‘If it’s any consolation, I wish I could remember it.’ I realise too late that it sounds like I am flirting and change the subject promptly ‘So – Hannah. What happened that night? We saw you together and then she was gone.’ I feel like a bitch for not being able to share the moment with him. What I do remember from that night at the Davies house was me hunched over a toilet after drinking a weird spirit from his dad’s cabinet that had flecks of gold in it.

‘We went to sit on a bench by that little hut, you know, the stone one next to the park by the fair with water filters or something inside it. We went there for a puff on some weed. I tried to kiss Hannah and she got angry. She stormed off and I never saw her again.’ He says it robotically, rehearsed and practised as though he has said it a hundred times before – no doubt during all the conversations he had with the police at the time.

‘Where did she go?’

‘She told me she was going to get the bus home.’

‘That was it?’

‘I told the police as much. Her parents said it was definitely me. Luckily that other girl came forward about that teacher. What was her name?’

‘Jasmine, Jasmine Burgess,’ I say, the name sticking to the roof of my mouth, I haven’t said it in over fifteen years. It’s been buried with all the other things I dare not utter.

‘You used to hang around with her, didn’t you? Are you still friends?’

‘We lost touch. You know how it is.’

‘Well, if it hadn’t been for all that weird shit that happened between her and that teacher, I don’t know what would have happened to me. Hannah’s parents were gunning for me pretty hard. They never liked me because I used to wear black nail polish and listen to Green Day; I think they thought I was a Satan worshipper who had sacrificed their daughter in some kind of pagan ritual. Everyone thought I was this weird little loner at school so people were more than happy to think the worst at the first opportunity. Then the police found her wallet in that teacher’s car and that was that. Didn’t get so much as an apology.’

I have decided that despite not really knowing Jason back then, I like him. I wish I had known him better. I wish maybe something had happened between us, then maybe we could have both been normal. I feel like maybe it was my job to protect him in some way, like I am the only one that could have. If only I hadn’t been so blind. He’s another casualty of this invisible war that no one even knows is going on.