The sad truth is that Will Parks doesn’t really have any friends. And so, as is not unusual, he’s riding the number 83 to school, sharing a seat with a complete stranger. Who, unfortunately, doesn’t smell great. Will breathes through his mouth into his own sleeve, desperate for the traffic to get moving as the bus crawls past Patten’s Island on its way towards town. Still a complex aroma lingers in his nostrils: like the airless hoover cupboard in a holiday let, plus a touch of blue cheese. A raspy cough escapes from the old bloke and Will holds his breath till his vision swims.

It’s not that Will is especially unpopular. Few of his fellow students would think twice about riding to school next to him. It’s just no one would go out of their way to do so. Friendship was once such a simple thing. You throw a load of kids together in a neighbourhood or a classroom and you’re done – everyone’s friends and they all go round each other’s homes on their birthdays. But then something weird happens. You hit your teens and suddenly it’s necessary to be in a tribe, to gravitate towards people of shared interests, of similar ambition, of roughly equivalent financial standing. Will isn’t a weed smoker, doesn’t care especially for grime, couldn’t give a toss about PC gaming or chess. He’s a kid from a skint family in a nice road. He enjoys night-time beach walks in the pissing rain and taking black-and-white photos. He likes novels from the 1960s, films from the 1980s and dance music from the early 1990s – preferably on vinyl. His is a tribe of exactly one.

The bus is packed, mostly with ECS pupils. Will keeps his face turned from them. It’s unlikely any of them know about yesterday evening’s shoe-licking incident, but he can’t be sure – who knows what details might have been shared and gone viral. There could be photos. What if there’s a video? The more he considers it, the more sure he becomes that people know. That everybody knows. Why else would they all be having such a good laugh at this time of morning?

He cringes as he hears Mick Touch’s words again in his mind: Not one for playing the hero, are you? You gotta act a bit braver than that when you’ve got an audience.

Will has long thought himself a wimp, but it’s one of many secrets he keeps from the world: how he can’t answer the front door at home, how he ignores the landline when it rings, how he finds things to do in the shed on Halloween to avoid being faced with someone demanding he answer the question ‘Trick or treat?’ But now it seems likely his cover is blown, that the truth is out: Will Parks is a pathetic little wimp.