Swirl of laughter, in the dark teeming air.

‘Rebecca’s all, “Oh, I was just getting out of the rain,” and I’m there, “Yeah, OK.” The school’s like half a minute away, and she’s wearing her coat and her hat, meaning she actually deliberately came out into the rain. And if she’s so shy, how come she’s hiding somewhere she’s going to run into big scary groundskeepers?’

Gemma had herself back. The story was coming out easy, confident. It sounded true. ‘So I go, “Planning on doing some gardening?” – there were all these shovels and stuff in the corner where she was; she had one of them in her hand, like she’d grabbed it when I came in, in case I was a psycho rapist and she had to fight me off. And she actually goes, “Um, um, I guess, sort of, I was thinking about—” till I decide to put her out of her misery. I’m there, “Puh-lease, you didn’t think I was serious?” And she just stares at me for a moment, like, Bwuh? and then she goes, “I have to go,” and she runs out into the rain and heads back to the school.’

She must have put down the shovel, before she ran out. Shovel, or spade, or hoe. Left it there to come back for, now she knew what she wanted.

The meteor in the palm of my hand. Beautiful. Burning me through, with a welcome white fire.

If there was anything in my face, the tricky light would hide it for me. I made sure my voice stayed easy. ‘Did Ronan see her?’

Shrug from Gemma. ‘Don’t think so. He didn’t get there till a few minutes later – he’d been waiting somewhere for the rain to ease off. He was kind of pissed off that I was inside, but he got over it.’ Smile, reminiscent.

Joanne was close to me. ‘See? All that pure-and-innocent stuff, that is ohmyGod such crap. Everyone else totally falls for it, but we knew you wouldn’t.’

I said, ‘Did Ronan sell anything else besides drugs? Booze? Cigarettes?’ Sometimes they’d had the odd smoke, Holly had said; and the packet hidden in Julia’s bit of wardrobe. Rebecca could still have had an innocent reason for being in that shed; guilty kind of innocent, but innocent all the same.

Gemma snorted. ‘Right. And fizzy lollies.’

Orla was giggling. ‘Phone credit.’

‘Mascara.’

‘Tights.’

‘Tampax.’

That exploded the two of them, shrieking laughter, Orla fell over backwards onto the grass kicking her legs up. Joanne cut through it. Coldly: ‘He wasn’t a supermarket. Rebecca wasn’t buying chocolate chip cookies.’

Gemma got herself together. ‘Yeah. He just sold the bad stuff.’ Lascivious curl on bad. ‘I’d love to know what she actually was buying.’