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hurry it up.’
    ‘But it might not.’
    Jo moved a little away from her and stared out at the wider world as if she were listening to something, and when she turned back Ali thought some mystery had come into her eyes. ‘There
used to be times when there weren’t enough men or women to go round,’ Jo said, ‘usually men because they caught the rough end of the world. Then if you were stuck, like most
people were back then, and you couldn’t get away, you just had to put up with it, but even then the good ones found their match. I don’t mean people like the Six, I mean the really good
ones – people like you, the sort of people someone would want to spend their life with. The right person comes along. And it’s so different now. You meet so many people these days, so
very many people. Nobody stays in one place any more but that helps, you see? Just breathe deeply and be patient. Your time will come.’
    Ali stared at her. ‘You haven’t been taking your pills, have you?’
    ‘Not for three days,’ said Jo. ‘Mum forgot again. She’s picking them up today.’
    ‘Don’t you feel the difference it makes?’
    Jo shrugged. ‘Yes, but then I forget.’
    But for Fleur’s approach to life, the friendship of the three girls might not have survived the amount of time Jo spent shut down in her chemically-dulled world. Fleur always put Jo second
to her business activity and that meant there were regular periods when they ran out of pills. For three or four days, every now and then, Jo would emerge from that chrysalis and remind her friends
why they stuck with her.
    The other two, Lucy in her studied flightiness and Ali in her stolid determination, were on a mission to save Jo from malign adult forces.
    One day in early May 2010, with the start of their GCSE exams only two weeks away, Ali summoned the other two to join her in a cafe on the way home from school.
    ‘My mother’s got this idea,’ she said, and Lucy groaned.
    ‘The answer’s no,’ she said. ‘Now what’s the idea? Somehow I already know it’s not going to be fun.’
    ‘No, it will be. Listen.’
    ‘Does it involve digging?’
    ‘That’s not the point. It—’
    ‘It’s digging. Count me out.’ Lucy got to her feet and reached for her bag.
    ‘Give her a chance,’ said Jo. She was dull that day.
    ‘Why? I know all I need to know.’
    ‘There are boys,’ Ali said quietly, and Lucy sat down.
    Lucy was currently playing the role of tragically spurned lover. She had spent the past three months entwined around sharp-tongued Matt, tall, slim and nearly twenty – Matt, with his own
band which played evening gigs in some of the town’s bars and cafes. Matt’s drummer, Whizz, liked Jo in a hopeless and unrequited fashion but Ali knew none of them were interested in
her.
    The group had been broken up by Matt’s sudden switch of affection to a nineteen-year-old music student.
    ‘It’s such a
tragedy
,’ Lucy had said. ‘Horrible Harriet’s
stolen
him and it’s not just
my
pain, it’s yours too.’
    ‘Don’t worry about me,’ Ali said immediately.
    ‘I didn’t really mean you, I meant poor Jo.’
    ‘I’ll probably survive,’ said Jo.
    Lucy was getting tired of the tragic role. ‘What boys?’ she asked.
    ‘Twelve students from Bristol University.’
    ‘Twelve students? They could be girls.’
    Ali shook her head. ‘By the law of averages half of them will be boys. That’s two each.’
    ‘No it’s not. It’s one each for you two and four for me.’
    ‘One?’ said Ali, ‘Only one?’ but the fact was she would have given anything for one.
    ‘You can have mine,’ Jo offered. She knew Lucy would be able to take her pick. Lucy had been surrounded by boys since they had first met. Jo had no obvious beauty yet, just a
pleasing curve of cheek and chin framed by dark brown hair, but her smile turned heads and that smile, once so rare, was seen more often these days. The boys who were drawn to it got no more than