‘We were just having fun,’ Mike pleaded to me. ‘I looked for you, after. You were off . . . I couldn’t find you.’ He was talking like he even owed me an apology, and that was something new, to have any rights at all. I thought of how I’d seen him on the lawn, getting gin, how he’d rejected me. Already he was rewriting the truth.

I looked round at them all. ‘But I don’t understand. What’s even happened? Why does it matter?’

‘Because, for fuck’s sake . . .’ Mike drew in his breath, as if frightened by his own burst of temper.

Again, it was Jodi who could say it, while Mike and Callum stared at the ground, and I realised they were both white and shaking. ‘They’re saying she’s been found dead,’ Jodi said. ‘In the Fellows’ Garden. Martha.’

‘Oh my God.’ Finally, I grasped it. ‘And you were with her.’

‘No! I mean, yes, but before. I left. I left, didn’t I, Cal? I swear it. You saw me, after.’

Jodi said: ‘I was with Cal. But I didn’t see you, Mike.’

Callum cleared his throat. ‘You see the problem, Al. Mikey-boy was seen talking to her and if she’s been . . . hurt . . .’

‘And I was looking for you,’ said Mike. ‘I looked all over. Cal said you were with Bill.’

Bill. Where was Bill? I looked in the crowd but couldn’t see him. Karen was there, staring into the lodge, her face strained and terrified. ‘I was, yes,’ I said, not bothering to apologise. Another new thing. I still wasn’t quite taking it in, the connection between the boys’ pale faces and the ambulance and Martha. I’d seen her only hours before, beautiful and laughing.

Again, Jodi. Dry and practical. ‘You need to say you were with Mike,’ she said. ‘All night.’

‘Why?’ I was bewildered.

Jodi looked at me like I was stupid. ‘Because, this is everything, Ali. This is the future. Don’t you get that? It’s our lives.’

‘But . . . I was with Bill. Everyone saw us come back.’

Mike spoke urgently. ‘Say you were here until an hour back. That’s when . . . someone first called the police then. Say I was with you and then you and Bill just went for a walk. OK?’

‘But . . . I don’t understand. Couldn’t someone else say you were with them? Where were you?’

Mike hesitated, just a second. ‘Looking for you, like I said. Moving all round the place. You see the problem.’ You see the problem. That seemed to be a phrase they had agreed on, he and Callum. My head spun slowly, taking in the way the balance had shifted beneath my feet. And where was Bill?

‘But . . . she can’t really be hurt, can she?’ Stupid, but when these things happen our brain wants to reject it and does its best to.