Woody nodded slowly. ‘I’m not going to lie, Max. It is a weird one. You’ve been on our radar for a while. No family. Acing all your CCF activities at school. Pretty good brain, by all accounts. You were definitely on my shortlist and I know Angel felt the same. We even went so far as to start concocting a story for the care home about why you had to leave. We were going to tell them you’d been caught robbing an old lady’s house and were going to be sent to a young offenders’ unit.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome! It was Hector who went the full Simon Cowell. Said you weren’t up to it. Said you didn’t make the grade. Since we all have to agree who gets invited on selection, I’m afraid that meant you were out. But then you went all heroic on us.’

Max was so overwhelmed that for a moment he didn’t understand what Woody meant.

‘Striding Edge, Max?’ Woody prompted.

‘Oh,’ Max said. ‘That.’

‘Yeah. That. I heard you abseiled all the way down the northern slope.’

‘This guy went over. He had our sat phone.’

‘Nice. What abseil did you use?’

‘Dülfersitz.’

‘Ah. Would have been better to –’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Max said waspishly. ‘South African.’

‘Right!’ Woody said brightly. ‘Listen, we Watchers don’t get the last word. We have superiors. When you made that emergency call, it triggered certain alerts. Hector got his instructions to fetch you.’

‘They moved pretty fast.’

‘That’s what we do, Max. We move pretty fast.’ Woody wrinkled his misshapen nose. ‘This has all happened very quickly for you,’ he said. ‘We’ve lifted you out of a world you know and put you into a world you don’t. This isn’t something you have to do. The others were all given the opportunity to pull out before selection started – and some of them did. You have that opportunity too. Why don’t you sleep on it? Let us know in the morning if you want to carry on, or if you want to go back home.’

Max looked out of the window again, considering Woody’s words. Go back home? To what? Back to the care home, and the school where nobody wanted to be seen in the same corridor as him? Back to having no friends and zero life? No way.

‘I’m in,’ he said quietly.

‘That’s what I thought!’ Woody said with a grin. ‘If you pass, we can teach you the South African abseil in no time at all!’ He frowned. ‘It’s all rather unusual though. I’ve never seen anyone miss the first day of selection before. Looks like our bosses are happy to make an exception for you.’

‘How kind of them,’ Max said. The last of the cadets had traipsed dejectedly from the parade ground.