Mrs Bracken blinked in surprise. No one ever interrupted her address at assembly. Eva strained to see above the girls in front of her, and then she saw the candyfloss hair, the familiar smirk.

‘No, you may not,’ Bracken snapped, rustling her notes before resuming her speech.

‘Who the fuck is that?’ Alicia whispered to her.

Eva didn’t answer. She kept her gaze fixed on Corinne, who continued to stand there, zipping and unzipping her hoodie, a challenge in her expression.

‘Take your seat, young lady.’

‘But this is boring.’

Laughter rippled through the crowd.

‘Sit down. Now!’ Bracken barked, irritation spilling over into anger, and Eva noticed the smirk hardening on Corinne’s face, before she sat down and Eva couldn’t see her any more.

Bracken’s speech continued but the mood in the room had changed. Next to her, Alicia’s foot was tap-tapping against the leg of her chair but Eva sat perfectly still. A familiar feeling of disquiet roused itself in her chest. She strained to see her younger sister but Beth was hidden from view.

A year ago, Eva’s younger sister had almost gotten herself expelled. Soft, dreamy little Beth, who never raised her head above the parapet. Eva could still remember the day she arrived home from the pool and found her mother sitting at the kitchen table, red-eyed, a tissue balled up in her hand.

‘Have you noticed anything in school?’ Abi had beseeched Eva. ‘Anything at all? Has anyone said anything to you about Beth? About anything she might have been involved in?’

‘Why? What’s she done?’ It had been the obvious question, but her mother had ignored it, ploughing on with her interrogation.

‘Has she said anything to you about what’s been going on in her class?’

‘No.’

‘Does she talk to you at all about Lisa? About Sasha and the others? Have you seen them together in school?’

‘I’m not her keeper, Mum—’

‘Would you just answer the fucking question!’

She had never seen her mother like that. Her voice screechy with shredded nerves, cheeks wet with tears. It had frightened Eva to see her so untethered. And that was before Eva knew what Beth had done.

They didn’t discuss it. That was the way things were in her family. Her father was emotionally repressed and her mother was relentless in her optimism – doggedly putting a brave face on things – so between them they conspired to curtail any analysis or even discussion about the points of pain in their lives.

Still, Eva remembered sitting at the top of the stairs, listening to the whispered conversation between her parents about Beth, about what had caused the rupture.

‘Perhaps it’s a genetic thing,’ her father had suggested. ‘I mean, when you consider Melissa – how she is sometimes …’

He had sounded morose, bewildered. Or maybe he was just wrung-out.