The clouds move fast today. The wind is rising. It clips the top of the houses, and swirls down side streets. When he was younger, when he was in the main yard with the lower-school kids, on days when the wind rose and whipped round the corners of the old block, a kind of frenzy descended. Everyone felt it. You could see the teachers standing alert, and knots of kids would start to sweep across the yard like leaves. The little ones became hysterical with excitement, and the older students, the year tens and elevens, they sensed the chance for mayhem.

There are things moving in him he can’t name. Surges and shifts. They might be emotions, but they feel more physical than that. They sit in his chest and his gut; they shake in his legs. He wants to name them, but the names don’t fit. He wants to say he’s in love with Rose, but the words flit uneasily on the surface of something fast and rough and elemental. She almost repels him. She feels raw. There’s a catch to being with her, a gag somewhere deeper than his throat.

He can feel the sensation of his forehead against the crook of her neck. His tears on her skin. He is exposed.

He remembers the feel of papery yellow skin. A hand in his, smelling of hospitals. Veins, thick and ill.

He turns towards home. He stops as he passes the long block. In the daylight you can see in at the door. He picks his way past the rubbish. Long grasses and nettles rise above it, swaying. The nettles are clustered and seedy, curling at the edges. The door frame lists slightly. Around the base of it grass is growing through the concrete.

He steps inside. The diamond pattern on the wallpaper is faded. At night it looked blue, but in the daylight it is reddish brown.

He backs out. Suddenly he can’t be there anymore.

On his own doorstep, he stops again. The gravel path is neat and weeded. The door frame is painted black. At the bottom, though, where the wood meets the concrete, the paint has cracked and the green of moss has begun to take hold.

It has been eight months now.

She’s dead, he thinks. My mum’s dead.

‌Riches

Mr Bradman is the first to see it, on the Monday evening. He follows a few media people on Instagram, and the post crops up in all their feeds. People like it. They share it.

By the time he gets to school on Tuesday, other teachers are talking, and the students know too. This is all before she gets in.

The teachers love it, by and large.

‘Incredible.’

‘Can’t believe it.’

‘Well done her – how amazing!’

‘Have you seen? Isn’t it lovely!’

Some are shocked.

‘Bloody hell. I thought she was still in year nine.’

The students pretend not to believe it.