Ged could hear his mother huffing and puffing outside his room and figured he’d better do as he was told for once. It was such an effort to get dressed. Maybe he should have gone to sleep earlier, not that he’d ever have admitted it. But he wasn’t going to miss out on all the action and the banter with his mates online. His legs wobbled as he put his trousers on and he fell back onto the bed. He started to pick at the bits of fluff from the top of the trousers. Maybe he needed some new ones; his mother had already let the hem down, put some of that Wundaweb stuff on them until she could afford some new ones. To be fair, you could hardly see the lines at the bottom, but he knew they were there – a constant reminder that his family were skint, potless. He flicked the fuzz ball across the room and lay back on the bed staring at the ceiling. There was no way he was rushing about. His mother could take a running jump if she thought he was ever going to be a star pupil; that would never happen, not now, not ever. Education was not his thing, none of that studying and revising for exams crap. Ged stared back up at the damp ceiling, black fungus crawling across it like a disease spreading through a body. His eyes pricked with tears – he had no idea why – he had to lift his head up to control his emotions. He was always filling up like this, it just happened. Maybe it was his hormones. His hand rummaged under the thin lumpy pillow and he pulled out a photograph of a middle-aged man. His touch was gentle, holding the picture like he didn’t want to spoil it in any shape or form. He studied it for a few seconds, stared at the image. His eyes closed and his mind was away with the fairies until he heard more noises outside his room. He rammed the snap back under his pillow; this was his treasure, the one thing that meant something to him, well, apart from his Xbox. He looked over to the window where he could see the grey clouds hanging low in the sky. It was like a grey blanket of despair creeping slowly over the top of the houses.