At first he had thought that he’d done something wrong, but then, as she led him through the school towards the Victorian house where the headmaster lived, and he was taken into the headmaster’s own private rooms, where a stuffed pheasant sat in a glass case on a mantelpiece, there was the growing realisation that something terrible had happened. The matron was sitting there, hands folded in her lap, hardly able to look at him when he came in. The headmaster, standing, waiting for him. He’d knelt down on the carpet, to be on his level, and Tom remembered noticing his trousers riding up his shins.

Those words, passing in a blur. ‘I’m so sorry, Thomas. I’m afraid there’s been an accident.’

The tears. The hot chocolate given to him by the matron, the blankness of the evening, spent in the sick room, with the headmaster’s wife and the matron sitting alternately with him through the night.

The looks, the next day, from the rest of the boys and girls.

‘I’m getting some strange readings, William.’ His mother was frowning over the radar.

Tom’s father looked up and went over to the controls. ‘That looks like a storm coming on.’

‘It’s odd – there was nothing in the weather report.’ She pressed the button on the radio system. ‘It’s not working.’

‘Weird.’

The sky darkened. A powerful wind began to blow, as if from nowhere, and the boat rocked violently, sending cold spray across the decks.

Tom, even though he knew that he could not be harmed, grabbed on to a rope.

‘Can’t you change it?’ he said to Jack, who was looking on with imperturbable calm.

Jack shook his head. ‘Nothing can be changed.’

A wave crashed over the bows, drenching Tom’s mother and father. The boat pitched violently from side to side. Above them was now almost entirely dark, and the rain was hurtling down as harshly as hail. A sudden fork of lightning illuminated the boat, and Tom saw his mother and his father clutching each other.

‘Lifejackets!’

‘Take me away.’ Tom clutched at Jack. ‘Take me away, I don’t want to see, I don’t …’

‘You will remember their faces.’

‘I don’t want to remember them like this.’

Tossing from side to side, the boat was now at the top of a huge wave, and his parents slipped, grabbing on to the railings for support. Thunder crashed. Tom was almost blinded by the rain.

‘Take me away!’

Jack laughed, and Tom remembered his laughter for a long time, even as he stood back in Jack’s rooms, and tumbled, blindly, into a chair, it rang still in his ears.

Light striped the wooden floor. Tom saw the paraphernalia of Jack’s rooms as if it were veiled by a membrane. Something was trying to break through the skin. He remembered. Dark, carefully coiffed hair. Deep eyes. Silver eyes.