There’d been a new drawing on her desk. The usual goggle-eyes and tiny twig body, but this time Andy had made the lips bigger, poutier, redder. Emma had started to panic. More laughter had rumbled as she’d grabbed the drawing and screwed it in her fist, breaking her normal policy of not reacting. She would never usually sit down without checking her chair first, either, but she had done that morning, straight onto a condom blown up like a balloon.

The room had erupted. The effort of holding back tears had made her cheekbones throb. She’d gripped the edges of her desk and only when she’d been sure of not crying had she lifted her eyes to seek out Robin. He’d been looking at her, his face solemn, unreadable. Ashamed, perhaps? Of what was happening now, of what they’d done last night, of being associated with her at all? Emma’s expression had become pleading, but when he’d noticed Andy observing them, Robin had turned abruptly away. He hadn’t laughed with everybody else, but he hadn’t stopped the laughter either. He’d spared her just one more glance before they’d returned to their places in the social order.

From then on Robin had ignored her. Wouldn’t look at her, speak to her, continued to watch Andy make her days a misery. Emma’s shame had brewed hot and angry. She felt like she’d fallen for their final trick. As if the loss of her virginity on grubby concrete had been the culmination of his mission—Andy’s, or Robin’s, or both.

By the time she’d discovered she was pregnant, it was too late to do anything about it. And year ten was over, the stress of school had melted into listless summer. All her peers were shopping for bikinis and trying not to think about next year’s big exams. Emma, instead, was plucking up the courage to tell her parents she had something alive and terrifying wriggling inside her belly. Her own alien baby. Her dad had been the one to fixate on who the father was, but Emma had refused to give a name, or to tell Robin he’d got her pregnant. She’d wanted to leave that school and never see him again.

And then there was Zeb. Zeb, with his little star-shaped hands reaching out from beneath a cloud of blankets. Zeb, with the tender swirl at the back of his head, the miniature feet that would kick as if air-swimming. Zeb, whom she wanted to pretend was nothing to do with bullies, or a patch of concrete behind a wall of trash bins.