‘What a piece of crap,’ April says as she jumps out of the broken-down bus.

Will reaches out a hand to steady her. She doesn’t notice, leaving him at the kerb with a limp arm. A younger kid in an ECS uniform points and laughs at him as he disembarks. Steam is billowing from the back of the bus.

‘Gotta be the fourth time it’s packed up this year,’ Will mumbles. ‘Hardly surprising.’ He gestures towards the rust that bubbles through the scruffy cream and green paintwork. The bus is specially laid on for the afternoon school run and has to be thirty years old, embellished with a generation’s worth of seat stains and compass-etched declarations of love.

‘What is it with you and me and breakdowns?’ she says. ‘Remember that time in Danny’s car?’

‘Oh yeah,’ he says, like he’s had to scan his memory. It was the night they met; if asked, he could recall every word they exchanged.

‘So what’s the plan now?’ April says. A light rain has begun to fall. She gazes up at the greying sky. ‘Long walk to the front from here.’

They were ten minutes into the ride from school when the bus ground to a halt, although the journey had felt much longer than that to Will. Why did sitting next to her bring with it so many tricky things to consider? Look forward when she speaks or turn to face her? Where should his arms be? Crossed felt rude, but when he put them to his sides he kept brushing against her, which surely felt like an attempted groping. And why had he allowed Alfie to mist him so heavily in Jean Paul Gaultier before he left school? Will had been burning up so badly he could almost see a haze vaporizing from his skin. Surely he was stinking half the bus out?

The crowd at the roadside has thinned now as ECS pupils wander off in every direction. Just a few remain, sheltering under a tree. And milling about behind the bus is the old man with the stained beard and the musty odour who, thanks to April’s presence, Will didn’t have to share a seat with today. He walks slow circles, drawing on a sagging brown roll-up.

‘Another time, maybe?’ Will says. He’s spent half the day toying with the idea of cancelling, so he’s surprised at his own sense of deflation as he utters the words.

‘Shame,’ April says. ‘Be good to put some ideas together. That way we’ve got the weekend to think about them some more. All for a good cause, innit?’

Will has almost forgotten this – that on the face of it they’re simply going for a coffee to brainstorm ideas for events to save the library. This is not a first date. So why has he been so insanely fucking nervous about it?