He looks at the packets of spice now, still scattered across the floor where he left them this morning. Maybe it was Rudy he saw earlier in the street when he kicked that Coke can on his way up to the school. Maybe the hard-as-fuck drug dealer has worked out where he’s staying, and is going to bring his machete and slice him up, or stab him with a little kitchen knife, but right in the heart because Rudy will know how to do that.

Fuck it. Fuck the shame, and the inevitable piss-taking. He needs to get out of this city and sort his life out. Stop terrorising innocent people. Stop smoking spice. Stop living like a rat, scared of being attacked by gangsters. But he can’t turn up in Cambridge looking like he does now. And he needs to charge his phone. He’ll stay here for one more night, he calculates, then go to the drop-in centre tomorrow. Even if he has to queue for hours to use the shower, he’ll do it. Maybe get a haircut if that woman with the sun tattoo and pair of clippers is there. And take advantage of their complimentary plug socket. Then when he looks half decent, he’ll get over to Stratford somehow and then use his last twenty quid for a bus ticket to Cambridge.

It’s a plan. A good one.

As long as he doesn’t think about his parents’ disappointed faces, or his inevitable spice withdrawal, or the fact that his shame will travel with him.

He pulls the sofa cushion from behind his back and flings it across the room, right at the mirror resting on the mantelpiece opposite. The cushion is soft, but it’s heavy, and the mirror sways in protest. The cushion drops first, but bounces away, so when the metal frame hits wood, the glass inside shatters. The noise splinters his hearing as tiny shards of glass land on his skin. ‘Fucking metaphor,’ he mutters to the empty room, but he gets no response, so he tries again. ‘Fucking metaphor!’ he screams.

But after bouncing off the walls, that cry dies unanswered too.

Everything is fine again. Chill. What he said to that little girl doesn’t matter. What he stole from Rudy doesn’t matter. No one cares that he stinks, including him, and his mum and dad are too far away to worry about. He sucks on the joint and feels the pure joy of it.

Tomorrow is another day. It’ll be his day.