Seraphine recalled the first few weeks at secondary school when she realized that everyone else had moved on. They were having conversations that she couldn’t follow. There were dramas, romances, and stupid fights over stupid things. She pictured standing with her back to the wall of the corridor, watching these laughing, squealing, screaming beings rushing by as she stood rooted to the spot. She had assumed she’d catch up. When she was more mature, she’d be just like them. But as the years went by she remained standing at that wall, watching and losing patience. Not with herself. Their dramas and romances and fights were nonsense. There was no logic, no gain and therefore no point in them. She didn’t want to be like them. It was more important to them to be seen to win an argument than to actually win.

She thought of Mr Potts, the History teacher. He was a bully. He thought nothing of ripping up someone’s homework, or keeping the whole class in at lunchtime to punish one disruptive boy. And if you were talking in his lesson he’d come up behind you and squeeze your shoulder very tightly. He wasn’t supposed to, but no one dared say anything. Until Jamie Parker and Lucas Kane decided to turn the tables. They spoke louder and louder in his classes, becoming more disruptive, failing to turn up to detention, and not doing their homework. Jamie even walked up behind Mr Potts and squeezed his shoulder tightly one morning. They became the class heroes because they were seen to be fighting back, but ultimately they lost. Their parents were summoned, they were punished for their bad behaviour, and Mr Potts carried on as before.

So one morning, when Mr Potts had gone to the staffroom for his usual coffee, Seraphine sneaked into his classroom and placed a pair of girl’s pants in the zip pocket of his work bag. She had bought the underwear specially. Then she went to the computer room, set up an anonymous Yahoo account and wrote an email: I am a Year 7 pupil in Mr Potts’ class and he kept me in detention and asked me to remove my knickers and give them to him. I knew it was wrong but I was scared and didn’t know what to do. She sent it to the headmaster and to Mr Potts’s wife, who was one of the PE teachers. And that was the end of Mr Potts.