It’d been all over the news a few weeks back. Vicious hazing of first years and sexual assault as a competitive sport for everyone else. It hadn’t occurred to Lena until now that Josh might have been involved in any of that. He was smug and mouthy, but too gentle, too clean to be capable of forcing some seventeen-year-old boy to drink beer off his balls or taking his turn raping an unconscious girl slick with other boys’ semen. And he’d shown such self-control now, putting a stop to things. No. He slept at the college but was not of it.

‘Your parents at home?’ he asked.

‘Mum might be; wouldn’t know. She’s, like, ten thousand k’s away.’

‘You don’t live with your olds? Cool. So can we … ?’

She imagined for a millisecond walking him the six blocks to her room in the non-college women’s-only residence, a characterless, 1970s red-brick complex known variously as Lesbo Manor, the Convent and Povvo House. ‘Nah. Housemates. It’d be awkward.’

He exhaled heavily. ‘Maybe another time. When your housemates are out or something.’

Would it be so bad, having him see where she lived? She tried to imagine him in the dim stairwell, eyes straining to adjust after the brightness of the afternoon, nose twitching at the mustiness, hand jolting away from the inexplicably greasy railing. Past the shared bathroom to her door, jiggle the key until the lock gives and then Josh standing there looking at the fold-up card table piled with textbooks and the clothes horse strewn with undies and socks drying under the barely-cracked-open window. The nun’s single bed made up with a blue-and-yellow-gingham sheet set which Aunty Nic gave her as a moving-in gift. Over her pillow, the corkboard covered with pics of Mum and Will and Nic and a couple of Dad and lots of Lena with her arms around friends, all of them pulling ugly faces. The cupboard-sized kitchenette that always smelt like old eggs, though she hadn’t cooked them there even once.

Josh drummed his fingers on his thighs. Long, long, pale pink fingers with neat, perfectly manicured nails. A lady doctor’s nails. She imagined those hands on the stairwell guardrail again, the greasiness that you could feel for hours even though you scrubbed and there was nothing there. She had imagined those fingers sliding into her so many nights. They were always this clean and dry, this unsullied.

He leant across and kissed her, so light it was almost a breath. ‘Another time then, Harris.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Unless …’ His lips nipped hers as he spoke.

‘What?’

‘I’ve got mates in other colleges. Ones they’re not surveilling so heavily. We could maybe …’

‘You think?’