Come on, come on, Paul said silently to himself. He glanced at the clock. Three twenty-nine. One minute to go. There were two papers left in Mrs O’Leary’s hand. If she spent ten seconds with each student, then she had forty seconds to tell them the homework. But Paul knew from past experience that she wasn’t going to let them out on time and at that moment he wanted to punch Mrs O’Leary in the face so hard. He imagined the feel of his knuckle as it connected with her squishy jowl, her body ricocheting back, eyes wide with shock, that he, Paul – her top student – could exert such violence. But she always did this, raged Paul silently, just kept them back a few minutes past the bell. When she finally let the class go, Paul raced out to the bike rack, but he already knew what he would find. His bike had gone.

Bastards.

His dad was going to kill him.

*

Paul let himself into his house, praying that his mother wouldn’t be in. It had taken him over an hour to get home, leaning over his damaged bike, his ribs bruised. It was rare she wasn’t there when he got home from school, but it happened occasionally. He’d hidden the bike in the garden shed under some tarpaulin and hoped his father wouldn’t find it until he’d had a chance to fix it.

As he closed and locked the back door quietly behind him, he listened. Silence. His wounds and pride could bleed in private. After racing to the school bike rack and finding his bike gone, he’d searched the nearby bushes, hoping he could at least find it and get it fixed without his dad finding out. But it wasn’t there. He’d then spent almost half an hour searching the rest of the school grounds before finally walking to the end of the school field, which led to a patch of woods. Although the school field was gated to prevent kids going into the dense woodland, the students did it all the time during school break times, mainly to secretly smoke or drink. Occasionally a teacher would get their arse into gear and do their rounds as far as the woods but most of the time, they couldn’t be bothered.

Paul approached the woods cautiously. Slipping through the rungs of the flimsy fence, he picked up a nearby stick and started prodding the undergrowth, in the hope that his bike had been dumped. Fifteen minutes in and still nothing. He looked around him in despair. It would take him hours to search the woods and he still wasn’t even sure it was here. But just then, he’d heard a twig snap and he whirled around. Gavin and three of his gang stood there, grinning like apes, the mangled bike between them.