“I mean, this is great, but it’s not real. Obviously I’m not an actual lesbian. It’s really nice, though, as an experiment. But I wouldn’t say I’m gay.”

Another beat. By the time she turned round, her hands were folded in a tight x over her breasts and her eyes were as bright as a morning sea.

“God, no,” she said, “me neither.”

***

Sometimes I remember it like this:

Me: I don’t think I’m actually gay.

Robyn [turning instantly, laughing]: Hell, no, me neither.

***

And other times, in the middle of long nights lying next to Jamie, after Robyn met Cat, after they moved in together, after they bought a house, after they had kids, this:

Me: I don’t think I ever want this to end.

Robyn [turning, smiling]: Neither me.

***

She didn’t argue or cry or try to make me change my mind. She was a bit quiet, perhaps, I thought. She didn’t come to my bed again, but our final exams were coming up and it was ridiculously hot for May and she said she needed her sleep. And that was the sensible thing, I told myself. There was time to repair things. I could make it up.

***

The first of our final exams was the Shakespeare paper for English, so Robyn and I would be sitting it together. That morning both of us were on edge, a little excited, a little scared. I thought So much rides on these next three hours.

I sat at my desk doing some last-minute revision but I couldn’t really concentrate. I kept looking at my watch. In thirty minutes we’d be going to the examination hall, twenty, fifteen, ten. I was so nervous I couldn’t keep still.

With five minutes to go I leaped up. “I really need the loo.”

Robyn laughed. “Go on,” she said. “I’ll wait here. Be quick.”

Every bathroom on our corridor was occupied. Knowing the next closest one was on the ground floor, I dashed down the stairs, two steps at a time, and ran through the empty day room, glancing at the TV as I ran past, which as ever was switched on, its volume turned right down. I stopped short. On the screen was a photograph of Laika. A breaking-news message on the news ticker ran continually across the top of the screen. I read: human remains fo…Something pounded through my chest. The image changed to a warehouse. Police cars and an ambulance out front, a tent. martenwood ware…Grim-faced men in white boiler suits. Another vehicle, this one moving at speed past banks of reporters, flashing cameras pressed up against the windows of the car. My eyes went again to the moving message on the top of the screen. I read father of missing…then back to the image—fuzzy dots started blurring and colliding. I read arrest.

I felt as if my heart had stopped. And Mum, I thought, Mum—where’s Mum? I scrambled for the volume, and accidentally hit the on/off button instead. The screen went blank.

A voice behind me said, “Willa?” I spun round to see my house-mistress smiling at me. “Chop, chop,” she said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “It’s a bit late for nerves.” She almost pushed me into the pack of girls flooding along the corridor and into the exam hall. Stupid, dazed, barely thinking, I sat at my desk, head in my hands, my head full of noise. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t think at all. I turned in my seat, craning to see Robyn. I needed Robyn. Robyn, the only person in the world I could talk to, who could help. But she wasn’t anywhere—her seat was empty. It was only as the exam was about to start that she flew into the back of the hall. She caught my eye, her face flushed red. Shaking her head, she mouthed, Where were you?

Moments later, the exam began. Mindlessly, unthinkingly, automatically, I opened my paper and read: The death of Lear’s youngest daughter is the shocking climax of cruelty in Shakespeare’s exploration of evil. Discuss.

I didn’t write a thing.

***

“What happened?”

What happened? Laika is dead.

I opened my eyes. I was sitting on my bed with my shoulders and head against the wall, stupefied and numb. Robyn was standing in the doorway of our bedroom. She looked furious.

“What?”

“Where were you? We were going together. To the exam, remember? I waited for you. You said you were coming back.”

“Sorry. Robyn—”

“If I’d been another thirty seconds they wouldn’t even have let me in. I could have failed the entire bloody exam because of you.”

“Robyn—I can’t do this right now.”

“It’s always about you, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“I mean, we’ve been together for nearly eighteen months and then you just go and dump me like—”

“I didn’t dump you.”

“You said this—us—wasn’t even real. Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve felt—I mean everything—you called it an experiment.”

“My sister—”

“Just for once this isn’t about your sister,” she said. “It’s about us.”

“Keep your voice down. People might hear.”

“People might hear what? That there’s an us? So, what, it’s fine for us to have sex so long as nobody knows?”

“That’s not what I—”

“Let’s find out, shall we?” She stuck her head out of the door and shouted, “HEY, EVERYBODY! WILLA AND I HAVE SEX.”

Straight off a voice shouted back, “WE KNOW,” followed by peals of laughter.

I jumped up and slammed our door. “What the fuck.”

She glared at me, almost smiling, her face flushed with heat. Then a cloud passed over her eyes, a gradual understanding. Her mouth changed shape. She shook her head. Quietly she said, “You’re embarrassed, aren’t you? I embarrass you. This embarrasses you.”

She gave me a chance to say something. Every chance. My mind just wouldn’t operate. Couldn’t. There was just too much going on in my brain. Too much chaos. Too much disaster. She waited as the silence swelled between us. And I just kept looking at her.

She walked to her desk and picked up a thick ring binder, the words human biology surrounded by hearts drawn in fluorescent pink marker. She said, “I’m going to revise in the library. Perhaps while I’m out you should ask to swap rooms.”

And then she left.

I pulled my purse out of my locker and picked up my school bag. Then I walked down the corridor, keeping my face fixed dead ahead so I didn’t meet anyone’s eye. I ran down the stairs and out into the midday sun. Then I walked, fast, but not so fast that I might attract attention, down the wide tarmac drive until I’d passed the school gates. I kept going until I found a phone box. Then I called a taxi and when it picked me up I asked the driver to take me to the station. From there I took a train to London, then the tube and then another train from Victoria. My mother met me at Lewes wearing dark glasses and a headscarf, plus a Burberry trench coat which, despite the warm evening, was buttoned up to the neck. I could stay one night, she said, and then she would drive me straight back to school. I said, “Absolutely not.”