In the corridor after the lesson was over, it got worse. One boy bumped him with his shoulder, and then a foot from behind hooked one of Ben’s ankles, sending him sprawling. His books skidded across the floor, and as he landed amid the laughter, Ben saw another boy deliberately veer to trample on them. By the time Ben was back on his feet, the culprits had disappeared among the crowd of leering faces. Not that it mattered who was responsible – clearly no one wanted Ben here, any more than he’d ever been wanted anywhere.

That evening, he returned to his dorm to find his bed sheets sodden. He felt the dampness with his fingers, and when he raised them tentatively to his nose, he immediately gagged.

‘Who was it?’ he raged, spinning. ‘Which one of you did it? Which one of you pissed on my bunk?’

He was met by a roomful of faces doing their best not to smile. The dozen or so other boys in the dorm were sprawled nonchalantly on their beds, or huddled in corners playing cards. They all knew who’d done it. They must have. But the silence was clearly the only answer Ben was going to get.

He dropped what he was carrying on to the floor – his books, after all, were ruined anyway – and took three angry steps towards the centre of the room. ‘I said, which one of you did it? You better tell me or I’ll … I’ll …’

‘Ben?’

He whipped around at the sound of the voice. Callum and Lance – the two boys Ben had met, together with Melissa, on the day of his arrival – were standing just inside the door.

‘Is everything OK?’ said Callum.

Ben felt his flush deepening, his rage turning to humiliation. Even though he hadn’t spoken to Callum and the others since he’d stepped from his father’s car, he’d seen them around campus – the three of them invariably together, always slightly apart from the other pupils. Almost two weeks into Ben’s time at Beaconsfield, they remained the only people – teachers or students – who’d been even vaguely kind to him, and he’d been trying to pluck up the courage to speak to them again. They were in the year above Ben, he’d found out, which didn’t help, and he didn’t want them to think that he was desperate. He didn’t need friends. He never had. But just sometimes, it would be nice to have someone on his side.

Lance had noticed the wet patch on Ben’s bed. He didn’t make the mistake of touching it, as Ben had, but his wrinkled nose showed that he’d worked out what it was. He seemed to silently convey the information to Callum, who’d moved to Ben’s side and joined him in looking around the room. This time, Ben noticed, the other boys all dropped their eyes.