Jane Jones had a reputation for offering boys the chance to explore the Promised Land, if they could afford it; for a pound they could touch her breasts through her school sweatshirt and for two-fifty she allowed their sweaty hands to grope through her bra. Just once she’d let a boy that she liked touch her bare breasts, but that had cost him a fiver. Jane always had money to buy cigarettes and blackcurrant VKs from the off-licence on the Esplanade, where no one ever asked her age.

‘I’d let you touch-me-up for free,’ Jane said to Seimon one day because she felt sorry for him, but she said it loud enough for some of the rugby boys to hear; she wanted to make Griff Thomas jealous. ‘Only through my clothes though,’ she taunted Seimon with a suggestive wink.

Seimon’s face turned scarlet. Griff Thomas pushed to the front of the scrum of boy-men and, flicking two fingers at Jane, he sneered; ‘Simple sissy Seimon wouldn’t know what to do with them. You should see the way he looks at us in the showers.’

‘You gay, like Mr Roberts, Seimon?’ Jane gibed, loud enough to draw mocking jeers from Griff and his mates. ‘Maybe if I give you a feel under my top it’ll help you make up your mind.’ As she said this she raised her sweatshirt until the pink bead in her navel ring was showing.

Seimon didn’t know what to say, or do. That Jane was being so common with him didn’t seem to matter too much, but in front of the boys he felt he needed to respond – and at least deny that he looked at them in the showers. But he did look at them in the showers.

Shân Jenkins was one of the Year Nine representatives on the School Council. Her election had surprised a lot of the teachers and some of the students. She took her responsibility as a Year Rep very seriously, almost as if she wanted to spite those that doubted her, and every Thursday lunch-time she’d walk around the school chatting to other students from her year and solicit their views about life in school.

‘You’re on your own a lot these days Sei,’ she said, finding Seimon sitting by himself at the far end of the field. ‘Ever thought of going to the Lunch-time Club?’

‘I don’t need the lonely kids club when I’ve got my dreams to keep me company,’ he said, because it was hard for him to admit, even to Shân, that he was a bullied loner.

‘What sorts of dreams d’you have then?’ Shân coaxed, just to be friendly to a lonely kid.