He’d missed the last few weeks of school. Shell-shocked, Connor had sat his mock exams at a nearby college rather than here, in the familiar sports hall which always smelled of rubber and feet. His body was present but his mind was somewhere else entirely. On autopilot he’d picked up his pen, his hand working independently from his brain. He’d scrawled his answers to the questions but his head was only full of one thing.

Hailey.

Frequently, he’d had to bite down hard on his lip to stop himself from crying.

Afterwards, there was no cursory call from his school to see how he’d got on. There was no prep for next year sent home. No reading lists. No visit from his form tutor to see if he needed anything.

The head teacher knows it.

They’d always taken the piss out of him – Mardy Marshall – his fixation on league tables, and results. Behaviour both in and out of school – I don’t care if it’s Saturday, boy. You’re still representing Kings Park Academy. Your behaviour is a direct reflection on the school and also a direct reflection on me. His standards were impossibly high. He was ex-military and sometimes the school felt like an army camp.

Or a prison.

‘Our last year then.’ Ryan breaks the silence as they climb the grey stone steps.

‘Thank fuck for that.’ For Tyler there is no staring at his shoes, no rounding of his shoulders, trying to make himself disappear the way that Connor and Ryan were. He put on a front half of the time. Mouthy and opinionated at school, he cowed in the shadow of his mum’s boyfriend, Liam, at home. It wasn’t unusual for Tyler to have a split lip, a black eye. It’s how they first became friends. He and Ryan feeling sorry for Tyler, always sitting on his own at lunch, the way he often didn’t seem to have any food. Ryan had offered him a crisp and they’d discovered that this boy, who was taller, louder, brasher than most of the class, was actually really funny and surprisingly ambitious. Connor assumed Tyler would end up in a dead-end job, or out of work, but Tyler had dreams.

‘Gonna be a teacher,’ he said after they’d hung out for a few weeks.

Connor and Ryan waited for the punchline.

‘Nah. Seriously. I am.’ Tyler shrugged. ‘Education… it gives you opportunities, doesn’t it? Gives kids who might not otherwise make something of themselves a chance.’

‘What do you want to teach?’ Ryan asked.

‘Not sure, either History or Sociology. It’s important, the way things were. The way they’ve changed. The changes we’ve yet to make. Anyway,’ he straightened his collar. ‘You can call me Mr Palin.’