There’s a decent thirty metres of clear grass now between me and anyone else in this park. Careful as I am not to look directly, I can’t see anyone paying me undue attention. I switch my sports bag from one hand to the other, the weight of it burning my fingers. The rucksack on my back, in addition to its delicate package, holds the books I’ll need to maintain a facade of normality today, plus my laptop and my phone. It’s safe to assume someone will come looking for those after today. There seems no need for which porn videos I’ve favourited and just how many times I’ve watched them to become a matter of public record. Those are the only secrets they hide, but they can join the bonfire nonetheless. It’s not like the porn is particularly extreme, not really. But it might look that way to someone who isn’t familiar with the stuff that gets passed around daily at school, I know that. It would kill me to have Gramps thinking of me as some sort of pervert, on top of everything else he’ll have to deal with.

So the rucksack stays. The sports holdall I’m carrying will be leaving with me. There’s a couple of changes of clothes, the remainder of my savings, totalling £480, a printed reservation for a one-night stay in a double room at Boater’s Inn on Lake Windermere and two adult train tickets. You don’t run away with a nineteen-year-old girl using a child ticket just to save fifteen quid.

There’s something familiar in the feeling that spreads over me now. It takes a moment to place it. Going away to summer camp with the Cub Scouts – that’s it. I’d feel kind of hollow when I got on the coach, everyone’s parents waving us off, Gramps giving me a salute. We’d all be subdued for the first twenty miles or so. But then we’d break free of the city and, as the horizons retreated, so would our resistance to the call of adventure. You just had to be too far from home to change your mind.

‘Ollie Morcombe.’ That’s all the kid says as I approach.

You’ve reached a special level of outcastery when the mere utterance of your name constitutes piss-taking. I look up for a split second before returning my gaze to the stony path. Year Nines. Four of them. They’re two years younger than me, for fuck’s sake. They stop tossing the tennis ball among themselves as I draw level. I cut through the middle of their group as they stare at me in silence, clutching both straps of my rucksack with one hand in front of my ribs. I can feel the tub pressing against my spine.