‘Since when?’

‘New initiative. Terence announced it this morning. Did you not get the email?’

She waltzed off, leaving him stymied. A minor triumph, she thought. It wasn’t true, but it was satisfying to see Piers’s reaction, nonetheless.

The moment Becky came home that night she threw her bike helmet and bag down and ran up the stairs two at a time. She had the house to herself – her mum was on her date with that guy Tim who’d stalked her at B&Q. Becky mentally sent her a good luck wish as she opened up her laptop and began searching Senerix’s website. She double-clicked the product data sheet for Crixus. At the top were pictorial warning signs: a lifeless tree and overturned dead fish, and the outline of a human head and chest, with the heart ripped out. Underneath the visual warnings, there were several statements in bold type: ‘Suspected of causing cancer if inhaled.’ ‘Suspected of damaging the unborn child.’ ‘May cause damage to the nervous system through prolonged exposure or repeated exposure.’

This stuff is going onto our foods, she thought. She knew it would be scientifically tested – vigorously tested – and there would be evidence that the weeks and months from application to harvest, the rain, the time passing, would neutralize the harm to humans. Personally, she’d still rather not take the risk.

But the massive oversight was that when these chemicals were applied, when they were undiluted by time and weather, there were people, families in their gardens just metres from the edges of the fields. And because of the current rules, it was legal.

Becky sat back in her chair. As sobering as it was, deep down she knew all this was still speculation. Not the piece of damning evidence she craved, evidence that would prove the chemicals caused Arnie’s and the others’ illnesses.

She pulled up the file with all the personal information she had on the families in Ramsbourne – names, addresses, telephone numbers – and downloaded it onto a memory stick. Then she deleted the original document. She tucked the stick into her jacket pocket – she would hide it tomorrow, somewhere out of the house. Something made her want to protect these people, from what exactly she didn’t quite know, but a growing sense of unease was making her extra vigilant with her information.

Becky glanced at her watch. It was getting late. Her mum might be home soon, and Becky was looking forward to getting caught up in the fun of the post-date conversation. She was about to leave her room and go downstairs when an email notification popped up. One new message: a Facebook friend request. She grimaced when she saw the name: Adam Langley. She hadn’t seen him since graduation day. He’d been at UCL too – had a room in the same house share as her best friend Maria on her journalism course. He’d taken a shine to her, in a bit of a cringy way, she’d thought. He was always a little too close for comfort, tried too hard. She remembered one occasion when she’d been over to see her friend and he’d made ‘too much’ shepherd’s pie for himself and wondered if she – and Maria – would join him. They’d sat in the cramped kitchen eating lumpy mashed potato, his sports kit drying on a rack near her elbow as he had some sort of squash match to go to later that evening – she hadn’t paid much attention to what it was.