“Not that I know of. I don’t know what’s wrong.”

“Hm.” She doesn’t say anything else.

Harry Greene lives in a townhouse near the high street. His massive parties are pretty much the main reason he’s the most famous guy at Truham. We know that by eleven almost everyone will be in the basement dancing to some crappy dubstep remixes. By twelve, people will be throwing up in house-plant pots and on the pavement outside. By two, people will be asleep in corridors, breaking away into different rooms to mess around, getting high in the garden.

And sure enough, Harry’s got music blasting from the basement making the floor vibrate and there are people everywhere, mostly Truham sixth formers, but definitely a few Year 10s and 11s too, and people from the secondary school across town. I think we were all supposed to be in the garden, but it’s absolutely chucking it down with rain. So much for summer.

As soon as we’re inside and Tori’s gone off to find her friends, Charlie speed-walks towards the kitchen for drinks. The kitchen table, as expected, is covered in bottles and plastic cups, and once we reach it Charlie downs a vodka shot, and then another one. I think this might be the point where I need to actually say something.

I touch his arm. “Hey.”

He looks at me and takes a sip of the vodka lemonade he just made. “Hm?”

“You okay?”

He nods a little too enthusiastically. “Yeah. Fine. Why?”

I shake my head. “You just seem sort of on edge.”

He looks away again and pours a drop more vodka into his drink. “Oh. Just… a bit stressed because of revision… just been in a bad mood today…”

This seems like a reasonable explanation, I guess. Then again, Charlie could lie for Britain – he lies to loads of people. He lied to people at school for months about his anorexia. He lies to his parents sometimes when he wants to go out somewhere with me but isn’t sure they’d let him. He lies to Mr Shannon to avoid becoming unpopular with other students. To be fair, he hardly ever lies to me, but occasionally I can tell that he’s saying something just because he doesn’t want to bother me. I think this might be one of those times.

He takes another sip. His eyes dart around the room. “Best Coast,” he says.

“What?”

“The music. It’s Best Coast.”

I hadn’t even clocked that there was music playing in here. I try to think of something to say but he beats me to it.

“We should get drunk.”

I chuckle. “I’m driving.”

“Oh. That’s boring.”

“You get drunk.”

“I plan to.”

“D’you think we should actually socialise first?”