‘Everyone’s seen it. Everyone except me.’

‘No! Probably there are loads of people who have never even heard of it.’

‘Repressed weirdos. To quote your brilliant speech.’

‘It was brilliant.’ Charlie tried to harden her misery, turn it into anger. ‘I’ve explained why I did it. Kate Kombothekra told me everyone was taking the piss out of us. I thought I’d steal their thunder by doing it myself.’

Simon sprang to his feet. ‘I’m going home.’

Charlie put her body between him and the door. ‘You came back here so that you could ask about Sex and the City and then leave? Why are you here, Simon? Did you overhear someone at the party talking about our sex life, or lack of? Kate says they were all at it. Maybe you wanted everybody to see us leaving together and draw the wrong conclusion.’

‘It’s what I heard you saying that’s the problem!’ Simon shouted in her face. ‘Foul-mouthed, loose-living, promiscuous, bent on self-destruction. Lucky for me my parents had left by then.’

‘Scared of Mummy and Daddy finding out, are you? What I’m really like?’

‘You’d still have done it, wouldn’t you? Even if they’d been there.’

‘They weren’t there! You’re being ridiculous. This is all about your vanity.’

‘It’s about your distortions, your . . . exhibitionism! That story about the primary school—was it true? Since the rest of what you said was a load of shit, I have to wonder.’

‘You think it was just an excuse, a convenient way into slagging off Catholics?’

‘Oh, you don’t discriminate—you’ll slate anything that moves. The more defenceless the better!’

Charlie stepped back, away from his anger. Stacey Sellers got off lightly, she thought. ‘Who’s defenceless, Simon?’

‘So it really happened? The teacher said, “Put your hands together for Grace,” and you didn’t know what she meant? Sorry, but . . .’ His words tailed off. He turned away, rubbed his face with his hands.

‘Sorry but what?’

‘Do we have anything in common? Do we even inhabit the same world?’

This can’t be happening. It can’t be. ‘Do what you have to do,’ Charlie said. ‘I’m not going to talk you out of it.’ She left the room and went upstairs.

In her bedroom, she decided not to slam the door. Instead, she closed it carefully. She wasn’t a child; she wouldn’t be treated like one and she wouldn’t behave like one. Lizzie Proust had liked her speech. Debbie Gibbs had liked it. Her awful speech. What had possessed her? Foul-mouthed, loose-living, promiscuous . . . Simon had misremembered the last bit: bent on annihilating themselves and everyone around them. ‘Oops,’ said Charlie out loud. The sound fell heavy in the silent air. She wondered what Kate Kombothekra had thought of what she’d said; would it be a thumbs up or a thumbs down from the person who’d put her up to making a laughing-stock of herself in the first place?

The door opened. ‘Talk me out of what?’ said Simon. He didn’t look happy. He never looked happy.