‘I have music on there, you see.’ I could hear him grunting with effort, had no idea what trick he was pulling off with that fifty-pence piece. ‘I take pictures with it too, so it’s not completely useless. Same with my iPad, I brought that as well.’

When he descended, his shirt was smutted, his knees damp. There were cobwebs in his hair. Our students next door had been let go for lunch, making the dash across the playground from main house to canteen in the still sluicing-down rain. We had missed out on teachers’ first dibs at the hot plates, so stayed behind to clear up the damage.

I took down the classroom portrait of St Rita, her eyes rolled back, the beam of light striking her forehead. Ben watched me wipe dry her face and the frame, as he worked the mop across the floor.

‘That St Rita,’ he said, ‘she’s a Catholic saint?’

‘Well… yes and no,’ I replied. ‘Augustinian, certainly. She’s the patron saint of impossible causes.’

‘And abused wives,’ he added, ‘and heartbroken women.’ A man who did his research.

‘Heartbroken and abused are the same thing,’ I said, returning St Rita to her nail on the wall, ‘wouldn’t you say?’

He gave me a sideways look.

I faltered, ‘Y– You wouldn’t?’

He pressed his lips together as if shaping an answer but returned to his initial point. ‘What I mean is, you’re not Catholic, here on Lark?’

‘Oh, it’s a leftover,’ I told him, ‘that’s all. A Catholic missionary came here in the… gosh, I don’t know, centuries ago, and he named the chapel, and the school was named for the chapel, and sometimes history wins over religion. Plus, we like the saints.’ I nudged St Rita, making her level. ‘So, we’re not Catholic, but we’re not Protestant either really. We’re not anything. We’re just… our own thing.’

‘You can say that again!’ He laughed, mopping a figure of eight with a flourish.

I couldn’t help but smile wide. My Knight of Cups was coming alive right before me, now that our talk had evolved beyond timetables and the right cupboard in which to find teabags. He was not what I had observed from a distance, was more than a man-shaped wish fulfilled. He was real, completely real, and I could not entrust him to Miss Cedars only to watch her lose her nerve again. So, I spoke in a new tongue.

‘You can say that again!’ I said, imitating him, coyly. Then, bolder, I added, ‘What is that supposed to mean?’ I adopted the same mischievous tone he’d used when talking of stealing gas canisters, of making fire, this Prometheus in our midst.

He stopped and considered me. I didn’t flinch from his gaze.