There was a hammer-heavy knock on the door and Bozey appeared. Next to Roger Fedora, he was my brother’s best friend. A large, hulking drummer, who I heard had girls screaming for him at school fests. This generation’s Kage, I thought, smiling sagely at the wry wisdom of my advanced years. ‘She’s got you there, bro.’

Polo grinned at him. ‘How did it go?’

‘Not too bad. We came second.’

‘Don’t tell me those shitheads at St Jude’s won again?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Shitheads.’

Still curious about this coding business, I redirected my query at Bozey, barely grasping anything he said.

‘It sounds like sci-fi! So, what, you guys just sit there typing up a storm for hours and then stuff happens?’

‘No, no, we just coded for, like, half an hour. Basic shit. We had to sit through a long-ass speech by some Vijay Dhillon guy first. He’s supposed to be a genius coder or something.’

I tempered back my squeal to a coughing fit. Focus, focus. Scavenge now, savour later.

Bozey seemed sceptical about the veracity of the Princeton degree Jay ‘claimed to have’ and quirked a sarcastic laugh at the American accent he presumed he was faking. I forgave him that because he was seventeen. Seventeen, and smart. Secure in the knowledge that his is a complete, comprehensive view of the world and everything in it. Besides, there was no time to be mad. I had to play it cool and get more details out of him.

Fortunately, an unwitting Polo came to my aid. ‘So basically, it all sucked. Can we go eat now?’

‘Actually, no, this dude turned out to be cool as hell, man. You know how lame these fucking speeches always are. Like, just let us get to the fucking code-off, fuckers.’

I threw a cushion at his head. ‘Watch your language, Bozey.’ Surprisingly, he looked chastened. ‘Sorry, Tars.’

He went all quiet after apologizing and, cursing myself for interrupting whatever he had been saying about Jay, I scrambled to bring him back to it. Said, in as casual a voice as I could, ‘Anyway, what were you saying about the dude and the speech thing?’

‘Oh yeah, that. Nothing really. Just that it turned out to be the best chief-guest speech I’ve ever heard.’ He sat up, betraying excitement. ‘Yeah, so this dude, like, offi cial-looking dude, right? He talked about 4chan and asked us all these questions about cloud computing and Pirates of the Silicon Valley. It was great! I stayed awake through the whole thing!’

Only you.