‘I have to go. Right now.’ My voice is raised. I tower over her. There’s no way she’ll stop me. She steps back and in an instant I’m at the door.

I freeze. Something catches the back of my throat. I take an instinctive inward breath and it burns my nostrils. I’d know that smell anywhere. It’s the substance that haunts my home life.

The glistening pool of liquid creeps outwards in a semicircle from under the door. A haze simmers above it. If a match is lit on the other side, I’ll never make it out.

The fumes are making me dizzy and my vision blurs. I stagger backwards into Miss Morgan, pointing at the base of the door. Her gaze follows the line of my trembling finger. I stand back as she squeezes past me and looks at the floor.

‘What on earth is it?’ she asks.

‘Lighter fuel,’ I snap. ‘Fucking lighter fuel.’

On hands and knees, she studies the ground. ‘Oliver, there’s nothing here.’

‘Can’t you smell it?’

Her palm is pressed against the floor. She lifts her hand and shows me. It’s dry. The pool is gone.

‘It was there. I swear it was. From under the door.’ My eyes are darting round the room. I know I’m under attack. It could come from anywhere. Anyone.

Miss Morgan approaches me. She reaches out and holds both my hands. ‘Please calm down, Oliver. Try not to cry so much. You’ll suffocate yourself.’

‘I have to go.’

She clamps my hands together and shakes them. Her eyes are boring into mine. ‘Oliver, I think you might be seeing something that isn’t there. I think you may be terribly unwell.’

I drop my head and stare down at my shoes. A tear splatters against the left and then one against the right. ‘I can’t stay here,’ I snap.

‘Let me call somebody.’ She looks back at me with each step as she moves along the corridor towards the kitchen. ‘Wait there,’ she calls. ‘Please, just wait.’

‘You have to run.’

His voice is behind me. I turn. There’s no one else here.

‘She’s working with them.’

I cover my ears, but I know it’ll do no good. It never does.

‘Don’t let them win, Ollie,’ Kenny tells me.

It’s usually only in the small hours, in the wasteland between sleep and waking where the rules don’t apply, when he comes to me. I know that through Sophia we have become connected. But always his voice tears me from sleep, renders me wide awake and petrified. He wants the best for me; he wants me to survive where he didn’t. But he scares the shit out of me every time.

My head is still bowed. My arms wrap round my skull, fingers interlocked behind my neck.