Most of the village kids had gone to Bettsbrough Comp but the Cassidys had always had to travel into Peterborough to the Catholic school. They’d hung out in the village out of school hours, of course, and he’d had a bit of a thing going with Laurel. They’d gone ‘over the fields’, the village term for anywhere outside the village proper, and Laurel had stolen rides on a pony on the Carlysle Estate. Some kids had been jealous of Laurel’s ‘luck’ not having ‘proper’ grown-ups to answer to, but Grady had known the reality. Her dad died before Laurel was two, trying some motorbike stunt. In Laurel’s mid-teens, her mum, who had diabetes-related kidney problems, had died, too, meaning Rea taking a job instead of going to uni. If that was ‘luck’ then it wasn’t the good kind. Even if Grady’s dad had been strict and rarely challenged by Grady’s mum, the Cassidy parents had provided a comfortable home. Grady had never had to do half the cooking and half the housework on top of schoolwork, like Laurel.

‘She might just be visiting her family,’ Mac said suddenly.

‘Yeah.’ Grady slowed as his headlights illuminated the bulky shape of Mac’s car, relaxing on the verge like a drunk who couldn’t find his way home. ‘I got on her shit-list years ago.’ He didn’t know why she’d stopped talking to him, unless it was because he’d said he’d meet her at a village hall party and then not turned up because he’d broken his ankle. He’d had a Christmas gift wrapped and ready to give her but once he’d been up and about on crutches, she’d blanked him. Mac had said she’d probably turned funny because she didn’t want to have to buy a Christmas present for him; told him girls were weird, hormonal things.

Grady had written a new tag for the gift and given it to his mum. If Mum had been bemused to receive a Sugababes T-shirt, she hadn’t said so.

He smiled faintly to remember the young him feeling so bewildered and hurt at the change in Laurel. Judging by her wary, unsmiling attitude at the roadside this evening, she hadn’t changed back. He addressed Mac again. ‘Do you really think the guys who stopped us were your students, muffled up with hoods?’ He turned the truck around in the lane and switched on the hazard lights.

Mac rested his hand on the door handle but didn’t get out, the reflection of the flashing lights going on and off in his eyes. ‘I think they were former students who probably saw my personalised number plate. I recognised the voice of one of the more challenging kids who left the school last year.’