‘Yeah,’ Conway said. ‘I figured. You let us know if you do.’ And opened the door.

Julia stretched, slid off the bed. ‘See you ’round,’ she said to me, with a little grin and a wave bye-bye.

We watched her down the corridor and into the common room. Julia didn’t look back, but her walk said she felt our eyes. Her arse was mocking.

Conway said, ‘Joanne.’ The name fell into the silence. The room spat it back out, snapped tight shut after it.

‘Means, opportunity, motive,’ I said. ‘Maybe.’

‘Yeah, maybe. If everything pans out. If Chris dumped Joanne, that’d explain why she was such a bitch about him liking Selena.’

‘Specially if he dumped her for Selena.’

‘It’d explain why Joanne’s gang hate Julia’s, too.’

I said, ‘They’re using us. Both lots.’

‘Yeah. To get at each other.’ Conway, hands shoved in her back pockets, still staring where Julia had been. ‘I don’t like being some little rich kids’ bitch.’

I shrugged. ‘As long as they’re giving us what we’re after, I’m grand with them getting a bit of what they want as well.’

‘I would be, too. If I was positive we had a handle on what they want. Why they want it.’ Conway straightened up, took her hands out of her pockets. ‘Where’s Alison’s phone?’

‘On her bed.’

‘I’ll confirm with Alison where she got it. You search this.’

The thought gave me the heebie-jeebies: left alone here, surrounded by teenage girls and knickers that said maybe on the arse. Conway was right, but: we couldn’t leave Alison’s phone for someone to get rid of it, couldn’t leave this room till we’d searched it, and Conway was the one who knew her way around to look for Alison. ‘See you in five,’ I said.

‘Any of them come in here, you go straight into the common room. Where you’re safe.’

She wasn’t joking. I knew she was right, too, but the common room didn’t feel like such a safe place either.

The door shut behind her. For a stupid split second, I felt like my mate had abandoned me in the shit. Reminded myself: Conway wasn’t my mate.

I got my gloves back on, started searching. Selena’s phone spilling out of her blazer pocket onto her bed, Julia’s on her bedside locker. Rebecca’s on her bed. Holly’s missing.

I started on the bedside lockers. Something about the Julia interview was poking at me. It was stuck in a back corner of my mind, where I couldn’t get my hands on it: something she’d said, that we’d let go by when we should have pounced.

Julia shaking info in front of us like a shiny dangle, to keep us from questioning Selena. I wondered how far she would go, to protect Selena or what Selena knew.