‘Not really,’ Lauren says in a quiet voice. She wraps her foot around the back of her left leg to scratch it, like a flamingo. It’s true that when Diane gets on the school bus, with her slouchy black hoody, she will sometimes touch Lauren’s hair as she passes, like a blessing. On those days the girls her age will leave Lauren alone, although they still whisper. It’s an unspoken rule that the seats at the back of the bus are for the older kids, who go to the high school next to their primary. Diane is the kind of teenage girl who takes the middle seat of the very last row and doesn’t care if her throaty laugh travels down the aisle. One time their bus driver, Roy, threw her off for smoking. Lauren remembers looking down at the stony verge as they drove away. Diane stood giving the bus the middle finger, the wide purple heathland stretching behind her into wide white sky.

Lauren wishes Diane could see her Halloween costume. She’s someone who enjoys old films with vampires. Lauren thinks she would too; if she was allowed to go to Diane’s to watch them, they wouldn’t scare her.

There are lots of times when Lauren does feel scared: at school, on the bus, even at home when her father yells at her for asking too many questions. But Diane gives her a little thrill of fear that can feel good. She once dared Lauren to touch an electric fence for as long as she could, which was just a few seconds in the end. A week later, Diane gave her a bottle of glittery nail polish called Electric Eel. She showed Lauren where she had ripped off the security tag, so the alarm wouldn’t be triggered when she took it out of the shop. ‘The name reminded me of you … though you’re more of a prawn,’ Diane said, smiling with dark lipstick. It was still one of Lauren’s best memories.

‘If she told you to jump off a bridge would you do it?’ Niall had asked at the time, when he heard about the electric fence. Lauren had shaken her head, but deep down, she knew she probably would.