‘Locked myself in a toilet cubicle, deleted the shit out of the message folders, took out the SIM and stuck the phone in a cistern. I figured even if you found it, you couldn’t link it to us, and without the SIM you probably couldn’t link it to Chris either. That weekend when I went home, I left the phone on the bus. If no one stole it, it’s probably in the Dublin Bus lost and found.’

She had guts, Julia. Guts and enough loyalty for a dozen. She was good stuff. I wished I knew how badly we were going to break her heart.

‘Why keep the SIM card?’ I asked.

‘I thought it could come in useful. I was pretty sure Selena was about to get arrested – even if by some miracle she hadn’t left evidence all over the place, I figured she’d go to pieces and confess. Do you even remember what a wreck she was?’

‘So was everyone else,’ Conway said. The sharp point on her voice said Should’ve known. ‘She wasn’t bawling or fainting: she looked to be in better nick than most.’

Julia’s eyebrow flicked. ‘Yeah, if only you’d told me that back then. I was there expecting you guys to come for her any minute. I thought if there was at least a way to show you that she was the one who’d dumped Chris, and that he was a total dickhead to girls, Lenie might get – I don’t know, a lighter sentence or whatever. Otherwise everyone would just think he dumped her and she went psycho, lock the evil bitch up and throw away the key. I don’t know, I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly; I just figured keeping it couldn’t hurt, at least for now, and it might help.’

If Julia had talked to any of the others, she would have known that the story had tangles, that not everything pointed straight to Selena. No way to guess what they would have done next, but they would have done it together.

It had been months too late for that to happen. Chris had cracked the four of them right across. Even after he was gone, the fault line he made had kept widening, deep under the surface, while everything up on top shone beautiful as new. We were just finishing the job he had begun.

I said, ‘Can you remember if anyone did manage to go up to the boarders’ wing before study period that day? We’ll check the logbook, but while we have you here: anything come to mind?’

I had Julia’s attention. She was watching me hard. ‘What? You think someone else put that phone down behind Selena’s bed?’

‘If Selena didn’t take that phone off Chris, someone else did. And then somehow it got to where you found it.’

‘Like, someone tried to frame her?’