‘It’s good.’ I’m focusing on the top corner of wall behind him. He’s looking somewhere over my left shoulder. ‘Quietly confident,’ I add, nodding in time with the phrase.

‘Excellent,’ he says, like he means it. Because what he really wants to say is, ‘Please don’t cry, not again.’ He’s seen me cry too many times these past few months, and nothing makes him more uncomfortable. The guy just can’t deal with it.

‘So, are we going to be seeing some classic Morcombe form? Straight As all the way? That’d shut those boys up.’

‘Think it’ll take more than that,’ I say.

‘Well, I’m expecting good things,’ he tells me as if my greatest worry is that I might let him down. ‘The consummate all-rounder,’ he says, all serious now, ‘that’s how my colleagues think of you.’ He studies me for a reaction that doesn’t come. ‘Well, other than the sports field, I suppose,’ he chuckles. ‘Never been much of a sportsman, have you? Half an all-rounder perhaps.’

I nod along with him.

He has the demeanour of a stand-up comic dying on stage as his eyes sweep up and down me. ‘I must say, you’re looking a bit sharp today. Liking the slicked-back hair. Not your usual dragged-through-a-hedge-backwards look.’ He sniffs the air and wafts it towards his nose. ‘Paco Rabanne?’

‘Might be.’ It is Paco Rabanne, a present from Aunty Kaye. I dug it out from the back of the bathroom cabinet this morning.

‘Shut the door if you like,’ he says. ‘You keep looking over there.’

‘It’s fine.’ I snap my gaze back to him. I’ve spent the last hour agonizing over what to do with my rucksack while I’m out here. Bringing it with me would have looked weird – I’d be gone less than ten minutes – so I left it at my desk. But ten minutes seems an eternity now. It was a crazy decision and my desperation to get back to it is mounting by the second. The classroom is suspiciously quiet.

Mr Clark lurches across the length of the room and clicks the door closed.

‘Listen to me now, Ollie,’ he says, his voice lowered, ‘this is not the time to drop the ball. You’re my star turn in this class.’ He looks straight into my face for the first time. ‘One final push is all it takes. Do what you did in your mocks, and you’ll be laughing. We’ll both be laughing.’

I try to smile, but my face is too taut to react. I’ve managed to blag it with my other teachers, disguise just how far behind I’ve fallen – with GCSEs looming, they have bigger concerns, squeakier wheels to grease. But Mr Clark sees me too often – he knows I’ve stopped trying, stopped paying attention, stopped caring.

‘You are still planning on coming back for sixth form, I trust?’