Harry held Ruby like he didn’t want to ever let go. Fierce and protective. That was how she felt, too. They were both crammed into the downstairs loo, the only place they felt safe enough to meet. They couldn’t go out because Ruby was grounded, and didn’t dare go anywhere else in the house, in case they were discovered. At least in here there was a lock, and if her parents came home Harry could scramble through the window, and make a run for it with a good chance of not being spotted.

Mouse was squirrelled away in some hidey-hole or other, presumably reading. She and Ruby had not spoken since the morning.

‘I’ll never, ever forgive the squirt for bursting in and screaming the place down. She should have knocked. She should have waited. She should have quietly asked me what you were doing there, rather than totally overreacting,’ Ruby fumed.

Harry nodded, then jerked is chin towards a carrier bag Ruby had chucked on the floor. ‘What’s in there?’

‘Oh, it’s a Christmas present for your mum. You know you mentioned the other day that she struggles with buttons so I’ve got her some nice tops, and a lovely pair of trousers from a posh shop – it’s got an elasticated waist but you’d never know to look. They’re smart.’

‘Rubes, you’re the best.’

‘Nah. It’s not like it’s my money I’m spending.’ But she felt her cheeks warming at the compliment. ‘Think your mum will like them?’

‘For sure. Hey, I can’t believe your parents want to call the pigs on me over some trumped-up rubbish.’

Harry put the lid of the loo down and sank onto it. Patted his knee and Ruby sat on it so they could carry on cuddling.

‘Why can’t they just fuck off and die?’ she huffed, anger igniting again.

‘If we can’t be together, I might as well be dead.’

She looked at him. Those big brown eyes of his, full of fire and love. ‘That’s how I feel, too.’

Without him all she had was pain. The constant insults were so deep-rooted in her now that they had tangled around her soul, choking off all the light, and stopping anything else from thriving within her.

The teenagers’ fingers twined, no words needed. Ruby couldn’t believe her parents thought she and Harry needed something so prosaic as sex, when they had this between them. Their love had been forged in a crucible of despair which made it unbreakable.

‘I can’t live without you,’ she repeated. ‘If my parents keep us apart, I’m going to kill myself.’

‘You’re the one good thing in my life, Rubes. Let’s face it, my home life is shit – and school’s worse. Don’t leave me.’

‘Maybe we should just kill everyone else instead. Blow up everyone who has ever crossed us, then we’d be free.’ She started flippantly, but even before she reached the end of the sentence, the idea took hold. The same pain that had fed the darkness inside her now allowed this idea to take root and grow.

‘Like Columbine? Great idea, except school is closed, I’ve no idea how to make a bomb, and it wouldn’t get rid of your parents.’

‘My dad’s got a shotgun.’ The words were out before the thought. ‘We could shoot everyone and then run away, be free. Me and you and no one to interfere.’

‘And if we got caught we could kill ourselves anyway.’

There was electricity in the air. Ruby’s heart was beating fast, and she had never felt so alive. She should have been appalled by this talk; she knew that, somewhere in the back of her mind. But she wasn’t. She was excited. The only other thing that made her feel like this usually was Harry – and the fact she felt so good as they talked now was confirmation for her that it must be right.

Harry seemed to feel it too. His eyes were fever bright, burning into hers. His pupils were huge, as if he had taken drugs.

His reaction fed her own fervour. Talking like this gave her an adrenaline rush even bigger than punching Jayne, or goading the police, or kissing Harry, all put together. It was wrong, horrifying – and that was the fun.

‘We’d never get away with it. We’d last five seconds on the run with the police after us,’ he said finally. ‘Unless we planned things real careful, like. We’d need to fool the pigs into thinking it was nothing to do with us.’

‘They’d need to think it’s a break-in gone wrong or something.’

‘Yeah, so, like, maybe I should bring knives with me, rather than using ones in the house. Like, I could nick some from home. Knives are better than guns because then no one would hear it.’

Good plan. And it was a plan, Ruby realised – both of them had slipped from saying what would happen were they to do it, to what they were going to do.

‘How will we know when they’re dead?’ Ruby breathed.

‘Well, it’ll be bloody obvious from the blood – it’ll be everywhere,’ he laughed, then turned serious. ‘But I know first aid, so I can check their pulses.’

‘Just imagine thinking you’ve murdered everyone and then realising they’re still alive,’ she mock-shuddered. ‘They could shout out for help.’

‘I’ll stab them in the throat first. Stop them from shouting out for anything ever again.’

There was such determination in his voice that Ruby shuddered again, for real.

‘We could drug your dad,’ he added. ‘He’s the only one who could really fight back and stand a chance of stopping us. Drug his food and he’d be taken out instantly. We can still slit his throat, even though he’s out of it.’

‘Yeah. I could slip something into his precious whisky. You could get like a roofie or something, couldn’t you?’

Harry shrugged.

Ruby had never been the bad girl; she had spent her life trying to fit in around others. Only in the last few months had she given up – and discovered that being bad felt good. This was a great idea. Even if they did end up with the police after them, they could always go back to Plan A and kill themselves. At least they would first have dished out some punishment to those who had let them down.