Holly’s heartbeat has reared up to match the cicada pulse. Selena’s made it so easy for Joanne. Whatever Joanne’s done, she did it knowing: all it’ll take is one sentence to a teacher or to the detectives who’ll be patient in the corner of everything from now on, one fake slip of the tongue, and oopsie!

‘Shit,’ Holly says, when they reach the bottom of the stairs. Through the open connecting door they can hear the net of school noise, pulled tighter and higher today. Someone squeals, And a police car!! ‘Forgot my poetry book. Hang on—’ and she’s squeezing back up the stairs against the flow and yammer, hand already outstretched to dive down the side of Selena’s mattress.

Two hundred and fifty of them bundle whispering into the hall. They settle instantly like good girls, hands all demure, like they’re not sucking up every detail of the two plainclothes police being bland in back corners, like that eager boil isn’t simmering just below their smooth eyes. They’re jumping to know.

That groundskeeper guy Ronan you know how he you-know-what, I heard cocaine I heard gangsters came looking for him I heard there were cops with guns right out there on the grounds! I heard they shot him I heard the shots I heard I heard— Selena catches Julia’s sideways grin – the grounds, like it’s some scary jungle full of drug lords and probably aliens – and manages to come up with one back. Actually she barely has the energy to pretend she cares about whatever pointless drama is going on here. She wishes she knew how to puke on demand like Julia, so she could go back to their room and be left alone.

But McKenna coming up behind the podium has her mouth and her eyebrows rearranged into her special solemn face, carefully mixed stern and sad and holy. Back when they were in first year and a fifth-year got killed in a car crash over the Christmas break, they all came back in January to that face. They haven’t seen it since.

Not Ronan the groundskeeper. People are twisting to see if they can spot anyone missing. Lauren Mulvihill isn’t in ohmyGod I heard she was going to fail her exams I heard she got dumped ohmyGod—

‘Girls,’ McKenna says. ‘I have some tragic news to share with you. You will be shocked and grieved, but I expect you to behave with the good sense and dignity that are part of the St Kilda’s tradition.’

Straining silence. ‘Someone found a used condom,’ Julia guesses, on a breath too low for anyone but the four of them to hear.

‘Shh,’ Holly says, without looking at her. She’s sitting up high and straight, staring at McKenna and wrapping a tissue around and around her hand. Selena wants to ask if she’s OK, but Holly might kick her.