I must have looked like a raving lunatic.

“You look weird, like you’re going off your head. Is it all that hoo-ha earlier that’s got you into this state?”

“How can I find Etienne!”

“It’s easy enough. He gets so bored at home that he hangs around outside the school gates every day. Anyway, he’s been behaving really oddly recently and he looks ill. You need to keep an eye on him. Now go away – I don’t want to let a goal through because of you.”

Just then I saw Van Gogh charging headlong towards me with the ball. It was obvious he was deliberately missing the goal in order to knock me off my feet, so I dodged to the right. The ball ended up on a roof, the match had to stop and the other players ripped into him. I made time to give him the finger, discreetly. An intimate, almost friendly gesture, just between the two of us.

I took up a look-out position by the gates like a monkey waiting for peanuts. I missed lunch. I was hungry and it took a lot of self-denial, which was a word I’d heard the head use when I was in her office. I hadn’t exactly understood it, but it seemed appropriate to my situation all the same. It feels good to enrich your vocabulary: even if you only get it approximately right, it’s like a breath of fresh air. And so I waited, one eye on the playground clock and the other on the road Etienne would come down.

I’d almost lost hope when I saw his silhouette in the distance. I started waving wildly, as though I’d been washed up on a desert island. As soon as he got close I pounced.

“Etienne! Etienne! I need you!”

“You need me?”

It was true, he did have a strange, preoccupied look about him.

“Yes, I need you. Listen, there’s not much time. I’ll pay you back whenever you want and however you want. Here’s the thing: in fifteen minutes it’s the road safety drill and we’ve all got to schlep around a course on bikes or in go-karts. I really, really need it not to happen.”

“So? What am I supposed to do about it?”

He was playing hard to get. I felt the blood rising to my head.