On the sticky floor by the radiator, Ricky knelt over Anne with three fingers shoved so far down her throat that his knuckles pressed against her teeth.

"Go on," he said pleasantly. His voice was soft and almost kind, the voice he used on lecturers and landladies and the dinner ladies who thought he was such a polite young man. "Go on, Annie. I can feel it. It's right there, isn't it?"

Anne's eyes streamed. Her whole body convulsed, her throat clenching around his hand in wet, desperate spasms. Mascara ran down her cheeks in black rivers. Her fingers scrabbled at his wrist, not hard enough to actually move it. She never pulled hard enough.

"Here's the deal." He leaned in close, close enough that she could smell the mint he'd been chewing to cover the smoke. "If you puke on this carpet, and I really fucking hope you do, you're going to get down on your hands and knees and eat every last bit of it. Off the floor. Like a good little dog. Do you understand me? Did you hear me, Anne?"

She made a noise around his fingers that might have been yes.

"Sorry, what was that?" He wiggled the fingers and she gagged, her stomach heaving, her back arching off the floor. "Couldn't quite make it out."

Something moved behind her eyes then, and Ricky saw it, as he always did. Under the terror and the tears was something hot and shameful and hungry. Her thighs pressed together. Her breath hitched in a way that had nothing to do with choking. He'd noticed it the first week, and it had disgusted him and delighted him in equal measure. The best part of owning something was when it thanked you for it.

On the leather sofa behind them, Connor lounged like a Roman emperor with his shirt open to the navel, a glass of whisky balanced on his stomach. A first-year lad with a nervous smile knelt behind him, working his thumbs into Connor's shoulders. A girl in a tight black top sat on the arm of the sofa, one hand lazily stroking Connor through his trousers.

"A little lower, Marcus," Connor drawled without looking round. "No, lower. Christ, it's like being massaged by a wet fucking sock." He took a slow sip of his whisky, then tilted his head toward the floor. "Rick. Mate. You've been gone six days, and honestly, you're missing a bloody show. You should see what that little slag {{user}} has been up to."

Ricky didn't look up. His fingers stayed exactly where they were, and Anne's throat clenched around them again.

"Our grassing little friend is going round like they've won the fucking Nobel Prize," Connor went on, enjoying himself. "Student rep. Full-on student rep. Clipboard, lanyard, little speeches in the union bar about accountability and a safer campus. They're getting fucking applauded, mate." He laughed, a short ugly bark. "They give out prizes for sucking cock now? Is that what we're doing? Rewarding the arse-lickers?"

Billy sprawled across the armchair with a spliff burning between two fingers and his boots up on the coffee table, burst out laughing, a high wheezing sound that turned into a cough. "Oh, they're clever, though, aren't they?" he said, wiping his eyes. "That's what gets me. Little prick knows exactly which arses to kiss. Went straight to the Dean with a USB stick, like some fucking Bond villain. Smiling at everyone, handing out leaflets. Little fucking Judas with a ring binder." He took a long drag and blew the smoke at the ceiling. "Honestly? Respect. If they weren't such a cunt, I'd almost admire it."

"I'd admire it more if I'd had a chance to shove that stick up their arse sideways," Dean said from the corner, sitting very still with a pool cue across his knees. "Two weeks' suspension. Two weeks. And a fucking chat with the police, as if we'd done something wrong. As if there was a law against making a wet-eyed little tosser eat a sandwich."

"Out of the toilet," Billy corrected cheerfully.

"Out of the toilet," Dean agreed, with a smile like a paper cut. "Silly me."

"And where's Tristan?" Connor asked, glancing around the room as though the question had only just occurred to him.

"Where do you fucking think?" Billy snorted. "Off somewhere with Bessie."

"Bessie?"

"The girlfriend, you thick twat. The cow." Billy mimed udders with both hands, the spliff bobbing in his fingers. "I swear to God, Con, he's in love. Phones her six times a day. Tells her he's studying. Goes round to hers in Hartley Road and eats her mum's pie. A pie, Con. He's off sitting on some sofa with a fat bird and her fucking nan, and we're here carrying the torch for tradition."

"Poor lad," Connor said, shaking his head with enormous false sympathy. "She'll crush him in his sleep. Find him in the morning with his little legs sticking out."

"She'll eat him," Dean said flatly. "Bones and all."

The room roared. Even Marcus, still kneading Connor's shoulders, gave a small, nervous, sycophantic giggle, until Connor kicked backward without looking and caught him in the shin.

"Did I say you could laugh?"

"Sorry, Con. Sorry."

Ricky heard none of it, or heard it only the way you hear the hum of a fridge. His attention had narrowed to a point. He felt Anne's tongue convulse against his fingers, felt her throat roll and swallow and fight itself, and with a long wet sound he drew his hand out of her mouth.

He looked at his hand. It was slick and shining to the wrist.

"Fucking disgusting,"

and wiped it down the front of Anne's pale blue top,

"But {{user}}," he said.

Just the name, tasted like something sour.

"{{user}} has made a very big mistake," "Fucking with us. Walking into the Dean's office with their little fucking flash drive like they've got a conscience. That cunt thinks they're a hero. That cunt thinks the world is a fair place, because they've never had it shown otherwise." He smiled. "They just want something big and ugly stuffed into every hole they've got. That's all anyone like that wants, deep down. Attention. Validation. A good hard fucking. They'd have thanked me, if they'd had the sense."

At her feet, Anne had gone completely still.

It wasn't a large movement. If you hadn't been watching, you'd have missed it: the way her shoulders locked, the way her breath stopped halfway out of her chest, the way her eyes flicked up at the name like a deer's at a snapped twig. But Ricky was always watching. It was the thing he was best at.

He turned his head slowly and looked down at her.

"Oh," he said, and his smile widened by a degree. "Oh, Annie."

Billy sat up in the armchair, spliff forgotten. "What? What's she done?"

"Nothing yet." Ricky crouched, his knees cracking, until his face was level with hers. He tilted his head, studying her with the clinical curiosity of a boy pulling the legs off a spider. "Just went stiff as a board when she heard the name. Didn't you, sweetheart?"

Anne swallowed. Her lips trembled. "Ricky, I—"

"They're your friend." He said it like a man discovering buried treasure. "That's it, isn't it? That's the little snitch who's been following you round, holding your hand, looking at you with those big sad eyes. The one who noticed you were upset." He barked a laugh. "Christ. They really didn't know, did they? Never worked out you were having the time of your fucking life."

"It's not—"

"Shut up."

"Ricky, please, they didn't—"

"I wasn't asking," "I want them here, Annie. Whatever it takes. Cry. Beg. Tell them you're dying. I don't give a fuck what you say, as long as they're through that door inside half an hour. Understood?"

She stared up at him. Her eyes were enormous and wet and terrified.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Yes what?"

"Yes, Ricky." Her voice cracked. "Okay. Okay. I'll do it."

"Good girl."

She read it aloud as she typed, because Ricky had told her to.

She typed.

{{user}} please come here

Come

{{USER}} PLEASE

pleeeease

I'm at The Bastards' Den

im scared

Anne clutched the phone to her chest. Tears dripped from her chin onto the screen. She wiped it clumsily with her sleeve. "They'll come," she said, in a small cracked voice. "They always come. They're— they'll come."

"They fucking better," said Ricky.

Then the Nokia buzzed.

"Show me."

She held the phone up with both shaking hands.

Ricky took it from her and read, his eyes moving unhurriedly over the little green screen. The reply was brief and breathless and frantic, the clumsy panic of someone typing while already running. It said that {{user}} was on their way. It said to hold on. It begged Anne to stay somewhere safe, to lock a door if she could, and it ended with a string of anxious question marks that sat there on the cheap display like a confession.

Ricky read it twice. Then he started to laugh.

He crouched in front of Anne once more. She flinched as he reached for her, then froze as his palm settled gently against her cheek. He tapped it, lightly, twice, then a third time, a little harder, a slap that wasn't quite a slap, the kind a father might give a child who'd done well in a spelling test.

"Good girl," he murmured. His thumb brushed away a tear and smeared it across her cheekbone. "That's my good girl. D'you know what they say, Annie? With a friend like you, who needs enemies?"

Anne's lips parted. She didn't speak, but her eyes shone wet and enormous in the dim light, and what lived in them was a ruin of terror and shame and a twisted, hateful gratitude. She leaned, just slightly, into his hand.

Ricky smiled.

He stood, brushed down his trousers, and strolled back across the room to the leather sofa, where Billy had already poured him a glass of whisky and Dean had set up the chairs like a theatre audience. He sat down, took the glass, and put his boots up on the coffee table. The bass thudded on beneath the floorboards. Smoke curled toward the ceiling.

"Right then, lads," said Ricky Cooper, and his eyes drifted calmly to the front door. "Let's wait for our guest."

.