‘Where did you get those?’ I asked, taking a powdery blue one.

He scratched his nose and grinned. ‘I have my ways.’

Finn came bounding up.

‘God, don’t give him one,’ I said.

Turning. The low clouds were turning into the hills and the hills into the clouds, each nicking colours from the other. I wanted to eat the clouds. They looked like cookie dough.

Hands were on my shoulders.

‘I really, really like cookie dough,’ I said, leaning back, feeling a cheek on my ear.

‘Cookie dough’s inside,’ said Fraser, twisting me round gently and leading me back to the door.

Finn was the best dancer in the world, or the worst. Becca had her own tightly quivering thing going on, as if she were disagreeing with someone very, very strongly, her limbs occasionally exploding outwards, but her younger brother – you couldn’t fault his conviction. I think Stef might have taken him under his wing, whether Finn liked it or not, with moves like that. And then we would have run away, killed him. Finn, lying on the pavement, spit thinning at the side of his mouth.

‘Don’t die, Finn,’ I said, holding his crooked hand in mine.

He looked quite pleased for a second. ‘I’m never going to die!’ He shouted it twice more, before running around the room.

Fraser pulled me towards him for a completely out-of-time, filthy grind. There would be no mums up here, or wayfaring dogs, or anything else.

Lips on my ear, and my mouth. Hands slotted between my pants and my hips. I thought about biting his tongue. I should probably have just told him I didn’t like it as much as he seemed to, but part of me didn’t care, and I let him swirl around my teeth. Didn’t bite.

Time went fuggy. It zipped by, or maybe it billowed, like a parachute. The fire strobed. Fire-disco.

There was a disembodied cry outside. Rising.

I prised my limpet-mouth off Fraser’s neck. ‘What’s that?’

Fraser lowered my head back down. ‘Dunno.’

Again. A sort of yowling.

‘I don’t like hyenas,’ I said, tugging slightly on the neck of his T-shirt.

He detached my fingers. ‘It’s not a hyena.’

I let him take my hand and lead me to the door.

The sky. God. It was so dark now, except that the moon was the brightest and most amazing thing ever. Someone had used a pipette and dropped milk and oil, all marbled together. Bang. Stars too, loads of them.

Becca was standing at the edge of the grass before it dropped away, her chin in the air, howling. A small, soaring sound, like the movement of a heavy bird leaving a tree, down then up, up, up. And – I swear I heard it – the hills answered her back with their own tiny, tripping howl. I’d caught her earlier, retching our crisps and chocolate dinner up into a bit of bog, her fingers in her mouth. Maybe she hoped the moon would suck it out of her instead.