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Slowly, she shook her head. ‘No, it’s fine. I’ll sort it.’ She was getting up again. He was disappointed again.

He took her hand, just like he used to, and hoped she’d let him. ‘Well, what about this weekend? We could do something. Go to a museum or watch a movie.’

Juniper’s puzzled expression surprised him, as though he was strange for even asking. Then, something shuttered over her features: that old barrier. It was back, but he no longer knew why.They’d become friends. They’d called over Christmas. He washere.

She opened her mouth, and then faltered as her gaze fell between his arms, to his sketchbook. The page was already coffee-stained, and a smudge of blueberry jam clung to the centre of the paper, but his drawing was clear enough that he was sure she could recognise it. He’d created his viewpoint from this table, shaded silhouettes sipping coffee and plants hanging from the ceiling. And at the centre of it, a curvy woman with her hair falling out of its ponytail, hunched to place a mug in front of someone.

Time seemed to slow, conversations quietening to nothing more than murmurs. He wanted her to like it. Wanted to see her eyes light up as she realised that he wasn’t messing around anymore, that he liked her and wanted her and couldn’t stop.

But that didn’t happen. ‘I’m working this weekend,’ she said instead, and then turned away to go back to the counter.

He rubbed his face as humiliation rose in him. Clearly, he’d gotten it all wrong.

24

Juniper never thought she’d say it, but she missed sitting on those uncomfortable stools in the workshop. Anything would have been better than setting up camp on the muddy grounds behind the teacher car park on the coldest month of the year. It didn’t help that, thanks to her snotty-nosed little cousins climbing over her all Christmas, she’d had caught some kind of flu. Mum had tried to blame it on Juniper being run-down, further proof she was incapable of surviving uni, but it was January. Everyone was ill. Tilly was blowing her nose in front of her right this very minute.

‘If somebody were to fall in this pit and die,’ Luc said, shivering with their hands in their pockets as the wind whipped their scarf over their shoulders, ‘would we be allowed to go back inside?’

‘I volunteer as tribute,’ Juniper murmured. Since opening the letter from RACA, she hadn’t had much zest for life. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one to have her bursary suspended. When she’d gone to visit the student finance office first thing on Monday, she’d discovered from a chatty receptionist that the school’s private funding – probably from some big,snobby investor who had realised art wasn’t nearly as profitable as other business ventures – had been cut in half, which left them in a ‘sticky spot’. Luc’s bursary had been frozen, and Amir’s, too, though neither of them were as distraught about it as her. Luc had a separate grant for being an international student, and Amir had claimed his family were loaning him the money to cover the rest of the school year.

Not like Juniper, who didn’t have anything else to lean on. She’d worked until nine last night, preparing the café for the following morning, and with this cold bogging her down, she was close to breaking point. She and Tilly had at least ended up buying a shared two-person tent, and thank goodness, because Juniper might have been sleeping on the grass tonight otherwise.

At her words, she felt Aiden’s heavy gaze press into her like thumbs against a bruise. He stood beside Luc and had done nothing but scrutinise her. She got it. She wasn’t being fair, not after his Christmas gift, but she couldn’t engage with him in the middle of this. He would pity her and her poorness or, worse, try to help her, and the last thing she needed was the one thing she’d always despised: Whittaker money.

No, she’d get through this on her own. If she kept picking up extra shifts, she’d probably be able to pay with the instalment plan the school had offered her. It might mean borrowing some cash from her parents and only leaving her room for work and class, but she’d manage. It would be easy enough to make a small fortune before April, right?

‘That’s the spirit! I can imagine they had just as much enthusiasm in ancient times,’ Chris said on the other side of the pits,a comically oversized raincoat protecting him from head to toe. The sky was already darkening above them, daylight a thing of the past this far into winter. Juniper hated it. She wished she could bury herself in her duvet and never emerge.

A few murmurs of discontent proved Juniper and Luc weren’t the only ones suffering.

She closed her burning eyes, laying her head against Tilly’s shoulder, whose coat cooled her feverish skin just slightly.

Meanwhile, Christopher taught them about the origins of pit-firing, most of which they’d already learned in his lecture yesterday before they’d thrown their own designs on the wheel in preparation. Juniper’s had been wonky thanks to her weak hands and pounding head, which still hadn’t eased, but she’d managed to make a teapot. Keeping with the theme, she’d brought dried coffee and tea leaves pinched from the Caffé Verde’s compostables bin to create colour variations in the fire, at least one less thing she had to pay for as part of her studies.

On another day, she would have been fascinated with the rich roots behind firing pottery this way, learning how different combustibles created unpredictable effects, but today, she was barely able to keep upright.

With eight dug pits available, one used by Christopher as demonstration, Tilly and Juniper shared theirs. Of course, Aiden and Luc took the one beside them, Aiden nudging Juniper lightly as she tried to figure out first steps. ‘You okay, Hodge? You don’t look well.’

She wondered if he’d ever stop trying, and worse, if she wanted him to. It seemed as though no amount of pushing him away changed things. Nothing on her surface mattered;like this pit, he would always dig, and she didn’t know if she was strong enough to withstand it for much longer.

‘Fine. Never been better,’ she murmured through chattering teeth, despite her body feeling like it was on fire.

Aiden’s forehead scrunched, and he began peeling his arms from his sleeves, revealing a thick hoodie underneath. ‘Here. Take my coat.’

‘I’m fine—’

But it was already draped over her shoulders, and the weight of it soothed her sore limbs. The smell of him eased her, too: boyish aftershave and woodsy cologne that transported her right back to the stolen moments they’d spent together last term. It shouldn’t have been a comfort, to feel like he was wrapped around her again, but she was tired. Feeling taken care of, in this moment, didn’t feel quite as scary as getting through this week all alone as planned.

It wouldn’t last. She wouldn’t let it. But she sighed and put her arms in the sleeves with a ‘Thanks’ that seemed to satisfy him.

‘So, are you two still boinking or what?’ Tilly asked, motioning between them.

Aiden spluttered. ‘Are wewhat?’

‘They clearly are,’ Luc commented, pulling materials from their bag: sandpaper and…

‘Oh, god!’ Tilly wrinkled her nose, leaning away from Luc with her coat sleeve covering her face. ‘Is that horse shite wrapped in newspaper?’