‘She’s in the middle of exams. Between you and me, she hasn’t made her mind up about applying yet.’ Poor Cassie. She was unlikely to get in, with her mediocre mocks results. I remembered how Mike had turned to me, bewildered that we hadn’t turned out another top-hitter, and I’d felt, obscurely, that it was my fault, with my lower-class genes.

‘Well, it’s lovely to see you. How’s Mike?’ From the way she said it, I could tell she didn’t know. Maybe the news didn’t penetrate these walls.

‘Ticking along,’ I lied.

‘Coffee?’

I let her make us some, filling a little kettle from a sink hidden away in a cupboard. The walls were hung with pictures of Matriculating classes going back years. I got up and scanned them, looking for ours. I found it, searching for us among the scrubbed, moon-faced first years in our black and white garb. There I was, with my unplucked eyebrows and ratty hair. Karen in the back row, wearing too much eyeliner. I remembered she’d turned up in fishnets that day. And Martha, standing out with her shining pale hair.

Victoria had come up behind me. ‘Seems like a long time, doesn’t it.’

‘Eons. But this is great, you’re working here!’

She sat down at the sofa area, placing the two mugs on the coffee table and indicating for me to join her. ‘Things have changed since our days. I don’t know if you’ve seen the brochure, but we have a new boathouse, a new common room—’

I had to play this carefully; I didn’t want her to throw me out. ‘Victoria – something odd happened the other day.’ I’d already decided not to mention the rape. If the college didn’t know, I wanted to keep it that way. ‘The police came to see Mike.’ I left out the part where Mike was unconscious, sinking further every day. How easy it came to me, all these lies.

‘Oh?’ She was frowning.

‘They were asking about – Martha.’

I saw her jump at the name, as if I’d slapped her. Martha had been her best friend, and I tried to imagine how it would have been to lose Karen back then.

‘What?’

‘Do you remember, after the ball, they interviewed lots of us?’

Her hands were white around her coffee mug. ‘Yes. It was so horrible.’

‘They had this idea that Mike – that maybe Mike had been with her. I think he helped her sit down or something. You remember, she was – she’d been drinking more than usual.’