The Captains sat at the back, and the boys at the front, and all of them stood to attention as he entered. He caught a paper dart happily, glanced at it, tweaked the wing a notch and threw it back, straight into the hands of the boy who threw it.

‘Good morning, class.’

‘Good morning, Dr Smith,’ they chorused.

‘Sit down.’ As they did so, Smith opened his briefcase. ‘I put a notice up on the board in the corridor. The cricket team.’

Hutchinson held up his hand. ‘Excuse me, sir, but weren’t we going to talk about that?’

‘Were we? I thought we had. Sorry. Oh well, it’s only a game. Now, destruction, murder, people impaled on posts⁠ —’

‘Sir?’ Captain Merryweather put his hand up. ‘Aren’t you going to take the register, sir?’

‘Abbot, Andrew?’ Smith muttered, flipping open the register. Each boy answered his name, until:

‘Alton, Clive Ian?’

‘Sir.’

‘Dean?’

Timothy was staring out of the window at the terrible greenness of the cricket pitch. Anand nudged him in the ribs. He looked up. ‘Sorry, what?’

‘Timothy Dean?’ Smith grinned at him. ‘I don’t know why I’m asking, I can see you’re there.’

Hutchinson glanced at the stern looks on his comrades’ faces, nodded and stood up.

‘Sir, that’s not right.’

‘What?’ Smith peered myopically between Dean and Hutchinson. ‘Can’t you see him?’

‘Missing one’s name in a roll call is a disciplinary offence, sir, under the rules of the school. Aren’t you going to do anything about it?’

‘Why, what do you think I should do?’

‘The standard punishment is ten strokes of the slipper, sir. Perhaps you weren’t aware of it.’

‘Aware?’ Smith looked uneasily round the class. ‘Yes, I knew that. But this is my form room. Can’t I change the rules?’

‘None of us can change the rules, sir. Even if we’d like to. If you’d prefer it, I could administer the punishment myself.’

Smith fiddled with the air, thinking. ‘Yes,’ he decided. Timothy opened his mouth in horror. Last time Hutchinson had punished him, he hadn’t been able to sit down for three days, and couldn’t get to sleep for the pain of the bruises.

Hutchinson stood up. ‘May I have the slipper, sir?’

Smith was fumbling inside his briefcase. ‘I wondered why I had to bring one of these to every lesson. I nearly wore it, but I’d have ended up walking in circles. Ah!’ With a flourish, he pulled a fluffy pink slipper from the bag, and experimentally slapped it across the back of his hand. ‘Yes… that shouldn’t hurt.’

He looked up at Hutchinson. ‘Ready?’

Hutchinson had walked up to the desk. Now he stopped, stiffly turned and headed back to his place. ‘I think we can defer the punishment, sir.’