The first time I lied to the police, I was twenty-one. It was two days after the ball, and I still hadn’t been able to take in Martha’s death. We hadn’t been friends, but she was so alive, so young, and then gone. I think we all struggled, especially as everyone was due to go home over the next few days. There was a lot of crying and hugging in the lodge while confused parents stood by with overpacked cars. Mine had heard about it on the news, and my mother had called to say they were coming to get me the next day. No mention of my father’s threats to kick me out, or that he’d slapped me, as was so often the way. Brushed under the carpet.

I wasn’t even sure the police would interview me. They had a lot to get through, and I think we all had a certain awareness that once we were home for the summer, in our semis in Wales or mansions in Surrey, they wouldn’t be coming after us. Martha had been killed by a stranger, of course. The security had been lacking. Someone must have got in. There was no CCTV in the garden and it would have been possible to climb over the back wall. The ball was so busy, no one would have noticed. None of us mentioned the fact that a stranger not in black tie might have stood out somewhat. So when it was my turn to present myself at the tutor’s office, I didn’t even think twice. I didn’t see it as lying, just as helping out friends. Helping out Mike. And Jodi was doing it for Callum, saying he’d been with her all night, so it couldn’t be that bad. All the same I was sweating as I waited outside, in a strange repetition of admissions interviews. In jeans and a She-Ra T-shirt, I looked very different from the night before. I was just Ali again, and all my problems and longings were there waiting for me like the socks I’d rolled on that morning.

Bill came out as I waited there. We hadn’t really spoken since the morning after the ball. ‘Hey.’

He just nodded. ‘They’re asking about Mike and Cal.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Are you going to do it?’ He looked me in the eyes. ‘What he asked?’

I didn’t like the idea that there was an ‘it’ I was going to do. ‘I mean – I’ll just say we were hanging out, I guess.’ I’d already spoken to Karen, telling her what I was going to say so she didn’t contradict it. So we’re on the same page, I’d said. Mike’s words. She hadn’t protested. I didn’t know where she’d been most of the night either.