Three times Danny twists the key. Four. Five. The engine cranks a little slower each time, the sound of his cool dying. He’s furious, although you’d need to be someone as close to him as his own younger brother to recognize the signs: the reddening at the earlobes, the tremor in his right arm as he waves the traffic past, the sweat beading in the stubble of his skin-fade haircut.

In one movement, Danny is outside with the bonnet open. His muscle-fit jumper is rolled to the elbows, creating the illusion that he might have the foggiest idea what’s gone wrong. That he might even fix it.

Unable to get out of the back seat without causing a fuss, Will instead stares out of his side window at the derelict shop they are stopped outside, with its peeling paint and cracked pebbledash. It was once a dry-cleaners, though the only evidence of that now are the rusted scars left by the signage. The sea is visible in the gap between this building and its neighbour. The light is fading fast, the setting sun like raging fire and smoke over the marshes. Will concentrates on the view, his head locked round at ninety degrees to his body.

I should have walked, he thinks. I really, really should’ve fucking walked.

‘You see your nan every Friday night?’ April asks.

Will’s heels dig into the car floor. She’s less than a metre away from him. Way too close for a conversation. At least she hasn’t turned right round, instead just inclining her head to the side. Limited risk of eye contact.

‘Sweet of you,’ she adds, even though Will hasn’t replied.

‘Sometimes,’ Will eventually says. A lie. He does see her every Friday night; spends most evenings round there if he isn’t working, and he’d wish it no other way. He’s only too well aware there will come a time, soon, when he won’t be able to do so any more.

‘What you reckon to sixth form?’ she asks.

‘S’OK.’

Will stares at his iPhone in his lap, smearing a wet thumb round in circles on the lock screen.

‘Hear about the dartboards?’

He gives a snort of laughter. He has heard about them – how they didn’t survive a week in the common room before being removed after Saul Caan had to be taken to A and E with a dart buried barrel-deep in the back of his neck.

‘You’re at ECS?’ he asks. Three days into lower sixth at Ebbswick Community Secondary, he’s sure he hasn’t seen her around. Though the fact that he hasn’t yet set foot inside the common room has, of course, limited his opportunities for meeting his fellow students.