That was true. The cost of this trip to the Lake District was £500. Max was an orphan, and lived in a residential care home in Newcastle. His parents had died when he was a baby. He couldn’t even remember them. A social worker had once told him that their house had gone up in flames and the firefighters had to make a choice: Max or his parents. That was all he knew. While the staff in the care home did their best for him, they could never be the family he craved. And there was nobody else. No grandparents, uncles, aunts or cousins to fill in the story of his life or send him presents for Christmas, like the lonely one that had just passed. No family friends to tell him what his mum and dad had looked like, or what sort of people they were. Not even any belongings or photographs. They’d all been destroyed in the fire.

And he had no money, of course. He could never have afforded a trip like this. When Mrs Barclay, the Combined Cadet Force teacher, had told him that his school would pay, Max had gratefully accepted. In fact, he was the most able CCF student at St Andrew’s School. He relished what the other kids moaned about – the fitness sessions, the drills, the field trip that had taken them climbing in the Peak District. The tougher the CCF teachers made things, the more Max enjoyed it. That, and living in a care home, made him a bit of a freak at school. Most people went out of their way to avoid him. He spent break times alone and he was never invited to parties. But it didn’t bother Max. He was fit, strong and agile and he had a plan: to join the army. It was all he had ever wanted to do. In his dreams, the army would be the family and friends he’d never known. And while a week’s climbing in the Lake District was not exactly the German Alpine Guides course that Max knew members of the SAS were sent on, it was still his idea of heaven.

If only he didn’t have to put up with the others on the trip – four boys, three girls – who insisted on calling him ‘orphan boy’ after he’d let slip his circumstances early on the first day. The nasty comments had started immediately. But Max was used to it, and well practised at ignoring insults.

‘Hey, orphan boy, nobody wants to sleep next to you in the dorm,’ Angus McKay had said that night.

‘Hey, orphan boy,’ Suze Roberts had smirked as they sat down to dinner, ‘bet this is the most food you’ve seen in a month.’