‘She’s still staring, so I’m just like, OK, forget this. I shove past her and I stick my hand down the side of her bed, where she kept the phone – it was this little foofoo pink thing, just like Alison’s; I guess that’s what Chris thought was appropriate for girls. I’m hoping to Jesus she hasn’t moved it, ’cause I don’t have time to try and figure out where, so I’m a happy girlie when I feel it there, right? Only then I pull it out, and it’s red.’

The memory made Julia take a hard in-breath through her nose, bite down on her lip. She wasn’t someone you could pat on the head with the old You’re doing great. Conway gave her a second before she said, ‘Chris’s.’

‘Yeah. I’d seen it on him; it fell out of his pocket once, when we were . . . I go, “Lenie, what the fuck?” She looks at me and she’s like, “Huh?” I swear I nearly shoved the phone up her arse. I went, “Where did you get this? And where’s your one?” She looks at the phone and after a second she says – this is it, this is all she says – “Oh.”’

Julia shook her head. ‘Just like that. “Oh.” I still feel sick thinking about it.’

Conway said, ‘You figured she’d killed Chris.’

‘Duh, yeah, I did. I just— What was I supposed to think? I thought she’d been out meeting him and he told her about me, and she— And then when she was legging it back inside, she grabbed the wrong phone somehow. If they’d, I don’t know, if they’d taken off their clothes and their phones had ended up—’

I said, ‘Or she might have taken it so we couldn’t link her to Chris.’

‘Yeah, no. Selena? Wouldn’t even occur to her. What freaked me out was where was her phone, like had she left it wherever Chris was? But I figured I couldn’t worry about that. I just grabbed the phone and I was out of there.’

It jibed with Holly’s story, or partway. Holly had thought faster: like her dad, always on top of the just-in-case, never let the off-chance sneak up on her. She had swiped Selena’s phone early in the morning, before the full story got through to McKenna and the school went into lockdown. Between then and study time, someone else had found a way into that room.

Conway said, ‘Where’d you put it?’