Striking to look at, with blond, almost white hair, and red-rimmed grey eyes, Vasily was a large-limbed Russian boy in his final year at the Phoenix. Tall for his age – he was thirteen – and with a disconcerting self-confidence, Vasily had put it about that he was a shoo-in for captain of the football team, having played two matches for them the previous season. To then see his name asterisked in the second XI for the match against Summer Fields was a humiliating shock for which he was ill-prepared, and it goaded Vasily to blame not himself or the coach, but whoever had usurped him. When Vasily scanned the team list, where his name should have been, his bulging glance read ‘Dyer, L.’ and ‘Marvar, S.’

On their own, the incidents were small. Dealt with one by one, Vasily’s tantrums would have been manageable. By not addressing them, a damaging relationship became normalised; and Dyer, to his shame, in not helping his son to navigate the waters with Vasily, had assisted.

Vasily’s reaction on discovering that he had been replaced by an eleven-year-old boy was to take Leandro into the playground and demand that he climb the flagpole in front of the others. No, refused Leandro, flushing, it was out of bounds, he would get in trouble with the teachers. But Vasily insisted in a menacing voice. It was a Phoenix tradition, anyone who got into the first XI two years early had to climb the pole. If Leandro didn’t climb it, he would be locked in the loo by the rest of the team and stripped.

When the inevitable happened, and Leandro crumpled to the tarmac, scraping his knee, a teacher ran up and demanded to know what he thought he was doing.

Vasily stood there, grey eyes blinking. Leandro, blood trickling, said nothing.

The attempted scaling of the flagpole had resulted in a visit to the school nurse, and in Leandro receiving his first Minus.

Dyer held back from making it a national incident. This was a stand-alone episode. Impatient of all kinds of bullying, he was indignant on Leandro’s behalf, but he made provision for Vasily’s resentment. Boys will be boys. Leandro had to learn to tough it out. No one had been tougher than the kids on the beach where Leandro had sharpened his football skills. It would make his son stronger. It had nothing to do with Vasily’s mother.

Leandro kept to himself what really was going on: that what Dyer hoped was merely an ad-hoc moment was the beginning of a concerted campaign to destroy his self-worth with a peer group of which Vasily was overlord.

It was Leandro’s history teacher who alerted Dyer. She suddenly turned to him and said: ‘Is Leandro OK?’

‘He’s had an earache.’

‘No, no, not that.’

Dyer gave her a quick look. ‘Why?’