That first day of Year Seven comes back to me. From the front row, I’d listened to everything he’d said about growing into a man in this place. I can clearly remember picturing the person I thought I’d become here, the charismatic and popular guy who oozed an easy coolness. I cringe at my own stupidity.

He steps forward to the edge of the stage. ‘Look at you now, chaps. How far you’ve come. You are gifted and well-rounded young men. You have surpassed every expectation I dared to have for you.’ The crack in his voice as he says it is pure theatre. ‘I would like you all to give each other, and yourselves, a round of applause.’ He leads from the front, slamming his palms together with a look of intense satisfaction.

There’s something genuine in the applause around me. I join in with it, even though I have the sense of being on a tiny island in the centre of the room, entirely remote from what surrounds me. My arms are weak and vibrate as my hands flap against each other. They are soaking wet, white as a dead man’s and inexplicably cold.

‘Do you have any idea, chaps, of the possibilities that lie ahead for you? One day, you’ll look back on this time, and you’ll appreciate just how much opportunity the world had to offer, just how brilliant, just how fantastic you all were.’

He picks his remote control off the lectern, clicks a button and a black-and-white PowerPoint image appears on the screen behind the stage. ‘Who can tell me who this gentleman is?’

There’s a general murmur of the word Einstein.

‘Einstein indeed! Word association, chaps – what word pops into your mind when you look at him?’

‘Clever!’ comes a shout. ‘Crazy!’ another. Without thinking about it, I’ve assumed a false smile, a smile that shakes at its corners. I’m staring at the floor. The thought of being asked to contribute anything aloud is petrifying me.

‘Genius,’ Lei Pang offers.

‘That’s the one,’ Mr Foxton says, bouncing where he stands. ‘What a thing. Genius. Now here’s a question, chaps. Who here thinks of themselves as a genius?’

There’s silence from his audience.

‘No one? So very modest of you all,’ he says. He clicks his remote again and the image rolls over. There’s a quote, written against the backdrop of a mountain at sunrise. It’s one of those neat little sentences against a breathtaking image that change hands on Facebook daily. Literature for the Tinder generation as Aunty Kaye once called it.