‘Yeah, well.’ Jem sighs. ‘It doesn’t do much good, does it?’ He rests his hand on the back of her neck and, briefly, it’s seven and a half years ago and she’s exhaling sharply into the muggy summer air at his touch—at his hand wrapping around the nape of her neck for the first time, completely out of the blue. A gesture that seems to anticipate a life of intimacy, a gesture that claims. Sparks of nervousness shoot through her like adrenalin—as adrenalin? in adrenalin? on adrenalin? she’s not sure of the chemistry, the syntax—and yet there’s also something in the weight of his hand that grounds her, that settles her somehow and she thinks: I could live down here just fine. And then she thinks about how sweaty her neck is and frets that he’s finding it gross and doesn’t know how to retreat politely from the contact.

In the school hall, she shrugs him off.

‘What?’

‘It’s too hot in here; I’m all sweaty.’

And then they’re outside and it’s too cold. She snuggles into her scarf and rams her hands in her pockets.

‘Catch you round,’ Harry mumbles in a puff of steam and shuffles to his car before she or Jem can answer.

‘Cuppa soon,’ Flo calls to Lucy as she trots after him.

In the car, Jem says to Lucy, ‘You’re very quiet. What did you think of it all?’

‘Well,’ she says, ‘to be honest with you, I was thinking about those octopuses. I was thinking about how global warming could reopen their waterway.’

‘You and those bloody octopuses.’ He rolls his eyes in faux exasperation, like he’s trying to make it a joke between them. But he doesn’t pull it off. Not quite.

‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’ She sighs.

He’s quiet for a moment, just driving. Lucy huddles towards the dash, puts her hands over the vents and tucks her feet up under the foot heater.

‘It’s just—you could have died, Luce,’ he says quietly. ‘Again. You could have died again. For an octopus. You were just lying there, on the side of the road. You looked broken. I was sure you were broken, and for what?’

His words wrap around her guts like steel rope. The pain—to think of the pain and worry she put him through. She doesn’t think of it, or at least, not enough. Not as much as he deserves.

‘And then you don’t say anything to me,’ he continues. ‘You don’t consult me. You just get them tattooed all over your body, like this reminder that you’d choose them over me.’

‘That’s not what it’s about.’ Her voice sounds strangled. It’s as if her throat has solidified into a glass bottleneck, and the words hurt as they squeeze out through it.

‘Well, it’s how it seems.’