These jokes weren’t something they saved for just themselves, I would soon learn. They were regularly rolled out over the next two years at college, and the girls would all laugh along—sometimes even coming up with “better ones” of their own. The boys loved it when we joined in. You could joke about rape in a place as safe as Surrey. Nothing like that happened around here. Eventually, I took the water in to Georgina, and Jessica and I held her up so she could drink it properly. She begged us to get everyone to leave, weeping into her knees, using her skirt as a tissue. We turned off the music, and, with quite a lot of protest, eventually managed to get everyone out. I saw Dave high-five a friend as they walked up Georgina’s drive. Mike stayed a bit, loitering around Jessica, as Jade, Sally, and I tried to tidy up the worst of the mess. There was a significant burn in the carpet. A broken chair. A smell that her parents would definitely still notice when they returned home to their husk of a much-loved daughter. From what I could tell, all the mess had been caused by the boys, almost like they’d reveled in creating it. Jade watched Mike and Jessica closely, and I watched her watch him.

“Do you think Dave and Georgina will become a couple after tonight?” Sally asked us, as we chucked away plastic cups with cigarettes floating at the bottom.

“I’m not sure,” Mike said. “Dave’s quite a sensitive guy. And Georgina... I dunno, with her fairy wings and stuff? She might be a bit much for him.”

I checked on her one more time before we left. She was curled up, fetal, on her sister’s bed, her beloved wings crushed under her. I put a bucket and a glass of water next to the bed, and a note with my phone number, telling her to ring me when she wanted me around the next morning to help clean up properly.

But Georgina never called.

In fact, Georgina never hung out with us ever again.

After that night she found a group of Christian students and sat with them in the cafeteria. She started carrying a Bible with her everywhere, under her arm, like a designer bag. She wore aggressively unsexy clothes—a giant rainbow hoodie with pompoms hanging off the sleeves, teamed with baggy jeans covered in pink glitter pen initials of WWJD? Weight started clinging to her hips and thighs as she stuffed plates of chips down herself each lunchtime, straining the fabric. She hardly acknowledged me when I said “hi” in the corridor.

It became a joke. Georgina joining God Squad. Dave was teased for ever having got with her. What happens in Bible Camp stays in Bible Camp... Did she whisper the Lord’s Prayer as you fingered her?