‘Bye, see you later,’ she said as she left the room.

Donny was bewildered, not sure what to do next. He shook his head and sighed, then sat there alone gathering his thoughts.

By the end of the day everybody knew Donny’s name – his street cred had gone through the roof. Suddenly everyone wanted to be his mate, to talk to him, hang out with him – including Bethany. But what mattered most to him was the fact he’d finally found his voice, stood up for himself. Nobody would ever make him feel like that again, ever. Trevor Beats’ mother picked him up, took him home. He never came back – which suited everyone else just fine. Let a new school deal with his crap.

There was an investigation – of course – but a pretty half-hearted one. The teachers seemed to be as pleased as the kids that Beats was off their books. And besides, no one was saying a word. It was impossible to get to the bottom of what had actually happened, and while they had their suspicions, they let the whole thing drop pretty sharpish.

Overnight Donny seemed to go from zero to hero and Bethany – never backwards in coming forwards – was at the front of the queue when it came to joining the Donny fan club. He carried on seeing her for a while – who wouldn’t? – at one point he even thought it might be love, but that faded soon enough. She was hard work – always blowing hot and cold. She kept comparing him to her old boyfriends, nagged him to do things he didn’t want to, like drinking and smoking. He ended it a few months later, he’d had enough. Bethany went ballistic when he told her it was over, cried her eyes out telling him she loved him, but she didn’t mean it, he was able to see through her power games by then. She just didn’t want to be the one being dumped.

It was lucky for Donny that his dad got a new job in Manchester and the whole family had to up sticks and leave Derbyshire behind. That was the last he heard of her or Trevor. He wanted no memories from the days when he was a victim. He was going start afresh, happy to leave his old life behind. Maybe that was why he understood the kids at Second Chance. Everyone deserved to be able to start over.

Second Chance was modern, had most of what you would expect to see in any mainstream school, with a few things you wouldn’t usually find too. Security was tighter and the kids needed places for time-outs, places to cool off when tempers frayed. Every student there was hard work in their own way, each carrying their own issues. It meant no two days were ever the same and Donny had to have his eye on the ball every second.