I can’t speak. I can’t do anything apart from cry, and I can’t even do that properly. I am going to die. I am going to disappear. This is the last day of my life, and every time I say it they think I’m madder than the time before because no one, no one believes me. Only one person understands, and she won’t be born until 2002.

Dad arrives and he is so worried that it makes me worse.

‘I’ll get a message to Mum,’ he says, and I shake my head. There’s no point: she won’t get here in time. I suppose she’s going to have to come back anyway. He’ll have to call her in a few hours when I go missing. I change my head-shake to a nod.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Call Mum. Tell her I need her.’

I can feel them exchanging glances above my head, and I let myself become passive, which everyone knows is not the Joe Simpson way. They can do whatever they want. I’m not going to Beachview, and that means I won’t die. If I keep my bum on this chair I’ll stay alive.

Dad says he’ll take me home. Mrs Dupont comes in and they talk quietly about withdrawing me from the French exchange. The deputy head, Mr Marks, is the first-aider, but this is too big a job for his tub of plasters and TCP, so he calls the GP and then says I need to go to the walk-in centre at half four and get referred for emergency assessment. I let it happen: inside I’m starting to glow. I can do this. I can get myself checked into some secure hospital-type place, somewhere where they lock the doors, and then I won’t be at Beachview at quarter past five, and that means – surely it means – that I’ll stay alive. I can take control by doing absolutely nothing. I’ve changed the course of the day.

The car is stuffy and has a definite smell of fast food.

‘You been having McDonald’s in here?’ I ask Dad, picking up the tiny end of a straw wrapper. Dad is always lecturing us about healthy eating.

He looks so pleased that I’ve spoken that he confesses at once.

‘I have,’ he says. ‘Guilty as charged. I had such a yen the other night. I just thought of it, and it took me right back to when McDonald’s first arrived in this country. How excited we were to go down there. We pretended to be American. So I had the feeling that it might still be the best thing in the world, even though I know it’s actually not. I went to the drive-through, and then I sat by myself in a car park to savour it.’

‘And?’