I cling to the winder, heavy with fine blue fishing line – exactly one mile of it – and Aunty Kaye leapfrogs the kite skywards. The tail corkscrews as it climbs like it’s rocket-powered. She sits at my feet as I reel out the line. My arms are soon aching. The six-sided kite is no more than a speck, far out over the sparkling sea, only the sway of striped tail giving away its location. No chance now to read my name and address that I scrawled in marker, should it make it to France and have to be posted back. People walk past and squint along the line until they find it. Even adults are impressed. People joke that we’ve lost our kite. Aunty Kaye and I lie on the grass and clutch the winder between us. And we laugh because everything is so funny, and so incredible, and so beautiful.

I am him. The grass tickles my ears. An arm rests across my chest. That incredible thing, the size of me just minutes ago, just a dot now, hovering in a clear sky.

I feel myself drifting up the line, past the cliff edge, out over the sea. I am on the kite now. I am the kite – weightless, rocking to and fro. I gaze back along the blue string as it arcs towards the shore. On those rich green fields beyond the chalk cliff face, lie, side by side, a blonde-haired woman and a child. It’s way too far to see their expressions, but there’s no need. Happiness radiates from them.

The image floats away from me. I’m somewhere else now. I’m over this school. Too high to hear anything more than the warm wind that keeps me airborne. Like viewing a satellite image of familiar ground, everything is an odd shape: the school perimeter far less square than I’d imagined, the field too big compared to the buildings. Every tiny human is running. Some towards that flattened shell of classroom that belches smoke, some away from it. One after another, students are dragged unmoving from the roofless structure. Two people wrestle with fire extinguishers behind the jagged back wall.

The gates at the end of the field are unchained. A procession of emergency vehicles speeds across the grass. Red-blanketed stretchers are unfolded and thrust towards the ruin. Those too near the building when it blew are helped to ambulances, bundled shirts turned crimson against heads and faces.

Police cars mark out four points. Plastic tape is unrolled to describe an enormous square between them. Outside the cordon, teachers and students look on. No one moves. They don’t look at one another. Like me, they are just spectators.

Stretchers are loaded, heads covered. As fresh ambulances arrive with blue lights, others leave in silence, in no hurry. Vans with letters on their roofs blockade every route in and out of the school.