The corridor light gives the glass panel above the transom a faint grey glow. Julia flares it to a blaze and looks down at the others. Holly is sprawled on her back, Becca is one neat curve like a kitten; Selena is a whirl of gold and a loose curl of fingers on the pillow. Their steady breathing has got louder. In the second before she opens the door and slips out into the corridor, Julia hates all of their guts.

Outside is different tonight. The air is warm and restless, the moon is enormous and too close. Every noise sounds sharper, focused on her, testing: twigs crack in the bushes to see if she’ll jump, leaves rustle behind her to make her whip round. Something is circling among the trees, making a high rising call that runs down her spine like a warning – Julia can’t tell if it’s warning something about her, or the other way round. It’s been so long since she was afraid of anything the grounds could hold, she’d forgotten it was possible. She moves faster and tries to tell herself it’s just because she’s on her own.

She is at the grove early. She slides behind one of the cypresses and leans against it, feeling her heart pound at the bark. The thing has followed her; it lets out its rising call, high up in the trees. She tries to get a look, but it’s too fast, it’s just the shadow of a long thin wing in the corner of her eye.

Chris is early too. Julia hears him coming a mile away, or at least she hopes to Jesus it’s him, because otherwise something else the size of a deer is crashing down the paths like it doesn’t care who hears. Her teeth are in the bark of the cypress and she tastes it on her tongue, acrid and wild.

Then he steps into the clearing. Tall and straight-backed, listening.

The moonlight changes him. Daytime, he’s just another Colm’s rugger-bugger, cute if you have cheap chain-restaurant tastes, charming if you like knowing every conversation before it begins. Here he’s something more. He is beautiful the way something that lasts forever is beautiful.

It goes through Julia like the punch off an electric fence: he shouldn’t be here. Chris Harper, half-witted teenage tit-hound, could come here and do his half-witted teenage tit-hound stuff and wander away safe and oblivious, no different from a mating fox or a spraying tomcat; the grove wouldn’t shift a twig to take notice of something so small and so common, just doing what its kind do. But this boy: the grove has taken notice of him. This boy like white marble, lifted head, parted lips: the grove has a part for him to play.