‘Yeah? We’re OK?’

‘We’re fine.’

‘God. Phew.’ Chris does a big exaggerated forehead-swipe, but he means it. He crouches to feel the grass. ‘It’s dry,’ he says, dropping down, and touches a spot beside him.

When Selena doesn’t move, he says, ‘I’m not going to . . . I mean, don’t worry, I know you’re not – or we’re not— Jesus. I can’t talk. I’m not going to try anything. OK?’

Selena is laughing. ‘Relax,’ she says. ‘I know what you mean,’ and she goes over and sits down next to him.

They sit there for a while, not talking, not even looking at each other, just getting used to the shapes of them in the shape of the clearing. Selena feels the hidden things thinning away to black veils you could pop with a fingertip, puddling into harmless sleep on the ground. She’s a foot away from Chris, but that side of her is rich with the warmth off him. He has his hands clasped around his knees – they’re like a man’s hands, strong-knuckled and wide – and his head tilted back to look at the sky.

‘I’ll tell you something else I’ve never told anyone before,’ he says quietly, after a while. ‘You know what I’m going to do? When I’m old enough, I’m going to buy that house. I’ll fix up the whole place, and then I’ll invite all my friends round and we’ll have a party that lasts like a week. Great music, and lots of drink and hash and E, and the house is big enough that when people get tired they can just go off to one of the bedrooms and crash for a while and then come back to the party, right? Or if they want some privacy or just some quiet, there are all these empty rooms, there’s the whole garden. Whatever mood you’re in, whatever you need right then, this place will have it.’

His face is glowing. The house flowers in the air above the clearing, every detail carved and shimmering, every corner ringing and fountaining with someday music and laughter. It’s as real as they are.

‘And we’ll all remember that party for the rest of our lives. Like, when we’re forty and have jobs and kids and the most exciting thing we ever do is golf, that party’s what we’ll think about when we need to remind ourselves what we used to be like.’