‘It’s not bad,’ Ben said, quickly. ‘No one died.’ He stopped again, as if summoning up the courage to continue.

‘Ben,’ Alexa said, reproachfully.

She knows everything already, Ellen thought, with a prickle of hurt. She took an exaggerated slug of wine. ‘OK,’ she wiped her hand across her mouth, ‘look, Ben, I’m going to need you to cut to the chase now.’ She put her elbows on the table. ‘I’ve been waiting since 2009 for this.’

He laughed, grateful that she’d broken the tension, before regaining his focus.

She tried to remember to breathe, and concentrated on a bit of torn beer mat. Frowning, he began again.

‘OK, so basically you were right. About rainham_romeo1991. In a manner of speaking. Which is to say that, technically, it was me.’

Ellen looked up sharply, but Ben avoided her gaze. She found Alexa’s instead, earning a cautious smile.

Ben continued. ‘Well, maybe it’s more accurate to say that, technically, it was my account. In that I set it up and everything. And I definitely used it. To speak to girls …’ Ben paused. ‘But the thing is, so did my younger brother. Oli.’

She froze.

‘Yes.’ Ben took a deep breath. ‘So … well, I felt weird after that weekend, because …’ He was struggling with his words, and then became unstuck. ‘Well, didn’t we all?’

Jack made a nod of vigorous agreement.

Ben was continuing, his voice low and just audible. Ellen felt a little light-headed.

‘And I thought about it a lot,’ he said. ‘And I worried because you were so sure, and I couldn’t remember any of it –’ He broke off, looking anguished, fixating on the pile of torn, damp beer mat. ‘So I messaged my sister, Ava. She couldn’t remember anything about it but pointed out that Oli, my brother, was more into MSN than me. So I spoke to Oli. And I didn’t think I was going to get very far with him. Oli was a sort of boy genius – man genius, now, he’s at Oxford doing a PhD – but anyway, at school he was more fussed about books than anything else that was going on, bit intense, really.’

Ben looked at Ellen now, and she felt a sick horror.

He continued. ‘And well, anyway, I spoke to Oli – on Thursday, I think – and it turned out …’ Ben paused to take a sip of beer and looked at Ellen, Alexa and Jack in turn. ‘Well, it turned out that Ol used to go on my MSN. Back in the day. He’s four years younger, so he’d have been fourteen or so in 2009 –’

‘Oh my God,’ Ellen interrupted, still hoping, somehow, that what was coming next was not, in fact, coming next.