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group earlier. I flipped open my course book, and looked at a practice exam question.
A runaway train is heading towards a fork in the railway tracks. The tracks are set so that the train will veer left and kill five people stuck on the tracks. You have access to a switch that will cause the train to veer right, killing only one person stuck on that side of the tracks. Do you hit the switch?
    Explain what deontologists and utilitarians would decide, based on their methods of thinking.
    I stared at it for a long time…
    I knew I didn’t have to decide what I would do, that wasn’t the homework. I knew what to write to pass the exam (well, to do more than pass, to get an A). Deontologists wouldn’t hit the switch. They would call it murder; they would say you could never justify letting one person die, even if it saved the lives of five others. Whereas utilitarians would hit the switch in a second – one person dead is a lot better than five people dead. If the overall outcome was better, what’s a few moral sacrifices along the way?
    What would hitting the switch mean in my life? I started to think.
    Like Dad said, getting into Cambridge meant I was statistically more likely to become prime minister, or even just an MP. In theory, I could use Cambridge to become someone who has the power to change things. Make things better in the long run. Is that worth giving up FemSoc for? Flick the switch? Let the train career into people like Megan while I wait to help more people further down the line?
    I stood and made my way over to my window ledge, hurling myself up onto it and against the glass – watching the sleepy street under me. After a while Mum came home and barged in, all high from her chanting, to tell me she loved me. Dad got in a little later, knocked gently on my door and sat on my bed briefly.
    â€œSorry, Lottie. You know I don’t like to fight with you. It’s just you only get one future. And I only push because I care about you.” I gave him a half-smile from my ledge. “I trust you’ll make the right decision,” he said, with meaning. Undoing all his apology. But it was too late to get mad, so I smiled again until he left me and went to bed.
    My stomach hurt, my head throbbed. I knew then, looking out at the orangey glow of my little road, that I was on the cusp of a choice. One of those big choices. One of those choices that makes you.
    Maybe most people get to delay a decision like this. But those men today, Megan today, everything today, had made me realize that, for me, I was out of time.
    What sort of person do you want to be, Lottie?
    What sort of compromises are you willing to make, Lottie?
    Are you going to hit the switch, Lottie? Are you going to wait to change things, and accept a few casualties in the meantime? Or are you going to start changing things now ?
    I was exhausted from being angry. I was angry about being exhausted.
    That exhaustion – it had stopped me talking back to those men.
    It had stopped me calling Mike out for stealing my point.
    And, directly or indirectly, I just knew – somewhere deep inside of me – that those moments, those glimmers of time when you’re supposed to shout about something you see that’s wrong but you don’t… They somehow lead to something like what happened to Megan.
    I knew then what I had to do.
    The decision ballooned inside me, trickling through my guts. The energy of clarity cascaded through my limbs, filling me up till I felt golden and light.
    I got down from the windowsill.
    With a decision.
    With a plan.
    I wasn’t the sort of person who would flick the switch.

seven
    I dressed carefully the next day.
    A tiny pair of shorts that had shrunk in the wash, worn over fishnets from a fancy dress party. A cropped jumper I rolled up even higher. My kick-ass knee-high heeled boots that I usually only wore to parties. No coat. Even though it was freezing. I backcombed my dark hair