‘Which leaves the function rooms like soft play and the speech therapy place for me and Gracie,’ said Raj. ‘You want us in the least likely places to see action, since we’re the least effective soldiers.’

‘Shut up, Raj.’

‘It’s true though, isn’t it? I can read you like a book.’

‘Raj, you can’t even read an actual book.’

Kate took a deep breath. Her wits were returning. Maybe it was the casual insults thrown at her boyfriend that woke her up. She looked around the group, back on their feet at the brow of the hill and sheltered behind the tree line.

‘So… what about me?’ asked Jack.

‘Keep guard here.’

‘What, so I have to miss out?’

‘You get to protect us. Alert us if you see—’

‘Is this because I talked to you about—’

‘—alert us if you see anything approaching. Or any activity that’s not us.’

Kate did not understand why Ewan was so irritated with Jack, or what they had talked about that could have caused the tension between them. Jack shook his head, the hair beneath his helmet waving across his face in messy protest.

‘Just do yourself a favour, yeah?’ he asked.

‘What?’ said Ewan.

‘If this place is abandoned, they’ve probably finished the testing already. When you’re close to the entrance, throw a bullet first and see if it blows up. Don’t walk gun-first into a shield that detonates metal.’

Ewan nodded, and Kate heard him whisper something to himself under his breath. Then, with no words of encouragement for his team, without even repeating the mission criteria, he started his walk down the hill, followed by Kate and the rest of the students.

This has got to him . A lready.

The emotional impact of the night was probably compounded by the fact that there had been no changing of the guard at three o’clock. Ewan had relied on the enemies’ routine for his strategy, and the rug had been pulled from underneath his plans. More than that, it suggested that the building had not been guarded in the first place, and they had wasted three hours of their time outside an empty building.

Kate understood his frustration. When one thing bothered her, it bothered her. When several things bothered her at once, she lost her capacity to think. Both she and Ewan reaped the benefits and suffered the consequences of autistic single-mindedness, and were unable to focus on two different sources of anxiety. Ewan could have coped with the emotional strain of seeing Oakenfold, or the sudden change of circumstances, but not both.