In the ‘decadent little hellhole’ of St Anton’s, the few cricketers with an actual conscience each deal with their guilt differently, from (more) drug and alcohol abuse to finding religion. None of them proves very sympathetic, however. Delaney strives to capture both the naïveté of youth and a hothouse college environment that promotes gross misconduct, but she has trouble finding a consistent tone. The plot is also slowed down by the repeated focus on mundane routines, including what music is playing and exactly which essay is overdue.

It is not just wobbly characterisation and awkward dialogue (‘That was a wrong thing we did’) that hampers Wild Things; dubious touches break the narrative’s spell. One character embraces feminism by appearing at a rally ‘swaddled in bulky army-surplus clothes’, while there is a stock villain in the silver-haired, teetotal ringleader Hadrien. And in a sea of references to contemporary music, Delaney makes the strange decision to repeatedly quote lyrics by the fictitious band Lance Vaine and the Musical Hellos as a framing device.

This is well-trodden territory; Delaney even cites Lord of the Flies by name. The story echoes other books about coming-of-age gone wrong as well, from Donna Tartt’s The Secret History to Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides. Delaney wants to pen a damning account of a generation run amok – and an older one looking the other way – but Wild Things is sorely underdeveloped.