On Thursday morning Becca wears her outgrown kilt again, and this time Sister Cornelius loses the head and bangs her desk with the ruler and gives the whole class a hundred lines of I will pray to the Blessed Virgin to grant me modesty. And then she sends Becca back to her room to change.

There’s no way to know what time this guy and Selena were meeting, but at least Becca knows one place where they met. Tonight in that clearing place? one text said, way back in March. Same time?

In the last place in the world where she should have brought him. For a second, zipping up her too-long new kilt, Becca’s afraid this guy must have power of his own behind him, to turn Selena into such a total lobotomised idiot. She spots a dropped scrap of paper on the carpet, launches it spinning like a moth around the light fixture to remind herself: she has power too.

The phone doesn’t feel black and hot any more; it’s turned foam-light and nimble, buttons pressing themselves almost before Becca’s thumb can find them. She redoes the text four times before she’s positive it’s OK. Can you meet tonight? 1 in the cypress clearing?

She might not get the chance to check for an answer, but it doesn’t matter: he’ll be there. Maybe Julia’s already set up a meeting for tonight – Becca doesn’t know how she contacts him – but he’ll blow Julia off, if he thinks Selena’s beckoning. It rises off his texts like heat: what he really wants is Selena.

He can’t have her.

Becca leaves soon after midnight, to give herself time to prepare. In the mirror on their wardrobe door, she looks like a burglar: dark-blue jeans and her dark-blue hoodie, and her designer black leather gloves that Mum gave her for Christmas and she’s never worn before. Her hood strings are pulled so tight that just her eyes and nose stick out. It makes her grin – You look like the world’s fattest bank robber – but the grin doesn’t show; she looks solemn, almost stern, balanced on the balls of her feet ready for battle. Around her the others breathe slow and deep as enchanted princesses in a fairy tale.

The night glows like some strange daytime, under a huge low half-moon packed tight in stars. Over the wall and far away music is playing, just a tantalising thread of it, a sweet voice and a beat like running feet. Becca freezes in a shadow and listens. Never thought that everything we lost could feel so near, found you on a— and it’s gone, faded on a change of wind. After a long time she starts moving again.