Yeah, he was.

‘I would’ve looked after you,’ he said, a lot more fiercely than he intended. ‘If you’d asked me to, I would’ve run with you.’

She had that closed look that he recognised. The one that said she wasn’t going to let anyone in. Except Eddie Conlon, who she had sat with all day long on the bus. Never Charlie. Charlie was just for night-time flirting and sex. During the day, he sat at the back of the bus and watched them with their heads together, talking nonstop. He wanted that with Violette.

‘He’s my brother,’ she said quietly. ‘And if you ever tell anyone that, I’ll do something to hurt you really bad, Charlie.’

Now he was confused.

‘My mum had him in prison,’ she said, and gave him a mumbled family history. She wasn’t facing him and he thought maybe she was crying.

‘We’re tired,’ she said eventually. ‘We need to sleep. Are your parents around?’

‘They don’t come in here unless there’s a pretty good reason.’

Like an arrest. Or the principal telling them he wasn’t returning to school because cheating wasn’t part of its tradition.

‘You people should lock your back doors,’ she said. ‘Lots of weirdos around.’

‘Violette,’ he said. He wanted to see her face. ‘Turn around. Please.’

When she did he saw the angry tears in her eyes and they made them look like liquid black gold. The last time they had sex they came together. She’d been embarrassed after that and he remembered the way she hid her head in the crook of his throat. It was as if when they were rubbish at sex they had a better handle on their non-existent relationship.

‘Fionn said you’re heading north,’ he said. ‘So why are you here?’

‘I can’t believe you punched Kennington and Gorman for me,’ she said, pressing her brow to his. It gave Charlie hope. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

‘I can’t believe he wore a Chelsea hoodie to do it,’ Eddie muttered. Charlie hadn’t noticed him remove the headphones.

‘It was good thinking,’ Charlie said. ‘I got to smash them one and put Chelsea fans in the bad books at the same time.’

‘I had to wear an Arsenal beanie the other day,’ Eddie said.

‘You’d have to kill me before I’d wear an Arsenal beanie.’

They all slept in Charlie’s bed that night. When he heard Eddie’s snore he tried to kiss her, but she pointed to her brother and shook her head. She did let him hold her hand, and they whispered all night.

‘Do you want to know why I’m going to be a doctor?’ she asked in the early hours of morning, her voice drowsy.

‘No. Why?’

‘So I can save twenty-three people. And make things right.’

‘I can’t believe you hid them in our house!’ his mother is saying now, still staring around his room.

‘Why would you think that?’

‘Look at this room! Just look at it,’ his mother repeats as if no one has heard her bellow. Sometimes the Reverend Crombie forgets she isn’t standing at the pulpit of a half-empty church. ‘I’ve never seen it so clean!’