The future seemed a scary thing, then, obscured as it was by the darkness of unpredictability. I had the sense of my life, and Peter’s, slipping out of our hands. And while we’d had no control over our incarceration in The Dean, the place had provided, in that last year, a degree of comfort, if only in the brutal certainty of its routine.

Time passed both slowly and quickly. Every time I checked my watch it seemed only five minutes later. And then suddenly it was fifteen minutes to midnight. I wondered if, at the last, I had somehow dozed off without realising it. But now my heart was hammering away, beating right up into my throat, nearly choking me. It was time to go.

I slipped out from between the sheets, fully dressed, and pulled on my shoes. They had thick rubber soles that I hoped would give me some grip. I tied my laces with trembling fingers and jiggled Peter by the shoulder. To my irritation it took him some time to wake up. When finally he had shaken himself free of sleep and some undeservedly happy dream, the memory of what we were to be about that night returned to him, and his eyes shone with anticipation. “Time to go?” he whispered loudly.

I put my finger to my lips and glared at him.

It wasn’t until we reached the door of the dormitory that I realized just how many others were awake, too. Voices whispered in the dark.

“Good luck, Johnny.”

“Show the fucker what the Dean boys are made of.”

I felt like saying, “You fucking show him!”

Catherine was waiting for us at the foot of the cellar stairs. She had a torch with her, and shone it in our faces as we came down. It almost blinded me.

“For God’s sake put that away!” I raised my hand to shade my eyes. And then, when the light went out, plunging us into darkness again, almost fell. “Jesus!”

“You’re late!” she whispered. “It’s scary as hell down here. Something keeps making strange clunking noises. And there are things scurrying about the floor. I’m sure it’s rats.”

I slid back the bolt to release the door, and felt the cold night air rush in as I opened it. There was a real smell of winter on its leading edge, and I could see stars, like pinholes in the black sheet that was the sky, revealing an imagined light that lay behind it. A light that was reflected in the frost that glistened all across the black of the tarmac. Heaven perfectly mirrored on earth. Or hell perfectly reflected above.