They weren’t my friends. Not Fraser, or Finn, and not Becca. I didn’t have any friends – not my housemates, who would probably never talk to me again, not even Stef, five hundred miles away in his own orbit, crowd-surfing above a load of shaved heads and shaved chests, his head arched back, yelling blissfully, trying to forget what we did.

I let myself suffocate.

Those underground jewels. Names that spark off the tongue, like faraway places. Zeolite. Aragonite. Galena. All just water and air, and yet each one different.

Woodruffite, with its charred look and firecrackle glaze. Brewsterite, the colour of clover honey. The long ice-shards of Strontianite, dirtier grains clumped on top like old sugar, my colours. I always liked white and now it’s all I am.

My uncle once put a block of harmotome into my palm, cut out from the dark. It was the width of my finger and had the shine of raw silk. Sharp enough to nick, to tear, just. A twinned crystal, he said.

I always wanted to find one of my own. I searched and searched. A twinned one is special, morphing to become more stable, to survive. Sometimes the crystals pass through each other, symmetrical, like two dancers.

Like this girl, the one living in the house I once lived in. I see her and she sees me, though she doesn’t know it yet.

I will make her see.

Lottie made me go for a walk. Practically pushed me out the door. The hills looked as hungover as I did, foggy-headed, sick. The village was a cobwebby drizzle. I sat in the cafe, using their wifi on my phone, trying and failing to drink a mocha. The place smelled of fried bacon and cheese scones, which almost made me puke again. Kids were running around in wellies, shouting. The clink of cutlery from the woman two tables down was like being stabbed in the ears. I read for about five minutes, my chin on my hands, the words too close. Every single one hurt my brain.

Another message. U get home ok? x

As casual as if he’d waved goodbye to me at a bus stop.

Through the window the sun was making the wet road spark. I went out to the playground on the green outside the cafe and dumped myself on a swing, my headphones on. Closed my eyes and let a new electronica band I’d found throb out, dry, sullen beats.

When I opened my eyes again there was a little girl standing in front of me. The girl whose back garden I’d climbed into. She was wearing a T-shirt that said DINOSAURS AREN’T JUST FOR CHRISTMAS with a cartoon of a dopey brontosaurus on one shoulder. Her eyes were as wide as a manga heroine’s.

I dug my toes into the mud and put my headphones around my neck. ‘What?’

She just looked at me, put her hand on the swing frame and moved the woodchips around with her Day-Glo trainer. A boy with a big bandage round his head was hauling at the roundabout behind her.