After that Selena stays as still as she can and listens to how her heartbeat’s changed, gone slow and rolling in underwater dark. She thinks maybe if she follows it far enough down the tunnel she’ll find Chris. Probably he’s dead if they all say so, but there’s no way he’s gone. Not the taste of his skin, not the hot mountaintop smell of him, not the upward curl of his laugh. She thinks if she concentrates hard enough she’ll at least find what direction he’s in, but people keep interrupting her.

People ask her questions in McKenna’s office. She keeps her mouth shut and doesn’t break down.

Just like Holly said, they get called into McKenna’s office one by one. There’s McKenna, there’s a woman with black hair, and there’s a fat old guy, all sitting in a row behind the long battered gloss of McKenna’s desk. Becca never noticed before – the couple of times she was in here, she was too panicky to notice anything – that McKenna’s chair is extra tall, to make you feel little and helpless. Actually, with three of them back there and only one tall chair, it just looks funny, like the woman detective’s feet must be dangling in mid-air, or like McKenna and the guy detective are midgets.

They start with the stuff they ask everyone. Becca thinks back to what she was just a few months ago and does that, huddling up and tangling her legs and answering into her lap. If you’re shy enough, no one sees anything else. The guy detective takes notes and bites down on a yawn.

Then the lady detective says – examining an unravelling thread in her jacket cuff, like this is no big deal – ‘What did you think about your friend Selena going out with Chris?’

Becca frowns, bewildered. ‘Lenie never went out with him. I think maybe they talked to each other a couple of times at the Court, but that was ages ago.’

The detective’s eyebrows go up. ‘Nah. They were a couple. You mean you didn’t know?’

‘We don’t have boyfriends,’ Becca says disapprovingly. ‘My mum says I’m too young.’ She likes that touch. Looking like a kid might as well come in useful for once.

The lady detective and the man detective and McKenna all wait, staring at her from behind the sun-patterns slanted across the desk. They’re so huge and meaty and hairy, they think they’ll just squash her down till her mouth pops open and everything comes gushing out.