‘If her parents get back to you, you’ve got our numbers. If Holly and Julia and Selena need anything else from their room, you’ve got the key. If anyone has anything to tell us, whatever time of night, you make sure they get the chance.’

McKenna said, ‘You have made yourselves abundantly clear. I think you can safely leave now.’

Conway was already moving. I was slower. McKenna had turned so ordinary; just one of my ma’s mates, worn down by a drunk husband or a kid in trouble, trying to find her way through the night.

I said, ‘You told us earlier: this school’s survived a lot.’

‘Indeed,’ McKenna said. She had one last punch left in her: that fisheye came up and hit me square on, showed me exactly how she smashed snotty teenagers into cringing kids. ‘And while I appreciate your belated concern, Detective, I am fairly sure that it can survive even such an impressive threat as yourselves.’

‘Put you in your place,’ Conway said, a safe distance down the corridor. ‘And serve you right for arse-licking.’ The dark took her face, her voice. I couldn’t tell how much she was joking.

Us, leaving St Kilda’s. The banister-rail arching warm under my hand. The entrance hall, slants of white spilling through the fanlight onto the chequered tiles. Our footsteps, the clear bell-jingle of Conway’s car keys hanging off her finger, the faint slow toll of a great clock striking midnight somewhere, all spiralling up through still air to the invisible ceiling. For one last second, the place we’d come to that morning materialised out of the dark for me: beautiful; whorled and spired of mother-of-pearl and mist; unreachable.

The walk to the car lasted forever. The night was wide open, full to dripping with itself, it smelled of hungry tropical flowers and animal scat and running water. The grounds had gone rogue: every flash of moonlight off a leaf looked like bared white teeth, the tree over the car looked dense with shadow-things hanging ready to drop. Every sound had me leaping around, but there was never anything to see. The place was only mocking or warning, showing me who was boss.

By the time I slammed myself inside the car I was sweating. I thought Conway hadn’t noticed, till she said, ‘I’m only fucking delighted to get out of here.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Same.’

We should’ve been high-fiving, high-stepping, high as kites. I didn’t know how to find that. All I could find was the look on Holly’s face and Julia’s, watching the last shadow of something craved and lost; the distant blue of Selena’s eyes, watching things I couldn’t see; Rebecca’s laugh, too clear to be human. The car was cold.