It was like being stabbed in the gut with a penknife. ‘Fuck.’

‘Polly.’ Lottie’s voice was sharp. ‘What’s going on? Are you actually ill? Not just—’ She looked exasperated. ‘You get too drunk too often. It’s not …’ She put her hand out towards my hair.

‘Please, really. Fucking – fuck. I just need to sleep.’ I stumbled out to the hallway.

I didn’t understand. He didn’t seem sorry that I hadn’t known. He didn’t even seem sorry about – God, I couldn’t even think the words again, it was too exhausting. He’d been in jail. For fifteen years. He’d shot someone. Someone who – I touched my laptop keyboard and forced myself to look at the article again.

Molly Bawn. My age, just under. And I realised something else, then.

Her name rhymed with mine.

Midsummer’s eve. I’d woken up with the sunrise prising itself metallically under my eyelids at a time when everything should still have been dark. I wandered outside as the birds began to string their songs together, my feet licked with dew, looking for bauchans and horse-demons and the Ghillie Dubh, before going back to bed mid-morning. Tyger kept popping his head round the door, like a nurse checking in on a patient. I’d eaten nothing but biscuits for a day, and the sugary mulch was the putty holding my insides together.

Lottie was sitting on my bed. It was the afternoon. Rain tickling the window like an annoying child pestering a cat. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you.’

‘Everything’s wrong with me.’

She was holding a headband with fake leaves spiralled round it on her lap. ‘I know you’ve been struggling a bit this year, but – I thought you were having a good time here.’

‘I’ve fucked up,’ I said, through a mouthful of duvet.

‘Polly. You’re getting ahead with your work, and—’

‘I failed the year.’

‘What?’

I lifted my head a little. ‘I failed my exams and have to rewrite my essays. If I don’t pass everything in September I have to redo the year. Which costs nine grand extra. Or leave.’ I pictured myself strung up, punchbag-style. ‘And I’m still paying rent on my room. I slept with Lena’s boyfriend. Dan. I moved out early because they all fucking hate me.’

A long, bewildered pause. ‘Right.’

Or her taking me back to the daughter shop, exchanging me for a better one. ‘And me and Stef …’ I stared ahead.

‘You and Stef what?’

I might have killed someone. I shook my head.

Lottie looked out of the window, before making a sound like air coming out of a tyre. ‘We’re going to the bonfire later. I’d like to see you there.’

I nodded, looking at the wall.

She put the headband on the bedside table and rested a hand on my leg over the covers, just for a second. ‘And for goodness’ sake, have a shower.’

Lottie had gone to Bev and Adam’s for a pre-bonfire dinner. I ghosted around the house, lifting things up – the retro cameras in the cabinet, the bulbous plastic lamp, salt and pepper shakers on the dining room table. Checking I was still real. The stray minerals dissolved on my tongue like tiny bee stings. Wasp stings.