‘Oh for fucksake, the girl was Helen! It was a picture of me and Helen! She was baiting me, she was testing me, must’ve been on to me for a while—’

Chris managed to suppress his laughter. ‘Doug, how many times—’

‘I don’t know, three, maybe four. Go on, you can laugh. I can see how this would be funny if I hadn’t made the biggest fucking mistake of my whole fucking life.’

‘I wasn’t laughing.’

‘No, it’s fine,’ said Doug, sounding very tired indeed. Chris wondered if he was crying.

‘Doug, mate. Here’s the deal. You’re a fucking idiot and you’re going to come up to London tomorrow afternoon and we’re going to get you absolutely shitfaced. Non-negotiable.’

‘Thanks, man,’ said Doug. He sounded terrible. ‘What happened to you and Leah, then?’

‘Nothing important. It doesn’t matter,’ Chris said, realising that this was true.

* * *

Callum had no idea what Tamsin and Leah had agreed to on New Year’s Eve, but in the first few days of January he felt more powerless than ever around Tamsin. His jokes were beginning to bore her; and this, he thought, was a very bad sign. It didn’t help that Roz had friends staying, so Tamsin was spending all her time with him in Brewer’s Court. He knew he needed to make himself scarcer, and therefore more valuable.

The first day back at Denham Hall came as a great relief. If he was powerless in his private life, then here, in the classroom, he had supreme control. Form 8S were more biddable than ever now that the exams were so close.

‘Right, I want you to do the second part of this practice paper, exam conditions, no dictionaries allowed,’ Callum told the class after they’d handed in their holiday work.

‘Sort of like the eve of a battle, isn’t it, sir?’ asked a wide-eyed Hugh Brodie as he stood in line to collect his paper.

Callum bit back a smile and nodded his agreement. This was what he liked about the job, he thought as he as he sat down at his desk. The heightened emotions of a world peopled by pre-pubescents – a self-refreshing world that came to a dramatic, tearful end once a year, when goodbyes were said and leavers’ ties distributed and unkeepable promises of everlasting friendship made as the top-year pupils went their separate ways. A world in which a good teacher was a sort of god. Callum was well aware that it was also, in a sense, a dream world – but it was a dream he was more than happy to inhabit, perhaps, he realised, for ever.