At the end of the hall is a long table of cupid-covered paper cups, arranged in rows around a big fake-glass punch bowl. The punch is a lurid baby-medicine shade of pink. Julia takes a cup. It’s squash with food colouring.

Finn Carroll is leaning against the wall by the table. Finn and Julia know each other, sort of, from debating society; when he sees her he cocks an eyebrow, lifts his cup to her and shouts something she can’t hear. Finn has bright red hair, long enough to flop into loose curls at the back of his neck, and he’s smart. These would add up to social death for most guys, but Finn has the minimum of freckles to go with the hair, he’s decent at rugby and he’s getting height and shoulders faster than most of his class, so he gets away with it.

‘What?’ Julia yells.

Finn leans down to her ear. ‘Don’t drink the punch,’ he shouts. ‘It’s shit.’

‘To go with the music,’ Julia yells back.

‘That’s just insulting. “They’re teenagers, so they must love shitty chart crap.” It never occurs to them that some of us might have taste.’

‘You should’ve hotwired the sound system,’ Julia yells. Finn is good with electronics. Last term he wired up a frog in Bio so that when Graham Quinn went to dissect it, it jumped, and Graham and his stool both went over backwards. Julia respects that. ‘Or at least brought something sharp we could stick through our eardrums.’

Finn says, close enough that he can stop shouting, ‘Want to see if we can get out?’

Finn is actually pretty sound, for a Colm’s guy; Julia likes the idea of having an honest-to-God conversation with him, she thinks there’s a decent chance he might be able to manage that without spending too much of the time trying to stick his tongue down her throat, and she can’t see him bragging to all his moron buddies that they had hot monkey sex in the bushes. Someone will notice they’re gone, though, and the hot-monkey-sex rumours will get going anyway. ‘Nah,’ she says.

‘I’ve got a naggin of whiskey out the back.’

‘I hate whiskey.’

‘So we’ll nick something else. There’s a whole offie out in those bushes. Take your pick.’

The coloured lights slide across Finn’s face, wide mouth laughing. It occurs to Julia, with a giddy rush, that she doesn’t have to give one single fuck about hot-monkey-sex rumours.

She glances over at the other three: still dancing. Becca has her arms out and is twirling around with her head back like a little kid, laughing. Any minute she’s going to get dizzy and fall over her own feet.

‘Stick beside me,’ Julia says to Finn, and starts sauntering casually towards the hall door. ‘When I say “Go”, go fast.’