I turn the opposite way. If they know we’re making for Verge Aquatics, they’ll have people waiting there for us for sure. It has to be unexpected. I make like I’m heading towards the front entrance, running like the floor is actual lava, and it’s only when I break out of the trees 123 that I leg it back to Aquatics and battering-ram the door, which luckily opens easily because I’m not the biggest guy and if it was me versus a solid door, I reckon my chances of coming out on top are slim.

‘What took you so long?’ Kat beams at me from just inside the door. Karim, next to her, looks like he’s just run through a forest of Christmas trees away from an evil alien swarm. They push a shelving unit in front of the door, cos apparently blocking doors after we’ve gone through them is our new thing, and then we charge through the store to the exit, out into the car park and away.

We have a tiny head start, and we have to use it to disappear. We jump the low fence into the park and run through it like we’re being chased by the actual Demogorgon. The park leads to the graveyard, which is quiet and still, the moonlight glinting off the marble headstones in a way that I might have found creepy if I wasn’t running for my life. My lungs feel ready to burst as we tear down the path, startling a lonely fox out doing whatever foxes do when we’re all inside.

‘Sorry!’ Kat says to it, as we speed past.

I’m relieved to finally see the big road bridge up 124 ahead. We half fall down the steep verge, which is icy hard, and once we’re hidden underneath, surrounded by the graffitied concrete, we allow ourselves a minute of rest. We squat in the shadows, our backs against a pillar that stinks of pee, all of us trying to catch our breath. I risk pulling the scarf down from my nose and mouth, so that I can enjoy the feeling of the freezing air being sucked into my lungs. I know we need to get moving quickly, but we’re going to be much harder to find if we’re not all rasping like we’ve just done a whole lesson of circuit training which is, no question, the absolute worst type of PE that they force you to do at high school.

It takes maybe two minutes for us to recover enough to stand up and talk, which isn’t that long considering how hard we pushed ourselves. Must be all that circuit training.