Nory looked at her three friends and suddenly it was like she was a kid again.

“Snowball Croquet!” she yelled, punching the air as she scrabbled out of bed and joined the others in jumping about the room.

“The boys are already down there, come on!” Jenna yipped excitedly.

“Wait, how did you get in here?”

“We picked the lock, silly,” said Ameerah.

“Braddon-Hartmead skills,” Pippa winked.

Learning to pick locks had been a rite of passage at school; the whole place was locked down after lights-out and the only way to move about the quiet halls once the housemistress and master had retired to their quarters was to be an expert at breaking and entering.

Four sets of woolly socked feet careered down the staircases. Nobody got dressed; Snowball Croquet was always played in pajamas. They slipped and slid their way—laughing hysterically—along the polished floors to the boot room at the back of the castle. It was like they were sixteen again, sneaking through the darkened corridors of Braddon-Hartmead. The big moon smiled at them through every window as they ran.

In the boot room, they forced their bed-socked feet into Wellington boots and shrugged on heavy winter coats, not caring whose was whose. Ameerah pulled the door open, and the cold night burst in to greet them.

It was freezing and dark, but that didn’t put them off. The moon was disappearing and reappearing behind the clouds, and the snow was drifting down like white rose petals being scattered from above. They made their way—boots crunching on the frosty grass—across to a gate hidden in the wall at the far end of the ornamental garden, which served as a shortcut to the farthest field of Braddon-Hartmead School.

The grounds closest to the school were set up with CCTV and motion-sensitive floodlights—much like a high-class prison—but this far from the main buildings there was no such security. These fields were only ever used for cross-country running and scavenger hunts; neither of which would be happening at one o’clock in the morning in below-freezing temperatures unless the school had employed a particularly sadistic PE teacher in the interim.

Nory held the phone torch while Jenna unlatched the gate, and they stumbled, giggling like schoolgirls, onto the far field. Jeremy handed them each a tumbler of pale-yellow snowball, while Guy knocked the croquet hoops into the ground with a stubby mallet. Nory noticed a plentiful supply of Advocaat and lemonade bottles leaned up against the wall and was relieved to see they were taking it seriously. She took a sip of the thick, custardy liquid and smiled, her spirits warm despite the cold.

“Where’s Dev?” Nory asked, looking around the dark field. Someone had borrowed the hurricane lamps from the dining room and set them at the edges of the makeshift court. The flames danced on top of the pillar candles, making strange patterns on the ground.