‘But I should have known. I should have been able to tell that she wasn’t sober,’ he insisted to himself as much as to Lily. After all, it was exactly what Claudia’s parents had shouted to him at the inquest.

Why didn’t you stop her?! Why didn’t you do something?!

The sounds of their voices loud in his ears, despite the intervening years. He’d never forgotten it, or them.

‘Do you know how many times I’ve thought the same thing?’ Lily asked him. ‘That I – that we – should have known that something was wrong with Claudia? She was in our year, in some of our classes. And no one – not her friends, not teachers, not the school – said anything. Did anything. She was in such pain, emotionally, and no one knew.’ She shrugged helplessly. ‘Claudia was the popular girl, a little naughty, but … In hindsight, we’d all realized that in the months before the prom, she’d been acting a little differently. But we just ignored it. We could have told the teachers, could have gone to someone, told someone … But we didn’t. If we had, you might never have been in the car. Claudia might never have felt the need to take drugs or get drunk that night.’

‘You can’t blame yourself,’ he insisted.

‘Yet you get to blame yourself?’ she asked.

‘I should have done something.’

‘You did. You stayed with her.’

‘What?’

‘I …’ She hesitated. ‘You stayed, in the car with her. You wouldn’t let the paramedics touch you until they’d got Claudia out. I saw it.’

Shocked, he searched her eyes, for something, he didn’t know what.

‘It gave me strength,’ she said sadly. ‘The strength to stay with V, Zo and Malie. For a while, in our car, I was the only person conscious. And although part of me wanted out, wanted so desperately to run, to flee, I saw how much you fought to stay with Claudia. And it made me hold on. I grabbed V’s hand from the front and Malie beside me. But over Zo’s shoulder I could see you. You held her and didn’t stop talking to her until they practically dragged you from the car. The entire time, I saw.’

Goosebumps pebbled his skin, and a cold shiver cut through his body. She closed the distance between them – bare inches between his chest and hers – and her hands came up to frame his face, bringing his gaze to hers.