She typed it before she got too scared to say it.

miss_BehaviourX91: do you have a type?

rainham_romeo1991: i guess you could say that

miss_BehaviourX91: ?

rainham_romeo1991: anyway. i should probably go to bed

She sighed in exasperation.

miss_BehaviourX91: yeah

miss_BehaviourX91: me too

miss_BehaviourX91: french speaking tomorrow

Maybe that would keep him online for another minute or two.

rainham_romeo1991: good night x

Nope.

miss_BehaviourX91: bye x

She put her hand to her throat to feel her pulse, which fluttered under the skin. This was surely the biggest milestone they’d reached since he’d started leaving a kiss at the end of his messages. They’d discussed relationships! Ellen set herself to appear offline in order to read back through their entire conversation from that evening, to try and work out if she’d missed anything else worth noting. She did this most nights, unless it had been an unusually short correspondence. She liked to imagine him doing so too, sitting in his bedroom reviewing her replies for the same clues she sought. His likes and dislikes, things she could bend herself towards or away from, and significances she might have missed.

She returned to the top of the conversation, noting with delight that they’d spoken for almost two and a half hours. Topics they had discussed included: Mick Jagger (Ellen had started doing her research during free periods when she should have been doing her coursework); Animal Farm (which had replaced Orwell’s 1984 on Ellen’s prepared list of palatable books); their respective relationships with their parents (parents fundamentally lacked empathy); their hopes and dreams for university (finding people who were more like them); New York (they both wanted to live there one day). She’d talked a little about Kate, but he rarely mentioned his friends. She could never work out if this meant he was actually quite unpopular – but she really wasn’t sure she cared.

Ellen was now at the stage where she spent most of her waking hours thinking about him. Their conversations were chaste, but they thrilled her. When something remarkable happened at school, she spent a lot of time imagining how she would explain it to him, smiling as she scripted the story in her mind. She also spent a lot of time peering at his small profile picture, trying to see more clearly what he looked like. She was desperate for them to swap numbers so they could text, but didn’t want to be the one to suggest it.

Kate had teased her about him. ‘He doesn’t sound like anyone we know,’ she’d said, cocking her head on its side. ‘Are you sure he’s not, like, a teacher or something?’

Ellen had shrieked.

Kate had added, ‘You never know. I think Holly Stanley is secretly a bit wild.’

Ellen had laughed, but afterwards had stopped sharing so much with Kate. She was too protective of the conversations.