The picture came around to me and I held it up to the light of the candles flickering in the middle of the table. It showed us standing close together, shoulder to shoulder, arms around each other’s waists. Ballgowns and big smiles and glasses of bucks fizz, balloons and streamers strewn at our feet while young men in tuxedos milled around in the background of the shot, a big white marquee set out in the central quad.

The picture had caught Rowan mid-laugh, hair styled and tinted like the Friends actress, in a deep crimson ballgown; next to her was Jennifer in a sleeveless pale-green two-piece that showed off all her curves; Izzy, her chestnut-brown hair cut pixie-short, stunning in a black cocktail dress – the only time I could remember her wearing a dress. And me at the end of the row, in royal blue.

God, we looked so young. But we looked happy. Like anything was possible.

Izzy leaned over to get another look at the picture in my hand. ‘Wasn’t that the night Jen finally snogged Darren Burton?’

‘That was you, if memory serves,’ Jennifer said indignantly. ‘I was still on the rebound.’

‘From who?’

Jennifer hesitated.

‘You know who,’ she said quietly, giving me a quick glance. ‘Sean.’

‘Oh,’ Izzy said. ‘Right. Forgot about that.’

The mention of Sean stopped me in my tracks. Jennifer had never talked about her relationship with him in those terms before. The ball had been in May but they had broken up the month before, as we came up to the Easter break. Had she still been on the rebound a month later, still hurting from the break-up?

And why mention it now?

Rowan pointed to a lad with a ponytail in the background of the picture.

‘And after Darren Burton threw up,’ she said to Izzy, ‘you moved on to his housemate.’

‘God, yeah! I vaguely remember him – what was his name again? Kissed like he was trying to suck your face off.’

‘Nice,’ Rowan said, laughing.

Izzy clicked her fingers and pointed at me, as if she’d just remembered something else.

‘I tell you what I do remember,’ she said. ‘That was the night, wasn’t it? The night you and Sean first got together.’

I nodded. It was true, in a way. That was the night we had first got together, at least in public. The first time we had held hands, danced together, kissed, with other people around. The first time he’d held me so close I could feel his heart bumping in his chest, when we didn’t care any more who saw us.

The whole truth and nothing but the truth was a little more complicated than that.