‘Kinky,’ says Julia. Her phone beeps. She pulls it out of her pocket and holds it above her face, squinting against the sunset.

If it had been an hour earlier, when they were throwing off their uniforms in their room and singing Amy Winehouse, deciding whether to go across the road and watch the guys’ rugby match. If it were an hour later, when they would be in the canteen, sprawled forward over the table, catching last crumbs of dry cake with licked fingertips. None of them would ever have imagined what they had brushed up against; what other selves, other lives, other deaths were careening ferocious and unstoppable along their tracks, only a sliver of time away. The grounds are pocketed with clusters of girls, all blazing and amazed with inchoate love for one another and for their own growing closeness; none of the others will feel the might of that swerve as the tracks switch and their own power takes them barrelling into another landscape. When Holly thinks about it a long time afterwards, when things are starting to stay fixed and come into focus at last, she will think that probably there are ways you could say Marcus Wiley killed Chris Harper.

‘Maybe I’ll just do it about pretty flowers,’ Selena says. She stretches a lock of hair across her face – the last of the sun turns it to a web of gold light – and examines the trees through it. ‘Or ickle kittens. You think he’d care?’

‘I bet someone does theirs about One Direction,’ Holly says.

‘Aah,’ Julia says, sudden and too loud, disgusted and angry.

The others come up on their elbows. ‘What?’ Becca asks.

Julia shoves her phone back in her pocket, clasps her hands behind her head again and stares up at the sky. Nostrils flaring as she breathes, too fast. She’s red right down to the neck of her jumper. Julia never goes red.

The rest look at each other. Holly catches Selena’s eye and tilts her chin at Julia: Did you see what . . . ? Selena shakes her head, just a millimetre.

‘What?’ Holly says.

‘Marcus Wiley is a douchewipe, is what. Any more questions?’

‘Duh, we knew that,’ Holly says. Julia ignores her.

Becca asks, ‘What’s a douchewipe?’

‘You don’t want to know,’ Holly tells her.

‘Jules,’ Selena says gently. She turns over onto her stomach to be side by side with Julia. Her hair is bright and messed, with bits of grass and cypress fans tangled here and there, and the back of her hoodie is ribbed with creases from lying on it. ‘What’d he say?’

Julia’s head moves away from Selena, but she says, ‘He didn’t say anything. He sent me a dick pic. Because he’s a fucking douchewipe. OK? Now can we talk about the sonnets some more?’

‘Oh my God,’ Holly says. Serena’s eyes are massive. ‘Seriously?’

‘No, I made it up. Yeah, seriously.’