Holly isn’t laughing. She looks like she hasn’t heard. Her head’s tucked sideways, listening to something else.

‘Hol?’ says Selena. ‘You OK?’

Holly nods backwards, at the Daleks.

Julia leaves the rest of her story for later. The four of them pretend to be fascinated by picking out exactly the right sweets from the packets, and listen.

‘He is,’ Joanne says, and nudges Orla’s leg with her foot.

Orla snickers and cringes her chin down between her shoulders.

‘Look at him. He’s so into you, it’s pathetic.’

‘He is not.’

‘OMG, he so is? He told Dara and Dara told me.’

‘No way does Andrew Moore like me. Dara was just messing.’

‘Um, excuse me?’ Joanne’s voice has an instant cold edge that sets Becca shifting on the fountain again. She hates being this scared of Joanne, but she can’t stop. ‘You think Dara’s going to make an idiot out of me? Hello, I don’t think so?’

‘Jo’s right,’ Gemma says lazily. She’s lying with her head in one of the guys’ lap, with her back arched so that her chest sticks up at him. The guy is desperately trying to look like he’s not trying to look down her top. ‘Andrew’s totally drooling over you.’

Orla squirms delightedly, bottom lip sucked in between her teeth.

‘He’s just too shy to tell you,’ Joanne says, sweet again. ‘That’s what Dara said. He doesn’t know what to do.’ To the tall brown-haired guy next to her: ‘Isn’t that right?’

The guy says, ‘Yeah. Totally,’ and hopes he’s getting it right. Joanne gives him a good-boy smile.

‘He thinks he hasn’t got a chance with you,’ Gemma says. ‘But he does, right?’

‘You do like him, don’t you?’

Orla makes some kind of mewing noise.

‘OMG, of course you do! It’s Andrew Moore!’

‘He’s, like, the biggest babe ever!’

‘I’m into him.’

‘Me too.’ Joanne nudges Alison. ‘You are too, right, Ali?’

Alison blinks. ‘Um, yeah?’

‘See? I’m so jel.’

Even Becca knows who Andrew Moore is. Over on the other side of the fountain, he’s the centre of the Colm’s guys: blond head, rugby shoulders, loudest of all, shoving. Andrew Moore’s dad flew in Pixie Geldof to DJ at his sixteenth birthday party last month.

Orla manages to get out, ‘I guess I kind of like him. I mean—’

‘Course you do.’

‘Everyone does.’

‘You lucky cow.’

Orla’s grinning from ear to ear. ‘So can you . . . ? OhmyGod. I mean, can you, like, tell Dara and then he can tell Andrew?’

Joanne shakes her head regretfully. ‘That wouldn’t work. He’s still going to be too shy to actually come over to you. You’re going to have to say something to him.’

That sends Orla into a paroxysm of wriggles and giggles, hands splayed over her face. ‘OhmyGod, I can’t! I just, like— OhmyGod!’

Joanne and Gemma are all earnestness, Alison looks confused, but the guys are jaw-clamping down sniggers. Holly, with her back to them, does an eye-widening Do you believe this? grimace.