‘I don’t like people touching it,’ Beth said quickly. She couldn’t say why she felt so alarmed, tears threatening to spring in her eyes.

‘How did you get it?’

‘An operation when I was twelve. I had scoliosis.’

‘What?’

‘My spine grew curved.’ She gestured with her hands to demonstrate. ‘They had to put metal pins in my back to straighten the curve and to make sure it grew properly.’

‘That is awful,’ Corinne said, and Beth felt shy beneath her gaze which had grown serious and intent.

She shrugged. ‘It was okay.’

‘No,’ the girl said, her voice insistent. ‘It must have been terrible.’

The statement, solemn and clear, sat in the air between them. The way Corinne held the silence and the change that came into her eyes – empathy, sadness – it was as if she glimpsed something of what Beth had endured. Not just the physical pain but the anguish of all the things you could not see, a history of names that had been affixed to her: hunchback, gimp, spastic. Names that adhered long after the unruly line of her spine had been disciplined.

‘Do you want to see something?’ Corinne asked, leaning forward slightly, her voice dropping.

Beth’s heart gave a small kick, and she watched as the other girl half-twisted, pulling up the hem of the green slip-dress to reveal her hip. Beth leaned forward.

It was a tattoo of a tiny flower. Delicate white petals surrounding a yellow centre, the outline of the flower inked in a thin black line. It was no bigger than a real daisy, and there was something tender about the sight of it nestling there on the band of skin above the blue cotton of her underwear – Beth felt an urge to touch it but didn’t dare.

‘What type of flower is it?’ she asked.

‘In French, we say laurier-rose. But in English, it is oleander?’ Her accent tripped upwards, questioning her own pronunciation. Then she added, almost bashfully: ‘I looked it up so I could tell you.’

‘It’s beautiful.’ Beth’s eyes were still fixed on the furl of petals. Her unease had dissipated.

‘But poisonous,’ Corinne added. ‘You must take care how you handle it.’

She said this lightly, almost carelessly, and Beth, who was still leaning forward to examine the delicate flower, felt the touch of Corinne’s fingers once more against her neck. A feathery caress.

‘I have an idea,’ Corinne said.

Beth allowed herself to be steered into the desk chair, and when Corinne tugged down at the back of her collar to reveal the scar, she didn’t flinch or protest. Instead, she remained still and perfectly calm as Corinne picked up a pen from the desk and began to draw. The coolness of the pen’s nib gliding over her skin. All the nerve endings tingling, a sensation that stilled her heart and yet sent ripples of feeling all through her.