Ben looked at the others, who were smiling in the same way Callum was. Ben, after a moment, smiled back.

‘So, what’s your story?’ Callum asked him.

They’d settled on the ground at the edge of what Ben had come to realise was a graveyard. It was the first time he’d ventured into the woods, even though he knew pupils were allowed anywhere in the grounds. When he’d approached the woods before, there’d been something about the ancient trees – their jagged branches and twisted trunks – that didn’t look right, as though they’d grown from soil that was noxious and rotten. He felt braver in the others’ company, but the graves didn’t exactly help. Ben’s mum had been buried – he recalled having to stand by his dad and watch her coffin being lowered into the ground – and all he could remember thinking through his tears was, what if they’d made a mistake? What if she wasn’t dead, and inside the coffin she was screaming, begging for someone to let her out? Now, every time Ben saw a grave, that was what he thought about: his mother, trapped forever beneath the earth, and what it must feel like to be buried alive.

He shifted, turning his back on the graves as best he could, and using the movement to disguise a shiver that had nothing to do with the chill in the air.

Melissa passed him the joint she’d rolled, and he accepted it between nervous fingers.

‘My story?’ he said to Callum. ‘What do you mean?’ He took a puff of the joint because he knew he was expected to, but he didn’t inhale. He’d tried weed before – it was the reason he’d been kicked out of the school before Beaconsfield, which at least made a change from truancy and fighting – and he didn’t like the way it made him feel. Adrift. Untethered. Faintly sick. Precisely the sensations, in other words, he spent most of his life trying to suppress. He fake-puffed a second time, and then passed the joint to Lance.

‘Your old man, for example,’ Callum said. ‘What does he do?’

Ben gave a snort. ‘He doesn’t do anything,’ he replied. ‘He calls himself an entrepreneur, but as far as I can tell he basically spends his time looking for new ways to lose money.’

The others laughed. Ben blinked, then smiled, pleased with himself.

‘What about your mum?’ asked Lance. This time Ben turned abruptly, the way he’d become accustomed to doing whenever anyone mentioned his mum, ready to defend her if he needed to. But Lance merely squinted as he smoked, watching and waiting for Ben’s answer. Ben thought he’d detected a challenge in Lance’s tone, but decided he must have imagined it.