He allows his eyes to wander to April, who seems to be similarly entranced as she tucks her short dark hair behind her left ear. Side-on, he can glance wherever he likes now. He stares at her tiny earlobe and the grey heart-shaped ring threaded through it; at the profile of her slightly pronounced lower jaw, and at the shallow relief at the back of her bare neck. He imagines his cheek against her skin. Is it, he wonders, as impossibly smooth and perfect as it looks? He imagines the tip of his nose gliding over her neck and her back, how the heat would rise from her, how she’d smell that close, how her hair would feel, dusting over his lips. His chest hurts, like the thought of it could make him cry. And he snaps his attention back to Ms Calloway, struck by his own weirdness and filled suddenly with a sense of guilt, like he’s been trespassing.

‘So here’s what I want from you this term,’ she’s saying.

‘Homework?’ Alfie whines. ‘Come on, Miss. Back me up here, Will.’ He slaps Will’s knee, an action that instigates a Newton’s cradle effect where both their seats rock equally and oppositely.

Will laughs, touched that Alfie knows his name.

‘I want one photo from each of you,’ Ms Calloway says. ‘Which, as you’ll realize soon enough, is a much tougher assignment then if I were to ask you for a hundred.’

‘Tell me we don’t need one of those,’ April says, pointing at Kris’s Nikon, which rests on his lap like a Bond baddy’s cat.

‘I don’t care what you shoot on,’ Ms Calloway says. ‘Big ole SLR – Polaroid – iPhone – whatever. Photographers have a nasty habit of obsessing over equipment. It’s to misunderstand the art. No one asks what brushes Michelangelo used to paint the Sistine Chapel, do they? And they certainly don’t assume they could do it too, if only they owned the same gear.’

For the first time in the lesson, Will dares to reach into his bag, no longer embarrassed by Nain’s vintage Olympus. He removes it from its tan case and catches a whiff of the reassuring smell – light oil, leather, hand cream.

‘Mind if I take a look?’ April asks.

Kris Tring huffs as she frames and focuses, treating it like a precious antique.

‘Two photographs for your consideration here,’ Ms Calloway says, standing an A4-sized image on each knee. ‘All about the one on the right, isn’t it?’

All four of her students agree. Will can’t look away from the picture. It’s a shot of a dandelion head, almost filling the frame, translucent and ghostly. Behind is the moon: huge and veined and glowing. It’s haunting and it’s beautiful.

‘Now look at the one on the left,’ she says. ‘Boring, innit?’