Again Charlie hesitates, then is grabbed by the sudden fear that the vicar will return, or some other customer, and make his query impossible.

“A tin of sweets.” He is rushing through the words so fast, he himself can hardly understand them. “Beasley and Son. If it’s no trouble.”

“What’s that?”

“Beasley and Son. A tin. Or just some loose sweets, if that’s how they come.”

The shopkeeper’s reaction is curious. The first thing he does is step away from Charlie, look him up and down. Reassess him. But he is still the same skinny schoolboy in the same tidy uniform, his collar freshly starched. Then the man looks behind Charlie, as though he suspects him of hiding a second person behind his back; then on past him, at the desolate street. His face is a mask of calculation.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” Smoke frames the words like a shroud. “You better pay and get out.”

And then, as Charlie stands counting out coins: “Who sent you here?”

“Nobody. I just— The teachers have them. I have seen the little tins. Just ordinary hard-boiled sweets. Like caramels, only clear. There was a delivery not long ago. .”

Charlie trails off, unsure how much information he should part with. The school’s affairs are private. Nobody has ever instructed him to treat them as such, but it is a rule all the same. It’s like any other family. When there are guests at dinner, certain things are not to be discussed.

“Look here,” the shopkeeper barks with particular emphasis, as though defending his good name, “if there was a delivery it wasn’t from here.”

More Smoke pours out of him, not thick but oddly smelly. It paints dark blotches on his collar. Again he looks Charlie up and down; again he stares past him, out at the street, searching it for accomplices.

“How much was there, boy? How many tins?”

Charlie shakes his head. “I don’t know. A crate, I believe.”

All at once the man is shouting, sweeping Charlie’s pennies off the counter so they scatter on the floor.

“You’re a liar, you are. Out. I will make a complaint, don’t think I won’t. Out, out!”