Most times people would be staring at them all the way, but Fergus Mahon just poured punch down Garret Neligan’s collar so Garret Neligan tackled him and they fell over on top of Barbara O’Malley who has spent the last couple of weeks telling everyone that her dress is by Roksanda Somebody and who is screaming at the top of her lungs. Chris and Selena are invisible.

Something is on their side, smoothing the way for them. Even at the doors: if Sister Cornelius was there, they’d have no chance – even if Sister Cornelius wasn’t crazy, this year the nuns take one look at Selena and get the urge to lock her up, for guys’ sake or hers or the sake of morality in general, probably even they don’t know – but it’s Miss Long standing guard, while Sister Cornelius is off shouting at Fergus and Garret.

‘Miss Long,’ Selena yells. ‘Can we go sit on the stairs?’

‘Of course not,’ Miss Long says, distracted by Annalise Fitzpatrick and Ken O’Reilly huddled together in a corner, with one of Ken’s hands out of view.

‘We’ll just be right out there. At the bottom of the steps, where you can see us. We just want to talk.’

‘You can talk here.’

‘We can’t. It’s too loud, and it’s . . .’ Selena spreads out her hands at the lights and the dancers and everything. She says, ‘We want to talk properly.’

Miss Long takes her eye off Annalise and Ken for a second. She examines Selena and Chris sceptically. ‘“Properly,”’ she says.

Something makes Selena smile at her, a burst of a smile, real and radiant. She doesn’t mean to; it happens by itself, out of nowhere, because there’s a pinwheel whirl deep in her chest telling her something amazing is happening.

For half a second, Miss Long almost smiles back. She presses her lips together and it’s gone. ‘All right,’ she says. ‘At the bottom of those stairs. I will be checking on you every thirty seconds, and if you’re not there, or if you’re so much as holding hands, you will both be in enormous trouble. More trouble than you can even imagine. Is that clear?’

Selena and Chris nod, putting in every drop of sincerity they can find. ‘It’d better be,’ Miss Long says, with one eye on Sister Cornelius. ‘Now go on. Go.’

As she turns away from them, her eyes sweep the hall like for that minute it’s turned different, it’s leaped up to meet her sparkling and strawberry-sweet and chiming with maybes. Selena, slipping out of the door, understands that she and Chris weren’t the ones who got the permission; that it was a decades-lost boy at some half-forgotten dance, his bright eager face, his laugh.

Chapter 15

Chapter 15