Chloe holds her head at the temples like her brain might explode any second now. I’m no expert, but she seems unusually stressed. Her eyes are sliding about like she knows something I don’t know.

‘I appreciate you doing all this, but I need you to stop.’

The look on my face must say it all because she continues.

‘I don’t want to fight anyone about this,’ Chloe says. ‘Not Mrs Christie and not even Petra. Audrey came and found me this morning, and she thinks Yin’s disappearance has brought up Petra’s grief over her aunt who passed away not that long ago.’

‘What? That makes no sense. Yin has nothing to do with Petra’s aunt. She deserves everything she gets!’ My finger goes up in the air. I am ready, more than ready, to debate this. ‘Firstly, we both know that Petra fired the first shot and anything we do is just matching her dirty move. If she didn’t want to fight, she shouldn’t have taken us on.’

Chloe opens her mouth to interrupt me, but I roll right on.

‘Secondly, you didn’t do anything. I, on the other hand, did go in quite hard because there was a principle at stake, right? And I’m trying to defend you, because, let’s face it, you’re not doing anything to defend yourself.’

Chloe looks outraged at this, but I’m almost there.

‘Thirdly, this has been going on for a long time. You forget that I’ve known Petra since Junior School. She has always gone overboard about every little thing.’

Chloe crosses her arms in front of her chest. ‘Why does everyone always bring up the fact that I didn’t go to Junior School?’

I’m very confused for a second. ‘What? We don’t.’

Chloe draws up to her full height which, truth be told, is slightly intimidating.

‘You don’t get anything,’ her voice is strangled, ‘because you’re rich and beautiful and you’ve got all the confidence in the world. You don’t know what it’s like to be an outsider or a target, you don’t know how easy it is to bring someone like me down. I tried, and I failed, and I just want to go away and be quiet now.’

I stare at her. This conversation is starting to resemble a runaway train, a train full of sentences that make no sense at all. What does she mean about confidence? She’s confident.

‘No petition. No protest. No attacking Petra. I mean it.’

‘Attack? Come on, Chloe.’

We fall silent for a moment, staring at each other, and there’s a sense that we’re strangers and don’t know each other at all. It’s embarrassing to be carrying on like this in the corridor where everyone can see us.