I can still escape. I can turn around and walk up the path away from the lilac bush and the music and back into the house.

Light struggles through the frilly nets. I stand for a while, chew on a strand of hair, tasting the Elnett. I wait for Shane to see me.

At the end of the song, he opens his eyes. He looks at every part of me, as if he’s never seen me before. It’s like that every time he looks at me. He examines me with his eyes, starting with the top of my head and ending with my feet. Taking in each hair, each bone, each vein, each blood vessel. I think about the diagrams we have to draw in biology. Close-ups of skin and blood, examined and dissected. Labels like corpuscle and epidermis. Shane looks at me and there’s this light in his eyes. It’s almost like a lamp that helps him see. Like the light the optician uses to go right into your eye. Look up, look down. And look into my light. But you can’t see them, because they’ve turned the ceiling light off and they’re so close to you in the dark, breathing on your nose, making it wet.

‘I like that song,’ I say.

He continues his penetrating stare.

I step forward. ‘You don’t mind if I come in.’

He shrugs.

I look up at the net curtain. ‘You’ve got this place looking – ’ I pause, let him watch me try to think of the right word. ‘Nice.’

He shrugs.

I lick my lips and shrug back. ‘Play me something else, then.’

‘Take your shoes off.’

‘What?’

‘You come in, you take off your shoes.’

I begin to laugh, but Shane just stares.

‘What if I don’t want to?’ I say.

‘Take off your shoes.’

‘These are new shoes.’ I try to think of some other reason, something that will melt his stare. ‘From Dolcis. Don’t you like them?’

‘Off.’

‘Why?’

‘My shed,’ he says. ‘My rules.’

Leaning back in his armchair, he stares at my bare toes. I wiggle them a bit to unstick them.

He presses play.

We stay together in the shed for the rest of the afternoon. We don’t speak much. I sit on the rug and Shane plays his tapes. Sometimes he forward-winds through the ones he doesn’t like, but still I just sit there and listen to the spooling tape. Grandmaster Flash sings, don’t do it! Shane wiggles his toes in time to the music. It starts to rain outside, and as the wind gets up, small gusts of lilac-scent come in under the door.

Then Shane’s mum brings the cake out. She knocks on the shed door once. Later I learn this is to signal she’s left it outside. Shane cuts into it with a flick knife he keeps in his back pocket. Each slice is even. He hands me a perfect triangle of cake, balanced on his blade. I bite into it. It’s light and sweet and full of smooth cream. After three slices, I begin to feel sick. But I eat more, because Shane keeps offering up slices on his shiny knife. Brushing the crumbs from his chest. Licking the cream from the corners of his mouth. Swallowing huge bites of buttery sponge. Looking at me.