‘I didn’t mean to,’ I say.

She sighs. ‘But you did. And there are consequences.’ She looks up at the clock. ‘Your father is on his way. Perhaps we’d better not continue until he arrives.’

‘He’s coming?’

‘We called him.’ She nods, watching me closely. ‘Is that OK?’

‘Yes.’

I don’t tell her I’m surprised he’s coming; it might not sound right. I love my pa, but he’s very absent-minded, and he tends not to do things other parents would do. Like come to school. He hasn’t been here in so long I wonder if he’ll find it. I wonder what he’ll say.

‘Mr Gravett, the stool broke,’ she says some time later, her voice close to despair. ‘Clementine is a good student,’ her eyes flick over me again, as if to reassure herself that I really am. ‘But we can’t tolerate violence of any kind, and she has made no explanation.’

‘Clem?’

His eyes are sorrowful as ever, his unbrushed hair standing up on end, like a burning match. He doesn’t look like he belongs here. I guess neither do I. Maybe that’s what Jago saw that first day, a year ago.

‘I didn’t mean to,’ I say.

Mrs Duke sighs, tapping her fingers on the folder she has on her lap.

‘I just wanted to stop him.’

‘From doing what?’

They both lean in to me. And my mouth dries up. What am I going to say, he poked me in the back? It sounds ridiculous, like I’m five. I suppose I could talk about all the other things that have happened over the last year, but they’re all so small, so silly.

He says I’m a freak.

He says it might be catching.

He shoves his chair out and tries to trip me, just as I’m passing with my lunch tray.

No.

I don’t know how to explain it. I was different from the start, and it’s lonely, even in the moments he’s not there to taunt me. Surrounded by hundreds of people every day, and alone all the same. I overhear conversations, and in my head I join in sometimes, smile at a funny bit, and then I realize I’m just staring at people, smiling to myself. Or I have thoughts that want to be out there, and they just wedge in my head because there’s nobody to tell them to. Maybe I whisper to myself when I walk along the bustling corridors. Maybe I stare too much at other people. Maybe I drop books, miss balls, stumble on steps, maybe I just don’t quite fit. Maybe that’s why I bother him so much.

But I don’t say any of that.

I don’t say anything at all.

Mrs Duke raises her hands at my silence. ‘I have no choice, Mr Gravett,’ she says. ‘Even if Clementine had some sort of justification, it wouldn’t be enough. We have a zero-tolerance policy, and there is no question that she pushed Jago, hard enough to break his stool and throw him to the floor. She will have to be suspended.’