A cough made him look up. A boy he didn’t recognise was standing on the gravel path in front of him. Almost eight hundred boys attended the school. Tom, being in the lower sixth form, did not come across many of the younger ones; but he knew most of them by sight. There was something distinctive about this one, though, and Tom wondered why he hadn’t noticed him around. He would have remembered him.

Tom couldn’t tell how old the boy was. He was very pale, with short black hair oddly combed so that it lay almost flat to his skull, and a snub nose. He looked like he might be in one of the junior forms, but a challenge in his eyes suggested otherwise.

Big fawn’s eyes and long trembling lashes. His uniform didn’t quite fit him, the purple jacket with its absurd gold stripes hanging off his shoulders; his tie in the school colours, green and grey, done up askew.

The badge on his blazer was odd. Instead of the school crest it showed a small square inside another square and another one inside that.

The boy was holding something to his chest, arms tightly across it. Tom wasn’t in the mood to be disturbed and savagely dragged a hand through his long blond hair, letting it fall across his eyes before blowing it away in displeasure. ‘Shouldn’t you have left?’ he snapped. ‘Everyone else has.’

The boy didn’t reply. Instead, he uncrossed his arms and offered up what was in his hands.

At first Tom ignored him. But there was a tightness in the boy’s shoulders. An insistence.

Tom took it carefully.

It was a letter. A heavy cream envelope of a type Tom hadn’t seen for years. The address was written in spidery ink.

‘Where did you get this?’ Tom straightened. ‘Did you take it from my pidge?’ The boy didn’t answer.

It was clearly addressed to him:

Master Thos. Swinton

Downshire College

There was no postcode, no county.

The boy shifted slightly, as if expecting something. Tom continued to stare at the letter. There was a silence around him; everything seemed so still, and he could hear no birds. Even the litter-picker seemed to have paused, deep in thought, and a cloud hung partway over the sun.

Thos? What did that mean? Nobody had ever called him Thos.

He turned the heavy letter over and was surprised to see that it was sealed with scarlet wax, which bore the imprint of a heraldic animal like a leopard’s head. He didn’t want to break the seal, but after a second’s thought, he slid his finger under it and opened the letter, leaving the body of the wax intact.

There was a single piece of thick card inside and two other small bits of orange card which fluttered out. Tom caught them without giving them a glance.