Melissa gave a squeal of delight. Lance grinned. Only Callum continued to look at him oddly, and Ben suddenly had a feeling that the boy could somehow see inside him: past the bravado, and the fear, and straight to the parts of him he always tried to keep hidden.

‘What did they want?’ said Ben’s dad, after he’d emerged from the main building. He watched Melissa and the others suspiciously as they drifted across the car park towards the school.

Ben shrugged. ‘Nothing much,’ he said. ‘Just saying hello.’

His father’s eyes tightened even further. ‘To you?’

Ben felt a familiar knot of rage balling within him. He could even feel it in his face: little flowers of heat that bloomed on his skin whenever he got angry, no matter how hard he tried to suppress them.

His dad, as ever, didn’t even notice. Didn’t care about Ben one way or another: not what he felt, nor what he did. All his dad cared about was money – of finding new ways to lose it, basically – and his only concern when it came to Ben was not having to get involved. This, the increasingly familiar routine of dropping Ben off at a new boarding school, was the closest they ever came to father-and-son time. In fact, Ben had been keeping count, and the hour and a half they had spent in the car driving out here was the most time he and his dad had spent alone together in the past twelve months. And it had been clear from his father’s demeanour – the frosty silence, the muttered curses at almost every other driver they’d encountered – that he’d resented every second.

He was still staring after Melissa, Callum and Lance. ‘They look like trouble,’ he declared, which almost made Ben laugh. His dad, passing judgement, when every single relationship he’d ever forged, whether in business or in his personal life, sooner or later turned to shit.

‘You stay away from them, do you hear?’ his dad insisted, oblivious to the irony. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘you’re not here to make friends. You’re here to get an education. Is that understood?’

Ben didn’t bother replying. He didn’t need to. There were some things he understood perfectly.

Monday 21 October, 9.56 a.m.

They were at the mortuary, waiting on Randy.

The pathologist had apparently been caught on a phone call, and one of his juniors had shown them into what she’d called the bereavement room. ‘There’s no one else in there,’ she’d told them. ‘And it’s more comfortable than anywhere else I can offer you. If you get bored you can always look at the fish.’