‘Is someone after you?’ she said.

‘You never know with the Stasi, they’ll stop at nothing.’

She laughed.

I made her laugh.

‘If they find us we could always get the recorders out.’ She pointed to the plastic storage box on the shelf above her head.

‘An ideal torture method.’

‘You have to pick the tunes carefully for maximum effect.’

‘Morning Has Broken?’

‘Good choice.’

‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands?’

‘You’re on my wavelength, soldier.’

People looked at me differently after I started hanging out with Lorna. The rich girl who managed to get herself expelled from boarding school. There were rumours. She had currency. My value went up just by association. Sometimes, when people assumed we were an item she’d ham it up. She’d put her arm round me and pull me in and say, ‘you won’t believe it, but actually we met in a cupboard! And we’ve never looked back, have we darling?’

And that’s what we were, when I think about it. A unit. I know she was taking the piss, but that’s how it felt. Us on the bench in the playground watching all the others. Footballers, terrified first years, girls rolling their skirts up at the waist and obsessing over twats who couldn’t give a shit about them.

‘It’s so depressing,’ Lorna said, ‘imagine in ten years time what they’ll all be doing. Working at the local chippy or a supermarket or the stinking cheese factory round the corner. Having babies and settling here without ever seeing anything, watching soaps every night and getting rat-arsed at the weekend to forget how sad their little lives are.’

I didn’t say anything.

‘After college I’m going travelling. Six months discovering the world then six months working for a charity in Africa or Thailand or anywhere. You should come.’

‘Yeah.’ I said it without thinking. What was there to think about?

‘Who knows,’ she said, ‘maybe we’ll never come back.’

I squint through the sunlight. The high grass swishing by the gate. A crow landing on a fence post. Its harsh call is like a warning, like a sound effect from a horror film.