Wright has not referred to that night at the cinema, and I suppose I got the wrong idea, although I’m haunted by the certainty that I had not. He has, however, been pushing me to take his photograph, there being a regional tournament next month. He wants to plaster the camp with posters and sell glossy ten by eights to his ‘fans’, as he calls them. Wright has big ideas about stardom. When we get out of here, he’s convinced he’s going to be famous, although he’s not quite sure as what – athlete, actor, singer, he’s not bothered, as long as he gets the adulation and the birds. He talks a lot about birds.

I wrote to Mum and Dad asking them to send me some film, on the pretext that I was taking a few snaps of the chaps, and it duly arrived, along with a note complaining about how they had to go all the way into High Wycombe to get it, which was an inconvenience as the parking there is so poor, but Dad managed to find a space near the Odeon which is not too far from the shops. But there they were: four rolls of Kodak 200 ASA, 36 exposure, undamaged and ready for use. I’ve been practising with my camera – without film – refreshing my memory of aperture and exposure and all that jazz. When I get Wright into my viewfinder, I don’t want to get flustered. I want to be cool, calm, professional. I’ve gone over the scene so many times in my head, at night, after lights out when mine is not the only mattress creaking and squeaking like the suspension of that old ambulance, which I think about a lot too, what they were doing in there, trousers round their ankles, faces glued together, eyes closed, unaware of the torch shining on their bare bums … I’ve drawn the scene many times, but scribbled it out, torn it into pieces, and dropped the scraps in the pig bin behind the cookhouse.

We set the date for ‘the session’ for a Wednesday afternoon, when the camp would be quiet, the rest of the men playing football or getting clap in Blackpool. I was nervous all day, couldn’t concentrate at work, buggered up the rotas, got a ticking off from the MO, felt sick and had the shits. Even Wright looked nervous when he arrived at the classroom that we’d got permission to turn into a studio. I’d never seen him like this, smoking furiously, dancing on the balls of his toes, punching his hands, pushing his hair back. One of us would have to be calm, and it was going to have to be me. I’d been fiddling around with the ‘set’ since lunchtime, arranging the folds of the old blackout curtain that hung over the blackboard, trying to conceal the worst of the holes and patches. I borrowed arc lights from the operating theatre, grouped on retort stands, angled towards the curtain like they tell you to in Amateur Photographer. I’d even made a classical column – just like the ones in Health and Strength and Man’s World – out of a roll of corrugated cardboard that was kicking around the quartermaster’s stores, getting damp. Whitewashed and shaded with pencil to suggest fluting, it would look all right in photos – as long as Wright didn’t lean on it. It was a bit wobbly.