What new evidence, I had asked him, but he wouldn’t tell me. It didn’t matter; I knew. Karen had delivered on her threat. She wanted Mike in prison, no matter what, so she’d told them the truth about that night. Maybe they even knew what I’d done, that I’d lied back then. Was that a crime too? I wished so much I could remember every moment of the ball, sift through my vague drunk recollections, pick out the right image to tell me what really happened. The wilted carnation in Bill’s buttonhole. The dawn sun glinting on a discarded champagne bottle. The gleam of Martha’s white silk dress, disappearing into the Fellows’ Garden, a man in a tux holding her up. Mike. Only imagined, since I never actually saw them together. And where was Karen? How had my best friend abandoned me so thoroughly for our last night at uni? Where was Callum, where was Jodi? All of us pieces on a chessboard, moving around the college that night. I wished I knew.

I could have tried Mike’s parents, asked them for money. But I knew they didn’t have much, had managed to sink it into property or lose it in dodgy investment schemes. I should call them anyway, explain how he was, but I couldn’t face their twittering confusion, the fact they were clearly alarmed at the prospect of travelling back from France. I’d wait until I had more news. If he got worse, of course, they’d have to come back anyway. To say goodbye.

There was no choice. Mike was not being released from hospital any day soon, or the charges dropped, and that meant we had no money. And that meant desperate measures were called for. I steeled myself, as if jumping into freezing water. It rang once, twice, three times. She’d answer of course, she never went anywhere these days.

A click. A wavery, hostile voice. ‘Hello?’ Even with caller ID, she didn’t know my number, I called so seldom.

I swallowed. ‘Mum, it’s me.’

Growing up, I hated my father. It was something Callum and I had in common, that we’d been able to bond over despite our differences. His dad was tyrannical, cold, demanding. And mine was – angry. Violent. I remember the feeling of shame when they came to visit me that first term at uni, appearing in their navy Focus with the dent from where Mum ran it into a bollard at Sainsbury’s. Dad yelling at me because it was hard to park in central Oxford. Mum’s floral suit from the eighties, too tight. I’d hustled them away as fast as I could. My parents could not afford to take me somewhere like Gee’s or the Old Parsonage, so we went to Pizza Express. Dad examining the menu over his little bifocals. ‘Bloody rip-off for a bit of bread and tomato.’