He laughs. ‘Why do you need me to go home early?’

‘You need to get out of school before three. You’ve got to promise me you’re going to do that. Before three.’

‘This is a bit weird, Morky.’ He shakes his head at the floor. ‘Is this another one of your bullshit stories?’

‘I’m not bullshitting,’ I snap, wrenching at his arm. His whole body jerks towards me. ‘You’ve gotta do it. Please. Please say you’ll do it.’ I’m checking frantically over my shoulder to make sure no one around the school office can overhear.

Amit wriggles out of my grasp and steps back. He looks scared. ‘Calm down, man,’ he says. ‘You’re being really strange.’

‘Tell me you’ll do what I say.’ I drive my eyes into him.

‘OK, Ollie,’ he whispers. He raises both palms and takes another step back. ‘OK, mate. It’s OK. I’ll do it.’

The Debris

Last August

The ninth of August.

I guess everybody has a date like it. A beacon projecting from the landscape of the past, a marker from which every lesser event takes its bearing. This is mine. It’s a date that survives not just on the empty lines of old calendars, or on newspaper sheets in attics. You’ll find it etched in marble at Hove Crematorium; you’ll find it on a plaque at the entrance to the Royal East Sussex neurology ward; you’ll find it marked on a double-sized house in the Brighton North Laine – a house that has since been bequeathed to a mental health charity.

It was day five of my stay. It began as they usually did – with the steam of Colombian coffee being wafted past my nose sometime around eleven.

‘I’ve never known anyone sleep as much as you do,’ Aunty Kaye said as my eyes popped open. ‘Sign of a clear conscience.’

Fresh from the shower, with her hair bound in a turban, she sat on the edge of my bed with her own mug hugged close to her chin.

‘Sea air and cocktails, I reckon.’ I rocked my head from side to side. There were no immediate hangover signs, but I gave the dull headache a few seconds to make itself known. It seemed I was in the clear.

‘Weather’s not looking too clever for Glyndebourne,’ she told me. ‘The radio’s been forecasting some savage storms this afternoon.’

My Venetian blind was only cranked open a few degrees, but the blue light of a perfect coastal morning was cutting through the gaps. The chatter of seagulls echoed round the courtyard walls outside. ‘Shame,’ I said, thinking that the imminent shift in conditions wasn’t such a bad thing at all. ‘So we’ll be giving the opera a miss then?’

‘You’re not getting out of it that easy, bucko. I’m telling you so you know to bring an umbrella. Dress for biblical rain.’