No extra phones in the lockers. This lot had books, in with the iPods and the hairbrushes and whatever else, but nothing old and nothing with bits cut out. Julia went for crime, Holly was reading The Hunger Games, Selena was halfway through Alice in Wonderland, Rebecca liked Greek mythology.

Liked old stuff. I didn’t know the poem above her bed – I don’t know poetry the way I wish I did, just whatever they had down the library when I was a kid, whatever I pick up when I get the odd chance – but it looked old, Shakespeare-old.

A Retir’d Friendship

Here let us sit and bless our Starres

Who did such happy quiet give,

As that remov’d from noise of warres.

In one another’s hearts we live.

Why should we entertain a feare?

Love cares not how the world is turn’d.

If crouds of dangers should appeare,

Yet friendship can be unconcern’d.

We weare about us such a charme,

No horrour can be our offence;

For mischief’s self can doe no harme

To friendship and to innocence.

Katherine Philips

A kid’s pretty calligraphy, pretty trees and deer woven into the capitals; kid’s need to blaze her love on walls, tell the world. Shouldn’t have hit me, a grown man.

If I made a card to put up on the Secret Place: me, big grin, in the middle of my mates. Arms around their shoulders and heads leaning together, outlines melded into one. Close as Holly and her lot, unbreakable. The caption: Me and my friends.

They’d be holes in the paper. Cut out with tiny scissors, tiny delicate snips, perfect to the last loved hair – this guy’s head thrown back laughing, this one’s elbow locked round my neck messing, this one’s arm shooting out as he overbalanced – and not there.

I said people mostly like me. True; they do, always have. Plenty of people ready to be my mates, always. That doesn’t mean I want to be theirs. A few scoops, a bit of snooker, watch the match, lovely, I’m on. The more than that, the real thing: no. Not my scene.

It was these girls’ scene, all right. They were diving a mile deep and swimming like dolphins, not a bother on them. Why should we entertain a feare? Nothing could hurt them, not in any way that mattered, not while they had each other.

The breeze made soft sounds in the curtains. I got my mobile out, dialled the number that had texted me. No answer, no ringing. The phones lay there, dark.

A sock under Holly’s bed, a violin case under Rebecca’s, nothing else. I started on the wardrobe. I was wrist-deep in soft T-shirts when I felt it: a shift, behind my shoulder, outside in the corridor. A change in the texture of the stillness, a blink across the light through the door-crack.