Everything was always broadly true, of course. Ellen just had the storyteller’s facility for colour and narrative and exaggeration. Most of the time, Alexa would play the willing accomplice, laughing in all the right places, adding affirmative statements, though on a very few occasions, when things had got a bit out of hand, Alexa would offer some renunciation (‘It wasn’t as bad as that!’). And Ellen would shake her head, grinning, refusing to be called out. ‘It absolutely was,’ she’d say. Case closed – and what a thrilling case it invariably had been.

So perhaps Ellen was hamming things up for dramatic effect. Perhaps they had messaged for a month, rather than four; maybe she was overstating the intensity of the connection. Plus, these things were – obviously – subjective, and teenagers are intense and melodramatic. Alexa suspected Ellen had probably been an especially intense and melodramatic teenager.

Still, Alexa snatched a glance at Ellen now. She had no doubt at all that Ellen had had this experience with someone. Alexa believed there had been a boy – a virtual boy – and that he’d ghosted Ellen. It was cruel. She tried to imagine Ben sitting behind a keyboard, writing all those meaningful things – to Ellen, her Ellen! – and then one day deciding to just stop. If it had been him, she couldn’t bear it.

Admittedly, she didn’t know him very well. But she couldn’t imagine it. Ben was kind. She recalled last night. He had been charming and engaging and engaged; a perfect date. There had been the previous awkwardness – the theatre lobby and the cooling off. But that didn’t mean anything, really. And he was so certain it wasn’t him.

It was possible – surely it was – that Ellen had misremembered the details. She could have mixed Ben up with someone else, misremembered the name of the real teenage villain. This could all be an unfortunate and emotional misunderstanding.

Alexa needed to say something. She opened her mouth, her brain in slow pursuit. ‘Um?’ she said, hopefully. ‘OK. I think –’ They were all watching her now. ‘I think that was a lot of information …’ She left the thought hanging.

Ben laughed a wry laugh. ‘No shit.’

Ellen looked at him again, indignant. ‘Yes, well,’ she stated, firmly, ‘it all … it was a bit of a shock.’ She raised her eyes heavenwards, and Alexa wondered, in horror, if she was about to cry. Mercifully not – when she returned her gaze to Ben, it was steady. ‘You could just say sorry, you know.’ She sounded prim, not at all like herself.

Ben pressed his hands to his temples. ‘I did! And anyway, it wasn’t me!’ he protested. ‘Really, truly. You must –’

‘Holly Stanley,’ Ellen interrupted. ‘Do you remember speaking to her?’

Ben looked stumped. ‘No? I don’t know?’

Ellen muttered, ‘Liar –’

‘Maybe we should forget about it?’ Jack interrupted. He sounded hesitant. Even he couldn’t have thought that was going to work.