‘Stuff like that, ghosts and ESP and stuff? I used to say it was all total bullshit. Like, I was fanatical about it. Once I went off on Selena, just because she was telling us about this thing in some magazine, about clairvoyance? I told her to prove it or shut up about it. When she couldn’t prove it, because obviously she couldn’t, I called her an idiot and told her she should try reading Just Seventeen because at least it’d be a step up from that crap.’

Finn’s eyebrows are up.

‘Yeah, I know. I was a bitch. I apologised. But it was because I wanted her to prove it was all true. I wanted it to be real, so badly. If I hadn’t cared, I’d’ve been like, “Yeah, whatever, maybe just possibly clairvoyance happens, probably not.” But I couldn’t stand the idea of actually believing in all this amazing mysterious stuff, and then finding out that duhhh I was a big thicko sucker and there was nothing there.’

It’s true: she’s never said this even to the others. With them she’s the one who’s always sure straight through – Julia figures Selena knows it’s more complicated than that, but they don’t talk about it. Something moves through her, unstoppable as the rum: tonight matters, after all.

‘Then what happened?’ Finn asks.

Wariness shoots up in Julia. ‘Huh?’

‘You said, a minute ago: now you do believe in some of this stuff. So what changed?’

Her fucking mouth, always open one sentence too long. ‘So,’ she says, lightly, rolling over onto her stomach to put out her smoke in the grass. ‘You don’t believe in the ghost nun, but you think she might be out here anyway. And I kind of believe in her, but I don’t actually think she’s here.’

Finn is smart enough not to push. ‘Between the two of us, we’re basically guaranteed to get haunted.’

‘Is that why you’re hanging on here? In case she goes boo and gives me a heart attack?’

‘You’re not scared?’

Julia arches an eyebrow. ‘What, because I’m a girl?’

‘No. Because you believe in it. Kind of.’

‘I’m out here every day. The ghost hasn’t got me yet.’

‘You’re out here in the daytime. Not at night.’

Finn is testing; finding new ways to work out what he thinks of her, now that the normal ones are useless. They’re in new territory. Julia realises she likes it here.

‘This isn’t night,’ she says. ‘It’s nine o-fucking-clock. Babies are still out playing. If it was summer, it’d be daylight.’

‘So if I got up right now and went inside, you’d be totally fine out here by yourself.’