That had been tempered a little since by the reality of doing it, the fear of getting caught, but he still couldn’t wait to deal this final blow. People like Kat deserved everything they got – that’s what TrumourPixel said.

‘Not long,’ said Luke, clicking to edit the home page. ‘Let’s give our snowflake something worth crying about.’

Kat Waldgrave was only at school because of the email she’d received complaining that she rarely went to school. It was an injustice, as far as she was concerned, that a mandatory attendance meeting should be allowed to upset her regular schedule of pretending to revise while actually watching Tinker videos and Doctor Backwash bloopers on YouTube. As if she hadn’t seen them all a million times before.

She tabbed to one of her favourites, putting in her earphones and angling the screen away from the window glare. Tinker showing off her new hairstyle, a neat bob dyed electric pink, dusky eye shadow applied to match. God damn, she was beautiful. Kat fiddled with the pink extension she had added to her own hair yesterday. It was supposed to be a tribute to Tinker, borrowing a little of her boldness, but now it just felt pathetic.

The meeting had not gone well. Despite her being head of sixth form, Miss Jalloh’s office was the size of a bus shelter, and smelled even worse. Kat would gladly have not attended her attendance meeting, except the email had threatened to get in touch with her dad. A phone call from school would certainly contravene their unspoken accord to keep their lives as separate as possible.

‘Your attendance is nowhere near acceptable,’ had been Miss Jalloh’s opening line, peering over her half-moon glasses.

The word attendance had begun to lose all meaning. ‘I still did fine in my exams,’ Kat pointed out. It was true too – nothing below a B grade in her mocks.

‘That’s hardly the point!’ The bangles on Miss Jalloh’s wrists rattled as she slapped her hands on the desk, living up to her reputation for being expressive. ‘Everybody knows you’re a bright girl.’

That was funny; as far as Kat could tell everybody hardly knew she existed.

Tinker had started out recording make-up tutorials – perfectly shaped eyebrows were her trademark – before moving on to discuss topics such as sexuality and feminism. She identified as pansexual, and was so open about everything it meant for her, posting regular videos on the impact it had on her dating and sex life. These were all mysteries to Kat, abstract ideas, and it was easy enough to pretend Tinker’s life was her own. Pretend these regular updates fleshed her out with experience. In between those personal videos she still posted about make-up, Doctor Backwash, books . . . a video almost every day made it feel like having a one-way conversation with a best friend. The friend Kat had always wanted, had always missed despite never having nor losing them.

‘If anything is going on to keep you away from school, I want to know about it,’ Miss Jalloh had said.

Kat had kept her gaze on the dusty desk surface, wondering if there was any way the teacher would understand: the threatening emails, attacks on social media, blurry photos of her sitting alone in the canteen or going into the toilets at break, even walking up the path to her house, always taken around corners or zoomed in from a distance. It was all part of a world the teachers couldn’t comprehend. Reporting it would be futile, and only risked making it worse.

Instead, she’d set about deleting her online presence. If she wasn’t there, they couldn’t attack her.

She reached out to type a comment on the video, before remembering that she had deleted her profile a week ago. It shouldn’t have made her feel so disconnected – it’s not like Tinker had ever replied.

‘It’s nothing,’ Kat had said, finally lifting her head. She had left the teacher’s office having barely heard the threats of phone calls home or possible suspension. It would never come to that.

It was pretty obvious who was responsible for this campaign against her. Luke and Justin sat across the room from her now.