Another shrug. ‘I’m just really stressed right now, Cass. I don’t need this. I’m under a lot of pressure.’

He was under pressure? ‘My dad nearly died.’ Her voice was thick now, like she had a cold. ‘You didn’t even come to visit.’ When his granddad was dying, she’d taken flowers, grapes. Trying to be a nice girlfriend. That was what her mum would do, when someone was ill.

‘Get a grip. How can I visit him? He’s a rapist, Cass. I have to go.’

‘Wait. Is this about – what happened?’ Her voice shook. ‘At the weekend?’

Aaron’s face changed. ‘It never happened. OK? Get that straight in your head.’ Then he sloped off, arching himself away from her, and as he reached his mates she heard the laughter bubble up and she stared at her feet, biting the inside of her mouth until she could be sure she wasn’t going to cry. That was who she was now. The rapist’s daughter. She would never forgive her dad.

Someone was coming over. Miss Hall, the deputy head, in her black suit, her tired eyes. Striding past the kids, who scattered and broke up like mercury. Was she in trouble?

‘Cassie.’

‘I . . . I haven’t done anything.’

In the background, Amira rolled her eyes. Cassie saw that, registered it. Amira had never done that before, not to her. They rolled their eyes at other people.

Miss Hall said, ‘Cassie, I think you should come with me.’

Sitting in the nurse’s office, with its crinkly exam couch and smell of plasters and lollies, waiting for her mother to pick her up, Cassie found herself reliving it. That night, and all the different things that had happened. Things that her mother didn’t even know about.

‘He sounds like a total prick.’ That was what Jake had said, when she’d finished telling him about Aaron.

‘He’s top of all his classes. Oxbridge stream.’