‘Absolutely not, Matron,’ Hunter would say, barely able to disguise his annoyance at being interrupted while he admired the clouds that he was Rorschach testing through his wrap-around Ray-Bans.

His roof terrace also provided a fire escape for Busby’s, leading on to the high, sloping roof of Church House. There was a flat area at the top of a set of metal steps, girded on three sides by some simple rusting railings. Hunter found that it was just possible to hook his feet under the lowest bar of the railings and lean backwards along the slope of the roof, lying at a sixty-degree angle, held only by the pointed tips of his black leather boots. The challenge was to smoke an entire joint of Afghani Black in this position, against the steep, smooth slate tiles, with nothing, if he lost his foothold, to interrupt his headlong rush into Great College Street, more than a hundred feet below. Excited by this discovery, he invited his gang of reckless and clever friends to join him on the roof. After demonstrating the dare, he hoisted himself up, clasped the dirty and corroded iron bar and clambered back on to the flat area.

‘Who’s next?’ he asked, holding up a pre-rolled joint.

To his surprise, there were no takers. He had crossed the line from bravado to something unacceptably sinister that lay beyond the presumption of invulnerability among these self-professed daredevils, who never tired of driving cars over the speed limit without a licence, or jumping from high rocks into seas of uncertain depth, or swallowing random pills sold to them by strangers at festivals.