophia turned her head away, wriggled herself free. Nate dragged her to the ground. Her skirt was pulled up by somebody. Someone else grabbed her by the hair. A pair of hands found their way inside her jumper. A third hand gripped at her above the knee, those cold, rough fingers climbing their way up her thigh until she could do nothing but freeze, clench every sinew, pray for it to be over.

Those who weren’t holding her, or helping themselves to her body, stood round in a circle, egging the others on.

Only an approaching dog walker broke up their party. Nate held her by the neck, played a wet tongue round her earlobe and growled his parting sweet nothing: ‘Next time, we’ll all be having a go on you. Someone in every hole.’

‘Who else was there?’ I asked, my voice no more than a crackle.

‘I dunno. A guy they kept calling Kirk.’

‘Dimi Kyrkos. He’s in my class. Anyone else?’

‘Little short guy. Asian. He was filming.’