Selena puts a sherbet lemon in her mouth, rolls the top of the bag and shoves it deep into her coat pocket. Harry has given up on her and is telling Becca how his Economics mock was a total ’mare, doing an impression of himself having a full-on cross-eyed wobbler in the middle of the exam room, and Becca is laughing. Selena looks up at the long strokes of light plummeting down between clouds straight at them all, and tastes exploding lemon and feels the insides of her wrists tingling.

During first study period Selena goes to the toilet. On the way, she slips into their bedroom, pulls the pick-and-mix bag out of her coat and shoves it into the pocket of her hoodie.

The phone is dusted with sugar and it’s empty: nothing in the contacts folder, nothing in the photo album, even the time and date haven’t been set. The only thing on it is one text, from a number she doesn’t recognise. It says Hi.

Selena sits on the toilet lid, smelling cold and disinfectant and powdered sugar. Rain blows softly against the windowpane, shifts away again; footsteps slap down the corridor and someone runs into the bathroom, grabs a handful of toilet paper, blows her nose wetly and runs out again, slamming the cubicle door behind her. Upstairs, where the fifth-years and sixth-years are allowed to study in their own rooms if they want to, someone is playing some song with a fast sweet riff that catches in your heartbeat and tugs it speeding along: Never saw you looking but I found what you were looking for, never saw you coming but I see you coming back for more . . . After a long time Selena texts back, Hi.

By the first night they meet, the rain has stopped. No wind rattles the bedroom window to wake the others when Selena eases her way out of bed and slips the key, millimetre by millimetre, out of Julia’s phone case. No cloud blocks the moonlight as she pushes up the sash window and slides out onto the grass.

She’s barely taken two steps when she starts to realise: outside is a different place tonight. The shadowy spots are seething with things she can almost hear, scuttles and slow-rising snarls; the patches of moonlight stake her down for the night watchman, for Joanne’s gang, for anyone or anything who happens to be on the prowl. It reaches her vividly that the usual protections aren’t in place tonight, that anyone who wants her could walk up and grab her. It’s been so long since she felt this, it takes her a moment to understand what it is: fear.