The heat made the backs of Nona’s knees blister with sweat, but Cam, unlike Palamedes, was always merciless about keeping her going. In a way she was glad that it was Cam today and not Palamedes, because even in his short appearances Palamedes liked to ask probing questions about exactly what the teacher was teaching, and to say things like “My God, that’s how they teach mathematics?” and cluck Cam’s tongue in a way that was impossible to answer. Camilla was just quiet and nice and held Nona’s hand, and once they got into the Building gave Nona a long drink of ice water from the cooling cupboard.

Nona enjoyed the water, but wilted a little at the sight of Camilla removing a carton of more sliced fruit from the cupboard. She and Pyrrha and Palamedes had gotten it into their heads a month or so ago that Nona could be tempted with fruit, which was true then but not particularly true now. Nona had decided that she was fine with having eaten fruit, but not with eating fruit; but she was too cheerful to disappoint Camilla, so they both ate slices of sweating orange melon until it was time to tack up the thick black sheeting on the windows, and then Cam barred the door and gave Nona the bones.

Nona sat cross-legged on the floor and chose to arrange them into a sort of snaking spiral, smallest pieces in the centre and biggest pieces on the outside, as Camilla sat nearby and sketched what she was doing on a brown sheet of butcher’s paper.

“Where did you go?” Nona asked, once she had taken the time to admire her handiwork. “When I was at school, I mean.”

The pencil stilled briefly. “Seeing people.”

“About Site C?”

“Keep going. There are some bones left.”

Nona added a big greyish knobble of bone to the spiral, but with no great interest. It was only a bone. Nice to nibble at, boring otherwise. “Done,” she said, then guessed, “People like Crown?”

The pencil had been put down. The eyes had shadowed into earthen greys. “Crown,” said Palamedes pleasantly, “isn’t our friend right now. Okay, take that smallest piece there and try rolling it in your fingers. Feel all the little indentations in that scooped-out portion.”

“I love Crown,” Nona protested, giving the smallest bone a desultory grope.

“Why do you love Crown?”

Nona thought about it.

“She has lovely hair. And when she hugs you she smells like cinnamon, and her breasts feel nice, and she’s so big and pretty.”

Palamedes looked at her, and then he took the notepad out of Camilla’s capacious pockets. Nona despaired: there was always a tick somewhere if she mentioned breasts. “That’s not exactly love as I would classify it,” he said. “That’s simply a list of things most red-blooded human beings like about Crown. How do you know what cinnamon smells like, Nona?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I just do. Is your timer on?”