‘I did the crime, all right, if you can call it that.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I was shifting stolen goods for somebody, that’s all. Wrong place, wrong time. You’ll know the feeling.’

‘Yeah, I do, sir.’

‘Well, don’t worry. It won’t set you back for ever. I’m not going to let it.’

Any doubts that Charlie might’ve had about the Mayhoods and their contest had been washed out in the rain. What sort of barrel-scraping architects went searching for apprentices at borstal? Were they looking for cheap labour? Someone they could boss around and torment? Were they skinflints? Desperate? In dire straits? When he’d seen that missing limb, it had occurred to him that something wasn’t quite as advertised. This one-armed architect was trying to recruit a dogsbody to clean his house and shine his shoes. There’d be no draughting work and no profession at the end of it. There had to be a negative he wasn’t seeing. But, that grey afternoon, he’d stopped mistrusting his own happiness.

‘If we had room and work enough to go around, we’d take a hundred of you,’ Mr Mayhood had explained it. ‘I’m not daft enough to think that every kid in borstal has the skill to be an architect, but I’m certain that they all deserve a chance to learn. I know what a place like this can do to you. You’ll have it tough sometimes, and they can work you like a mule, but they’ll still treat you with respect. In Feltham, there were lads you’d never even look at in the corridor in case they beat you down, but then you’d see them working on the lathe in hobby hour and they’d have a peacefulness about them – they’d go whistling round the workshop, never bothering a soul. That’s what a sense of purpose gives you. Just to know you’re good at something other than the things you grow up having to be good at, out of sheer necessity, or else because somebody’s breathing down your neck. I’m sure there must be lads in here who you avoid – you’re probably right to. Some can’t raise a smile for anything but violence. I’ve seen the way it goes. A lot of kids like that are just too damaged to put back together. But the point is: they weren’t born that way. The world’s what did it to them. Pain and suffering. Neglect. The loss of things. There’s no one reason lads wind up in here. A lot of them have more of an excuse than others. But what matters is the way that you emerge from it. Believe me, with a little help, there’s nothing you can’t do when you get out of a place like this.’

A few weeks after that, a parcel had arrived for him at Huntercombe. He’d opened it to find a large tin of tobacco, ciggie papers and a book, The Architect in History by M. S. Briggs. There’d been a pencilled note: Dear Charlie, Just some things to keep you out of trouble until June. Best wishes from the Mayhoods. The library index card was still glued to the inside page: the Liverpool School of Architecture.