After lunch, after I’ve failed for the third time to remember what ‘latrocinium’ means (fraud or robbery), Aled puts down my pack of cue cards and looks at me. Aled Last doesn’t have a load of friends – he’s extremely shy so not many people try to talk to him – but I’d say he and Tao were two of my best.

“Ugh, sorry,” I say immediately. “Wow. I need to revise more. God.”

Aled blinks at me, and then glances out the window. It’s another intensely sunny day. I probably should have just stayed in bed with Nick this morning.

“Maybe we should stop revising now,” he says in his tiny voice. He chuckles and looks down at his own revision – more colourful maths cue cards. “Not that I’ve been doing much anyway.”

“Haha, yeah, same.”

“You okay though?” he asks. “I feel like you’ve been really down today.”

I pause, a little taken aback. “Oh. Yeah. No. I’m fine.”

“Yeah?” He fiddles with his fingers and gives me a look.

“Yeah. I don’t know. Nick’s just talking a lot about uni, it’s kind of… just makes me feel a bit crap… I don’t know.” I groan and run a hand through my hair. “That sounds so bad when I say it out loud.”

“No, you’re allowed to feel things.” He smiles. “I get it.”

“It’s not really fair on him though; like, he has a right to be excited.”

“Maybe you should talk to him about it. You’ve already talked about long distance and stuff, right?”

“Yeah, we’ve talked about it… I just don’t think he realises how much it’s…” I don’t really know how to finish my sentence. “It’ll make him feel so bad though.” I shake my head. “I don’t want him to stop being excited about it.”

“Well…” Aled struggles to find something to say. He looks down at his desk and fiddles with his cue cards. “I don’t think you’ve got anything to be worried about. I mean, you know, you’re… you’re Nick and Charlie. You’re not going to break up… I don’t think… I mean, even Elle and Tao aren’t breaking up and you know what they’re like.”

Tao’s been going out with Elle Argent, a girl from Nick’s year, for almost the same amount of time Nick and I have been going out. They do seem to argue a lot but this is only because they’re practically the same person.

“Yeah.”