I soon realised the youngest boy in the group was the most experienced. ‘Well done, Ali,’ Shaun said, beaming down at him. Ali Bashar was short, plump and meekly acquiescent, but he managed to work his way through half-a-dozen potatoes in the time it took everybody else to peel just one. He was an experienced kitchenhand, lovingly trained. I wondered what on earth he was doing on Finch Island.

‘According to his parents, he won’t come out of his room,’ Shaun had told me. ‘Skips school. Talks back. Spends all his time on the computer. Sounds like he’s a target, but that’s okay. We’ll send him home with a load of self-confidence and various techniques he can use against bullying. You watch—we can work wonders with kids like Ali.’

I hoped so, but I had my doubts.

‘What the fuck are you doing, Marcus?’ Connor’s voice pricked like a needle. ‘You’re only meant to peel off the skin.’

‘I’m getting rid of this brown spot,’ said the redhead. He had a thick, muffled way of talking. ‘Don’t I have to?’

‘Not by peeling everything off! If you keep doing that, you’ll be down to a bloody pea there soon, not a potato!’

I caught a glimpse of Marcus on my way to the stove, his face reddening beneath the acne. Rhys said to him, ‘You’re okay, mate. We’ll dig out your brown spot with a knife.’

‘What a fucking idiot,’ Connor scoffed—and that was when Marcus took a swing at him.

But Rhys was too quick. He blocked the punch before it landed. ‘Oi,’ he said. ‘No.’

‘He called me a fucking idiot!’

‘Because he’s trying to get at you.’ Shaun began to lecture Marcus as I lowered my pot of water onto a hob. ‘He’s only doing it to make himself feel good. It’s a sign of weakness.’ Turning to Connor, Shaun said, ‘What makes you so superior, Mr Pusnik? I don’t see many potatoes in your bucket. Not like Ali’s.’

Connor flushed and hit back. ‘So? Ali’s a food person. Look how fat he is.’

Ali winced. Rhys’s face tightened.

Shaun adopted a weary tone. ‘Every time I hear this kind of thing, I look at the person who said it and think: there’s someone who feels worthless. Who feels so bad about himself that he needs to make other people feel even worse.’

A sudden squawk made my head snap around. Nathan was dripping blood. He held up his peeler, which had a shred of his own skin stuck to its blade.

‘Look,’ he said with a sickly grin. ‘It works.’

There were hisses and squeals from everyone except the two veterans, who always coped beautifully in moments of high drama.