‘What do they think’s wrong?’ Will asks.

‘I’m falling to bits, Wilbo!’ Her laugh graduates into a cough, which she struggles to clear. ‘Minor heart attack, they think. I’m all out of rhythm.’ She tugs at the bunch of wires attached to her chest. ‘Look at the state of me. I’ve got a cardiologist coming to see me. They should send an electrician.’

‘You’ll be OK, though?’

She takes a deep breath, enough oxygen to see her through a whole sentence. ‘I am hammering on recovery’s door.’ She picks up the volume. ‘Don’t go worrying about me.’

Will squeezes her hand. ‘Do my best.’

‘Never mind me. How are you? How’s your week been?’

‘Good. Really good.’

This is a lie. It’s been a miserable week. Will’s read an awful lot of novels over the years, and so had dared to believe that he understood roughly how love stories work. But since that day with April, he’s realized he knows bugger all.

For a few hours after they’d hugged on top of the Martello tower, he imagined this might be the start of something, that each time they met from now on they’d fall a little further for each other, until – probably in some torrential rain – they’d lose control and confess their love and kiss hungrily and forsake all others. To that end, he’d even begun compiling a list of conversation topics, saved on his phone for future meetings. But when he next saw her in Ms Calloway’s photography lesson, things were no different from how they’d been before. In fact, they were worse.

In the hours after he’d left her at the beach, he’d done something silly. Unable to think of anything but her, he’d looked her up online. And, as grubby as it made him feel, he locked himself in the bathroom for five minutes and propped his phone against the taps, a close-up of April’s face on the screen. It was possibly the fastest, and definitely the guiltiest, of his wanking career.

Why could he not dismiss the thought that April somehow knew? It was illogical to believe that somehow his phone had accidentally filmed him and forwarded the video to her. Illogical, but another idea Will was unable to shake. These thoughts had taken him over so completely that, come photography, he couldn’t even look at her when she handed him the library copy of Geek Love, as they’d discussed. His hands were shaking so viciously as he traded it for his Laurie Lee compilation he couldn’t even keep hold of the thing. Mercifully, as he fumbled, a distraction was provided by the noisy arrival of Alfie Lim, who began a striptease in front of Kris Tring, ordering him to ‘Shoot me like one of your French girls.’