He would do it. Filled with sudden energy, he found a small rucksack and packed it with a week’s worth of clothes and a toothbrush and his mobile phone charger and a couple of books. He also placed in it a small folder, in which he kept a photograph of himself with his mother and father, and a few other keepsakes, including notes and cards they had written to him.

He tried not to look at the photograph for too long.

Tom waited, reading and scrolling through messages on his phone, until White Quad bell had struck midnight, and then crept down the corridor to the stairs to the tower door, which led outside.

He would go down to the stile now, hide the bag and be back without anyone noticing.

The night was still and the short stretch of grass between him and the path was cast into silver. To his right, Fletcher’s rooms were mostly darkened. A light shone in what must have been one of the older boys’ rooms, and he could hear the faint bleeps and calls of a multi-player computer game in progress. There was a tremendous coughing, and Tom saw the silhouette of his housemaster behind the screen of his bathroom blind.

As soon as Tom got onto the path that led to the farmer’s fields, he had a sudden sensation that the school had entirely vanished and that he was alone, surrounded by nothing but darkness for miles.

To reassure himself, he turned and saw the bulk of the school building looming as it always had done, angular and vast.

As the school receded into the darkness while he walked onwards, he started to feel almost lighthearted. Any worries he might have had about being discovered, or what might happen when Fletcher found out he had absconded, disappeared into the cool night. He whistled and was delighted to hear an owl hooting in what seemed like response.

He came to a place where the scrubby path curved and passed round the bend, stretching a hand out to lop off the top of a tall grass and letting the feathery part idly fall to the ground.

In the middle of the path, draped in a long cloak, someone was standing, facing away from him. Tom halted.

Could it be one of the masters, out for a night stroll? Hardly likely. It might be the farmer. Or it might be a would-be burglar casing the school.

But that cloak. No farmer or burglar would wear a cloak.

The figure was tall, and unusually slender. Tom would have to pass by it to carry on; either that or he’d have to scramble through the hedge on his right and make his way through the field.

Cloak swirling, the figure turned.