Shane grins back, a half smile that shows his uneven teeth.

‘I’ll see you, then,’ he says.

And before I can think of a reply (where? when?), he turns and walks out the door, leaving the bell clanging.

I wrap my fingers round the can; it’s still warm from Shane’s pocket.

I meet Simon in Mr Badger’s tearoom, a café that does tea in a china pot and has lace everywhere: all over the tables, on the walls, in the loo.

When I come in he’s sitting there, wiping his glasses on the tablecloth and peering at the menu. A pot of tea steams in front of him.

He jumps up. ‘You’re late, young lady.’

‘I was discussing crucial plot moments with a teacher.’

He touches his specs and grins. ‘Touché. I’ve ordered you a coke.’

‘No ice?’

‘No ice, exactly as you like it.’

I take off my denim jacket and sit down.

I see him give my pink scoop-neck T-shirt a good once-over.

‘Where’s your school blouse?’

‘I changed in the toilets before I left.’

A girl wearing an apron covered in toilet-roll-dolly frills puts down my coke. It’s in a half-pint glass, resting on a doily, resting on a china saucer.

Simon stops looking at my T-shirt and rummages in his rucksack. ‘Here we are. You’re doing Frankenstein at school, aren’t you?’ He slaps a paperback down on the tablecloth.

I take a sip of coke and nod.

‘What can you tell me about Mary Shelley?’

‘She wrote a book that was made into a lot of films,’ I say.

‘That’s true. Have you seen any?’

‘I’ve seen that cartoon with Frankenstein in it. And The Munsters.’

Simon raises a finger. ‘Can you tell me the mistake you made there?’

‘What?’

‘Think about identity. Who precisely is the monster – and who isn’t?’ He puts both elbows on the table and leans across with his gob open in a half-smile. This is one of the first things we covered in class, but I don’t mention that. Instead, I stretch my legs out under the table and feel for his ankle with the point of my shoe. ‘What are you on about?’

Looking triumphant, he shifts his ankle out of my shoe-line. ‘Doctor Frankenstein is the scientist; the quote-unquote monster is not, in fact, Frankenstein at all. But you could say that what the doctor does is quote-unquote monstrous.’ He beams.

‘Quote-unquote monstrous? What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I’m placing monster within quotation marks, denoting a certain… so-called-ness about the term. Like, you might say, people think that Joanna is a quote-unquote monster, but in fact she’s just a mixed-up girl.’

‘Who says I’m a quote-unquote monster?’

He laughs. ‘No one. No one.’ He pours himself some more tea, lifting the teapot so high that the stream of water sounds like a stream of piss.