It was at this point that other people began to join the conversation. Someone told a story about her aunt being mugged not five minutes after she got off the train at Penn Station. One of the boys claimed to know the statistics of violent deaths in the City for the last five years. One of the girls told a story about her friend’s friend who was abducted off the street in New York in broad daylight, in front of dozens of people, and no one tried to help her. Someone else said he’d seen a documentary about gangs that made him turn down free tickets to Madison Square Garden.

“Well, my parents took me to New York for my birthday last year,” said Ella, “and I thought it was beautiful.” She smiled. It wasn’t a big smile, but it was a sincere one. Which made a nice change. “You know,” she continued, “the lights at night and everything? I felt like I was visiting Oz.”

That was when I knew that despite her straight and rather uninspired appearance, inside Ella Gerard was a free spirit waiting – no, begging – to be released. I recognized her as the sister of my soul, who, unlike Pam and Paula, the sisters of my flesh, had everything important in common with me.

“You should see it at Christmas,” I said. “Fifth Avenue at Christmas is better than Oz. It’s like walking through the Milky Way.”

Carla Santini’s laugh this time was less like an alarm and more like a flak attack.

“Except that nobody’s going to rape or murder you in the Milky Way,” said Carla.

The cackling only stopped because Mr Finbar, our homeroom teacher, stumbled in just then and told us all to shut up.

Ella is shy and she’s quiet, but she’s kind and has a good sense of humour. We were in all the same classes except maths (Ella was in the advanced maths class, but the creative mind can have a difficult time with mathematics, so I wasn’t), and when she discovered that we had almost identical schedules, she dedicated herself to showing me around. I knew that, subconsciously, Ella wanted to be friends because she was attracted to my style and originality, but I acted like she was the one who was doing me the favour.