“Impatient, are we? Though you were tardy enough about coming to school. And are slow enough about learning your lessons.”

He unhooks the lamp and carries it closer, stands over him, bathing him in the beam.

“You know,” Julius mouths, so quietly only Thomas can hear, “I think I can see your Smoke even now. Steaming out of every little pore. It’s disgusting.

“But if you are so very impatient,” he goes on, louder again, his orator’s voice self-possessed and supple, “very well. I will make it easy for you. Your examination will be a single question. Does that suit you?”

Thomas nods, bracing himself, like you do when you expect to be punched. It is Charlie who later explains to him that it is better to unclench, absorb the hit like water.

“Go ahead, then. Ask.”

“Well, well.”

Julius makes to speak, stops, interrupts himself; turns the lamp around for a brief moment and lets its beam dance over the faces of the boys. Thomas sees Charlie for half a second; not long enough to read his expression. Then the beam is back in his eyes.

“You see,” Julius resumes, “the question I want to ask is not mine. It belongs to everyone. The whole school is asking it. Every boy who is in this room. Even the teachers have been asking it. Even your friend over there, though he mightn’t admit it. It is this: What is it that is so filthy about you, so unspeakably foul, that it made your parents ignore all custom and common sense and hide you away until your sixteenth year?

“Or,” he adds, more slowly yet, articulating every syllable, “is it that there is something vile, disgusting about them that they were afraid you’d disclose and spread?”

The question hits its mark: as an insult (to him, his family, the things he holds sacred) but more so as a truth, a spectre that has haunted half his life. It punctures his defences and goes to his core; wakes fear and anger and shame. The Smoke is there long before he can account for it. It is as though he is burning, burning alive without reason. Then he knows what it marks: he has hatred, murder in his heart.

Another boy would crumple with shame. Thomas leaps. Hits Julius, headfirst, sends the lamp crashing to the floor. Its flame, unextinguished, lights their struggle from one side. To the boys who are watching they are a single shadow projected ceiling-high against the wall, two-headed and monstrous. But to them, close to the lamp, everything is crystal clear. Thomas is smoking like a wet ember. His hands are fists, raining down on Julius. Insults stream from his mouth.

“You are nothing,” he keeps on saying, “nothing. A dog, a filthy dog, nothing.”