It was all suspended in the air, hanging from the ceiling, limbs dangling: the folder.

June not telling me anything.

I felt myself stiffen. ‘What’s happening?’ I said.

‘I wish I could …’ She said that all dreamy, which honestly made me angrier. Was she crying?

I moved away, pushing her off my arms; immediately there was a terrible, aching absence where her body had been. Her against me was wrong and her away from me was wrong.

June just looked at me, shocked, scared, like she’d been sleepwalking and just woke up here, or maybe like it was me who’d brought her here, but after considering it for a moment I realized that no, my memory was completely intact and this was all her doing. ‘What’s happening?’

June looked around. ‘That was bad,’ she said, brushing herself down, like I’d left some residue she wanted rid of. ‘That was so bad and stupid. I shouldn’t even be here.’

‘What just happened?’

She dragged her hand down her face. ‘I don’t know.’

And as the bliss left me, the anger arrived. She turned away; I heard the click of her knuckles. ‘No, June,’ I said, and she turned back, because she knew I was dead serious. ‘What just happened?’

Her eyes went filmy. ‘I don’t know,’ she said again, shaky and uncertain this time.

‘You can’t – you can’t do – I mean, Heath …’ I was a hypocrite. I was the world’s biggest hypocrite. I was actually defending his honour or whatever when I’d thought about his girlfriend in various states of intimacy a million times over the past five months.

June hardened. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Heath. Yeah. Cool. Heath. I’m sorry. OK? I don’t know what to tell you.’ The ‘sorry’ jumped out of her throat and crumpled awkwardly on the ground, lying between us like a corpse.

‘Why are you crying?’

‘I wish I could say more than that. I wish I could tell you more. I can’t.’

‘OK. I mean, is that it, then?’ I asked. ‘Should I go?’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘Really? I think I do.’ I hated this. I got everything I ever wanted in one second and it only made me angry. Didn’t make me feel better at all. Surprise, surprise.

Behind June, Leo stepped forward, my coat in his hand.

June followed my gaze and jerked when she realized someone had seen us. So she was worried. ‘Don’t worry. That’s Leo,’ I said.

She nodded. ‘OK.’

Leo just stood there with his mouth slightly agape and my coat dangling from his hooked arm.

I didn’t say anything. Just left.

Everything was wrong.

Leo and I drove in silence.