‘He doesn’t seem very happy right now. I’ve noticed he’s withdrawn a lot. He was far friendlier to begin with, and he’s not a shy boy.’

Leandro had been flailing a bit in his work, it was true. The peeling away of academic kids at the start of the second year had left him in a lower class. Supremely fluent on his feet, uninhibited, with a quick intelligence, he fumbled, however, with Wordsworth and the Napoleonic Wars. Dyer wondered if the malaise was due to that.

‘Leandro, is there anything you’d like me to help you with?’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure?’

Silence.

His son, although diligent, had always been temperamental. He shared Dyer’s tendency to be moody, which expressed itself when he was hungry or tired, or was asked a question that he didn’t want to answer.

‘Leandro?’

‘Dad …’ he said, on a warning note.

If it unsettled Dyer to see Leandro exhibiting characteristics he shared, then it also blinded him. He attributed his son’s subdued behaviour to longer days at school, to Leandro’s flu which had given him a painful ear infection, and to his own malaise at the sound of winter slamming against the panes, the chill dark afternoons – weather for reading and taking notes, and not much else.

Dyer did not uncover what was going on until, arriving to collect his son one afternoon, and unable to prevent his glance sweeping the playground for Katya, he came upon a stricken-looking boy who reeled towards him. At first, he failed to recognise the disconsolate figure, then the faded uniform began to register. Exactly as his parents had done, Dyer had purchased this second-hand, from a room behind School House which opened at odd hours and was staffed by vultures who volunteered in order to pick through the best stuff. The stacks had shrunk to a few items by the time Dyer turned up. Almost all new boys wore pristine dark blue corduroys; Leandro’s were weathered, greyish, the colour of the February sky.

‘Leandro!’

He was biting down on his lip and his eyes were shining. Behind him, a group continued to kick a football around with exaggerated concentration. A tall, fair-haired boy, who seemed to be their leader, turned and smiled at Dyer. A knowing, mocking smile, emanating a malicious energy that escorted Dyer back to the favelas.

Leandro’s nose was still running by the time they returned to Jericho. It was alien to his nature to snitch, but in trickles and half-sentences he choked out what had happened in the instant before Dyer appeared. How the other boys had looked to Vasily, saying, ‘Can Leandro join us?’ How Vasily, shining with self-satisfaction, replied sneeringly, ‘Not today, sorry. You’re rubbish at football. Come back when you’re better.’