The noise wakes the dog. It jumps to its feet, presses its ears flat against the side of its head, arches its back, then spins on its feet, trying to identify the source of danger. But Charlie has already retreated to the door. He lets himself out, the brown paper bag with his sweets in one hand. Outside, released from the atmosphere of boiled sugar and caramelized nuts, the cold air hits him like a slap. Through the window he sees the man shouting, shaking his fist above his head. The high, quivering yelp of his dog falls in with the man and follows Charlie down the street. Then the wind picks up and scatters their noise. All the same, it’s only at the edge of town that Charlie stops running.

The road to school seems longer on his return.

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Charlie tells him everything, starting with the letter. Thomas listens distractedly at first, then with ever greater intensity, biting off pieces of liquorice from an uncoiled snail.

“So what do you think?” Charlie asks when he’s finished his account.

“These are disgusting. You should have bought sherbets.”

“Be serious, Thomas.” But he can see from his friend’s face that he is, really; that he is thinking it over.

“I don’t know,” Thomas decides when the liquorice is gone. “Some sort of drug, maybe. Like opium.”

“Can’t be. You can buy opium in any pharmacy. Or laudanum, which is the same thing.”

“Something different then. More powerful than opium. Hence: forbidden.” Thomas shrugs. “We won’t really know until we get our hands on some. Here’s the thing, though. The shopkeeper knows about it. And so does your mother.”

Charlie bites his lip.

“Yes,” he says. “I think so too.”

“So everybody knows. It’s only we idiots who are kept in the dark.”

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Two days later Trout summons Charlie. He does not send Cruikshank: it’s a note he finds in his pigeonhole, unsigned. Report to the headmaster. Seven o’clock sharp. The note is so beyond precedence that right away Charlie knows he is in trouble. There is nothing, of course, that can be done. He will have to go. Trout will ask him how he came to hear of Beasley and Son. If Charlie mentions Cruikshank, Cruikshank will get the sack. If he does not, he will be in disgrace and make acquaintance with the dentist’s chair. A tribunal seems possible. A letter to his parents will already be in the post.

As he sits at dinner, sawing forlornly at the lukewarm cutlet in front of him, Charlie watches an invisible wall spring up between him and his fellow students. Already he is set apart: they just don’t know it yet. Thomas would understand this feeling, but Thomas isn’t here. Charlie has not seen him since breakfast. There is no one to help him make sense of his fall, from good boy to pariah.

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