‘I don’t care about bloody jobs, dear. I can always get a job. Turn my hand to all sorts, I can.’ He managed to make this sound very wicked.

‘Why not just make the best of it, keep your head down, you’ll be out in eighteen months.’

‘Eighteen months?’ He practically shrieked. ‘I’ll be old by then. Look at me! Crow’s feet and saggy skin and I’m not even twenty yet. It’s so unfair. I should be in London, with my friends, having fun.’

‘Well you’re not. You’re on a godforsaken marsh somewhere in the north-west of England, and you might as well accept it.’

We both stared out of the window, watching a line of trucks making steady progress towards the camp gates. A new intake, ready to be shorn, hosed down and kitted out, just like us.

‘I told them I was queer, you know. At the medical.’

The word landed with a plop, and the ripples spread out for a while.

‘That was either very brave, or very foolish.’

‘I thought it would automatically get me off. But they just laughed at me. I told them I had terrible eyesight, so they tested it and said that I’d never be a fighter pilot but I was fit for ground duties. Then I told them I had asthma, and flat feet, and that I wet the bed, but they said that National Service would make a man of me. I even thought of joining the Communist Party.’ He ran his long fingers through his hair. ‘But that was going a bit far, even for me.’

‘And so here you are. And here you’ll stay.’

‘Not if I can help it. I’m getting out before they kill me.’

‘Stephen, the only person who’s trying to kill you is yourself.’

‘Oh, you don’t know what it’s like.’ His voice turned bitter. ‘You can pretend to be one of them, can’t you? You can hang around with your big buddy Wright and they leave you alone. They all know you’re queer, of course, but you play the game and so they tolerate you. For all I know, you might even be having a bit of fun. I mean, they’re randy enough to fuck anything, aren’t they? As long as it doesn’t rub off. But they’re scared of me. They hate me, Michael.’

‘Stephen, don’t work yourself up.’

‘Do you know what it’s like to be completely and utterly alone? To know that everyone, every single person, hates you and wants you dead?’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Oh, I suppose you’re going to say that you don’t hate me, is that it? That you’d like to be my friend if only I wasn’t such a dead bloody giveaway. You’re not denying it, I notice. Well I’m sorry, but I just can’t seem to fake it like you can. I can’t talk like you, and I can’t walk like you, and if I try to act butch I just look like a lesbian. It’s not fair.’