‘No thank you, Ludo, I don’t need all nine of you scribbling god knows what all over the place. Let’s have one person, one sensible person, to write something respectful on behalf of everyone. Sophie, you come and do it.’

Sophie stood and thought for a long time before selecting what she felt was the perfect word. Lately she had been thinking that she might like to be a writer when she was older.

‘Surreal,’ Ludo read out loud when she’d finished writing.

‘Because it’s like your mind can’t even really process what actually happened out there,’ said Sophie. ‘It’s like it happened on another planet.’

Several people giggled at this.

‘That sounds fair enough,’ said Mr Dempster. ‘It is pretty hard to take in, isn’t it?’

The teachers moved away to examine a display of personal items found in the trenches, but most of 8S stayed crowded around the book, reading out other people’s entries in foreign accents.

‘Surreal,’ said Rhiannon, faux-thoughtfully. ‘That’s just like Hugh Grant, “surreal but nice”, like Notting Hill. Was that your inspiration, Sophie? Were you quoting Hugh Grant?’

Verity and Flick laughed. Sophie felt wounded; Rhiannon had been reasonably pleasant to her all week, so this reversion to her usual mocking tone came as a blow.

‘Why don’t you write the whole thing out, “surreal but nice”?’ Rhiannon was saying.

‘Because that wasn’t what I wanted to say. It wasn’t nice,’ Sophie said.

‘But you’re meant to be our spokesperson, Sophie,’ said Rhiannon. ‘That’s so unfair of you to just totally ignore what we want to say.’

Ludo Hall held out his hand. ‘Gimme that pen.’

‘No.’ Sophie shook her head.

‘Well then, you write it,’ said Ludo. ‘Go on, I bet you don’t have the guts. You’re such a suck-up, you never do anything—’

‘Watch me,’ said Sophie, bending over the book again. Her nose was hot with unspilled tears. In her best handwriting, she added the words ‘but nice’ to her comment.

‘There,’ she said, standing up straight; and before the others could see how upset she was, she marched off to join the teachers by the display cabinets.

After supper that evening, Mr Dempster closed all the shutters in the main sitting area so they could play Murder in the Dark. If you drew the ace you were the murderer and if you drew the king you were the detective. When the murderer tapped you on the shoulder you had to die, but you got to choose your own grisly ending. Mr Dempster encouraged them all to be creative with their pretend deaths. People got poisoned and strangled and shot and beheaded and exploded. While Des Kapoor was dying from head injuries, perhaps a little louder than was strictly necessary, Sophie tripped over someone’s ankle.