I join in with their synthetic silence, careful to look anywhere other than the bag beneath me. But my feet shuffle gently to either side of it, confirming to myself every few seconds that it’s under my control. It occurs to me that they’re probably too preoccupied with their own agenda to care what I’m concealing. Perhaps they’re thinking about what’s hiding in their own schoolbags – some of them, I’m sure, will have brought some sort of weapon. I know perfectly well that I’m not the only man with a plan today.

‘Morning, ladies!’ he shouts as he enters, his strut making the flimsy structure beneath us bounce.

The sycophants around me nod at him or mutter, ‘All right, Nate.’

He spits towards the window but it falls short. My eyes follow the sticky lug of gob as it slinks its way down the matchboard wall and disappears behind a heater.

‘Ready for your last day, darling?’ he asks the side of my head, placing an emphasis on the word last. I say nothing. He strolls round the front of my desk, but still I won’t look at him. He lowers his head until it’s level with mine, talking through a smile like he always does, as if we’re all just enjoying a joke together. ‘Sucked your grandad’s wrinkly grey cock one last time, did you? Give him something to remember you by?’ His head jiggles in rhythm with his words.

There are some snorts of laughter from the filling classroom.

‘What’s with the hair, Morcombe?’ he asks, grabbing my chin and angling my head so he can study it. His spidery fingers smell like a festering ashtray. ‘Is that gel?’

I reverse myself out of his grip. Something squeezes at my guts as I stare at those yellow fingertips. I know where they’ve been. I grimace at the thought.

‘You’ve done your hair for us. How sweet of you.’ He turns and addresses the rest of the room. ‘It’s like putting a set of bling alloys on a wheelie bin.’

Everyone laughs, although no one as hard as Nate himself.

He turns back to me. ‘Bless him, he’s shaking,’ he says, checking for the appreciation of his audience. ‘You’ll have a fucking reason to shake this afternoon, Morcombe.’

‘Leave him now, Nate,’ Amit says.

Nate turns and towers above him. He’s six two, with no shoulders or waist to speak of, a head as white and smooth as a cue ball. Standing dead straight, as he is now, he looks like a baby on a stepladder. ‘You two bumming each other again?’ he asks. ‘Got the gay team back together?’

‘Shut up,’ Amit says, then immediately recoils at his own aggression.

‘Talk to me like that, little short-arse. You wouldn’t be saying that to my brother, would you?’