I love it.

I’m never going to take it off.

Something like static seemed to hiss and spit inside my brain, scattering my thoughts.

I folded my hand around the dolphin and squeezed my eyes shut. There was too much noise, so much noise. I slammed the lid of the box. The music stopped but the buzzing inside my head carried on. Blood was rushing in my ears. I felt impossibly hot, like I was burning with fever. I went and stood by the window. I put my head to the cool glass, then the flats of my palms. Then I stood there, thinking, over-thinking, not thinking at all.

The minutes clicked past midnight. Distant fireworks lit up the sky, momentarily illuminating the outline of the stone steps and the dark garden, the black water of the swimming pool, the dark shadow of the pool house, the long sloping lawns and the flowerless winter beds, the leafless webs of oak and laburnum, and, all around the perimeter, the towering wall of rhododendrons.

I stood there for a long time. The last fireworks faded into the night. I left Laika’s room, snapped off the light, and shut the door behind me. Then, before my parents came back, I hid the dolphin and its broken chain deep within my school bag.

***

The morning I was due to return to school I was packed up and ready to go straight after breakfast. I found my mother sitting in the kitchen. I sat next to her. I placed the tiny leaping dolphin on the table between us.

My mother’s hand flew to her mouth. “Where did you find it?” Her voice was breathy and came out in a rush.

“In her bedroom.” I pushed the chain around so she could see the break. My voice was low, urgent. “Tell me about that morning, Mum. What happened after I went to school?”

She glanced once in the direction of my father’s study, then back at me.

“You left. I nipped next door to give the new neighbors some flowers. I was only quick. I wanted to give her a lift to school so she wouldn’t be late. When I came back, she was gone. Your father told me she’d left for school.”

“You left them on their own?”

“No, the builders were here, pouring the concrete floor.”

I felt a prickling heat rising fast up my neck. I looked toward the conservatory. I said, “Oh my God.”

Something was building in my chest—something that would burst out of me, urgent, savage, uncontrolled. I opened my mouth. “Mum—” I stopped. From the hallway we heard my father’s study door opening, his footsteps in the hall; both of us glanced toward the kitchen door. As my mother’s hands reached for mine the edges of her silk blouse pulled back, exposing the white skin of her wrists. Automatically I checked them for marks. Then I gave her fingers a quick squeeze and before my father arrived in the kitchen I swept the silver dolphin off the table and folded it into my palm.

8 The Fermi Paradox Willa

The January term started with a blizzard. The school cranked up its ancient heating system and the radiators threw off so much heat you could almost see it blistering the air. One minute we were frozen, the next we were dripping with sweat.

At night our room was so stuffy we could barely breathe. We threw off the duvets first, then our pajamas. In the middle of the night I watched Robyn as she stood naked, tugging at the metal hooks of the ancient sash window. She rammed it up a few inches and a cool river of chilled air flooded in, fresh and bright and clean.

“Better?” she said, looking round. I nodded. “I’ll leave the curtains open.” The moon touched her hips, her small breasts, the dark tuft between her legs.

“You’re so beautiful,” I said. The words were out of my mouth before I realized I’d said them aloud.

“I’m not.”

“You are,” I said.

“I have a runner’s body. I could do with a few more curves.”

“Wish I had a runner’s body.”

She climbed back into bed, and I shifted over to make space.

“Thank you,” I said.

“For what?” She turned on her side to face me. I knelt on my elbow and moved a lock of hair from where it fell across her eyes.

“For everything,” I said. “For being you.”

Her eyes moved between mine, her face an open question. The cool air pooled between us and my skin brightened, prickling into goosebumps. Her eyes were clear and dark in the silver-gray light.

With a finger I drew a line down her breastbone and across the small curve of her belly. I watched her little nipples harden. I put my head next to hers on the pillow, my hand on her hip. The air was full of unanswered questions.

“And now it’s cold,” I said.

“Come here.” She put a hand on my neck and her fingers found their way to the dent at the base of my skull. A slight pressure in the weight of her hand, an invitation or not. My choice. I moved my hips toward hers. Our eyes held, our faces almost touching.

It was me who closed the space, me who put my lips on hers, and her lips that softened, then opened, the tip of her tongue finding mine. All of me shuddered.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Words whispered in the dark. I put my hand to her breast, felt the perfect shape of it, so light and warm and round. Beneath my palm I could feel the nub of her nipple, a little nipple, so much smaller than mine, something amazing.

She moved her hand on to the small of my back, her hand warm, stroking, her fingers making light circles on my skin. For ages she drew circles on my skin, I on hers. Then it was me who rolled on to my back, my legs that opened, and her fingers that moved downward, opening me, exploring.

Words breathed rather than spoken, like cirrus clouds, tiny puffs of air.

There

Don’t stop

You

Then an opening of warm, infinite spaces inside me. Soft-edged shapes that bloomed in my mind like giant peonies, undulating, moving, each one blossoming from the center of the one that came before, on and on, then everything opening, rising, filling, emptying, and flooding, until I arched my back and gripped her wrist Stop.

My breath, holding, then releasing, then holding.

My eyes shut.

And then opening again, and there was Robyn, still there, still real, still looking at me with such tenderness and wonder that I wanted to cry. My beautiful friend Robyn. My good friend Robyn.

Robyn, who could make everything okay.

I think, perhaps, I slept more deeply than I ever had before that night, my arms around her, my head buried in her neck. Robyn must have too, because with a jolt I realized I could hear the morning wake-up call. That meant our housemistress, Mrs. Turner, was at that very moment walking along the corridor, knocking briefly on doors before swiftly opening them, delivering a cheery greeting into each of the rooms, Good morning, good morning. We were naked. We were both in the same bed and we’d both overslept.

Robyn heard it too. She hesitated for one brief second before leaping out of the covers. She threw a duvet over me while scrambling for her abandoned pajamas. Moments later our door opened.

“Morning, girls. How was your night?”