The furthest fire door is better. From there, you can see a little garden with smallish trees and more buildings. I stared out for ages at the sky. I realised I was looking for a spark of light or a flash of pinky blue. But there was nothing.

Through another fire door and along another corridor, everything was still silent apart from a bluebottle flying in a square shape along the ceiling.

Nobody came, so I carried on to the main window in the entrance hall. Grey buildings stood on little stilts straight across from the main building. Loads of them, as far left and right as you could see. ‘Appropriate Settings’. Not prisons.

I tried another door. Locked.

Then there were footsteps, soft ones, coming towards me.

‘Good morning, Alfie – you’re up and about early! How are you doing?’

It was a lady I hadn’t met before, so not sure how she knew my name.

‘Hello,’ I said. My voice sounded high and thin.

‘Breakfast isn’t for a while yet, but we need you to be dressed before you eat it, so why don’t you get ready quietly, then have a proper look around. It must feel horrible there with your cold, bare feet.’

It does feel horrible here, but my feet have nothing to do with it.

The dining room here is small compared to the one at school. Everyone piled in at the same time. I was the only new one, and the other boys stared. I sat next to someone with tramlines in his hair, who never spoke a word. One of them coughed all the time. It came out like a bark.

I had Weetabix and toast. Then the man who’d been watching over us at breakfast – Mr Francis – said, ‘Jack, please can you lead out today,’ and everyone followed this one boy out of the dining room, across the hall and through the front door into the open air.

I’d been dying to get out into the light, but in seconds, we arrived at one of the grey buildings on stilts. They’d looked like spare classrooms because that’s what they were. We had school. I couldn’t believe it. School in the summer holidays! It’s barbaric.

The teacher, Mr Francis, is short with brown curly hair and a round face. There’s something so smooth and peaceful about him. He reminds me of an actor from one of Mum and Dad’s old comedy shows. He looks at us as if he expects fantastic things. Don’t know how he’s lasted in the job, because someone probably disappoints him every single day.