Ben squirmed. ‘It was Ol, you see.’ He looked as uncomfortable as Ellen felt. ‘It turns out that he sort of hijacked my account and used it to, well, I suppose you could say he used it to impersonate me.’

Ellen covered her face with her hands.

Ben was, unfortunately, still talking. ‘So, together, we worked it out. He remembers the day that you added him, you see.’

Ellen lowered her palms and peered at him. Alexa wrapped her arm around Ellen and squeezed her hand in hers. Ellen could not summon the strength to squeeze it back. There was a pause as Ben tried to work out whether it was OK to continue.

Having decided it was, he spoke quietly. ‘He says he’d been using my account, off and on, because I always used the family computer – the one in the living room – and I always left it signed in.’

Ellen’s scalp prickled like she’d been out in the sun too long.

‘But then you added him, and so he decided to properly – well, pursue you. And I guess by that point in sixth form, I wasn’t going online as much anyway – I was getting together with Imogen –’

She moaned by way of interruption. Mercifully, Ben sounded like he was winding down. He waited.

‘But what exactly did he say?’ Ellen asked, finally finding her voice, though it was rather hoarse. ‘To you, I mean. What did he say about it all?’

‘Oh, he remembers it all,’ Ben replied, quickly. ‘Starting talking to you. He doesn’t remember every message, obviously, but he remembers the letters and –’

‘But didn’t you go on MSN once, in that entire time?’ Ellen interrupted. Her voice still sounded rusty. ‘Even just to chat to your mates, or something? Wouldn’t you have seen the messages? Or wouldn’t I have started chatting to you, and you’d have been, like, “Who the hell are you?”’

Ben shrugged. ‘I don’t remember. Maybe. I dunno.’ He took another sip of his pint. ‘But I mainly remember it being something I used for talking to girls. Not my mates. And I got a bit wrapped up in Imogen.’ He made a face. ‘First love and all that.’

Ellen thought about this. To be fair, she wasn’t sure if she had ever spoken to Kate on MSN. ‘This is even worse than when I thought it was you.’ She put her head on her forearms, which rested on the sticky table. ‘I got ghosted by a fourteen-year old,’ she whispered.

‘He was a very clever fourteen-year-old,’ Ben pointed out. ‘Basically, a full-on genius. Good at everything.’

Alexa squeezed her friend’s hand again. ‘It could have happened to anyone,’ she tried.