This time Julia misses her chance to laugh along. A discreet distance away, among the ragwort and dandelions that are growing even taller and thicker this year, Selena and Holly and Becca are all trying to listen to something on Becca’s iPod at the same time; Selena and Holly are elbowing each other for the earbud, laughing, hair in each other’s face, like everything’s that simple still. They make Julia want to shoot off the breeze blocks and explode. Any second now some mate of Finn’s is going to show up and come bouncing over, and by then she needs to know. If Gemma wasn’t lying, just if, Julia needs the weekend to figure out what to do.

‘You’re friends with Chris Harper,’ she says. ‘Right?’

Finn’s face closes over. ‘Yeah,’ he says. He holds out a hand for his phone, shoves it back in his pocket. ‘So?’

‘Does he know you’ve cut off the alarm?’

His mouth is getting a cynical curl to it. ‘Yeah. It was his idea. He’s the one that took the photo.’

Gemma wasn’t lying.

‘And if he’s who you wanted to hook up with all along, you could’ve just said that to start with.’

Finn thinks he’s been played for a fool. Julia says, ‘He’s not.’

‘I should’ve fucking known.’

‘If Chris disappeared off the earth in a puff of sleazebaggy smoke, I’d be celebrating. Believe me.’

‘Yeah. Whatever.’ Finn has changed colours, eyes gone dark, a raw burned red high on his cheeks. If she were a guy, he would punch her. Since she isn’t, he’s left stinging and helpless. ‘You’re some piece of work, you know that?’

Julia understands that if she doesn’t fix this right now, the chance will be gone and he will never forgive her. If they run into each other on the street when they’re forty, Finn’s face will get that burned look and he’ll keep walking.

She doesn’t have room to work out how to mend this. The other thing is spreading white and blinding across her mind, pushing Finn to the edges.

‘Believe what you want,’ she says. ‘I have to go,’ and she slides off the breeze blocks and heads back to the others, feeling the Daleks’ eyes scratching at her skin like needles, wishing she was a guy so that Finn could punch her and get it over with and then she could find Chris Harper and smash his face in.