‘And others make a packet,’ Bernie replied contemptuously. ‘You should listen to yourself, Harry. “My cousin might be able to help. My uncle’s friend.” None of the people I know at home have cousins or uncles to help them rule huge chunks of Africa.’

‘And the socialists can run things better, can they? Those idiots MacDonald and Snowden?’

‘They’ve sold out. They’re weak. We need a stronger type of socialism, like they’ve got in Russia.’

Sandy looked up then and laughed. ‘D’you think Russia’s any better than here? It’s probably like this place, only worse.’

Harry frowned. ‘How can Rookwood be like Russia?’

Sandy shrugged. ‘A system built on bloody lies. They say they’re educating you, but they’re trying to drill you full of things they want you to know, just like the Russians with all their propaganda. They tell us when to go to bed, when to get up, how to talk, how to think. People like you don’t mind, Harry, but Piper and me are different.’ He looked at Bernie, his brown eyes alive with malicious humour.

‘You do talk a lot of shit, Forsyth,’ Bernie replied. ‘You think sneaking out late to go drinking with Piers Knight and his mates is being different. I want freedom for my class. And our day’s coming.’

‘And I suppose I’ll be on the way to the guillotine.’

‘Maybe you will.’

SANDY HAD FALLEN IN with a crowd of fourth-and fifth-formers who went to the local town to drink and, they said, meet girls. Bernie said they were all wastrels and Harry agreed although, after Taylor’s attempts to recruit him as a spy, he could see things a little from Sandy’s side: the black sheep, the boy who had to be kept an eye on; it wasn’t a status he envied. Sandy did as little work as possible; his attitude to the masters and his schoolwork one of barely veiled contempt.

That term, Harry took to going for walks on his own. It cleared his head to go ranging for miles over chalky Sussex woodlands. One damp November afternoon he turned a corner and was astonished to see Sandy Forsyth crouched on his haunches in the lane, turning a dark round stone over and over in his hands. He looked up.

‘Hello, Brett.’

‘What’re you doing? You’ve got chalk all over your blazer.’

‘Never mind that. Look here.’ He stood up and passed Harry the stone. At first it looked like a dark flinty rock but then he saw it was full of concentric circles, spiralling inwards.

‘What is it?’

Sandy smiled, not cynically as usual but broadly, a happy smile. ‘It’s an ammonite. A fossilized sea creature. Once all this was a sea and it was full of these, swimming about. When it died it sank to the bottom and over years its shell turned to rock. You can’t imagine how many years. Millions.’

‘I didn’t know fossils were like this. I thought they were big, dinosaurs.’

‘Oh, there were dinosaurs here too. The first dinosaur fossils were found near here a century ago, by a man called Mantell.’ Sandy’s smile turned sardonic. ‘Wasn’t popular in some circles. Fossils were a challenge to the Church’s idea the earth was only a few thousand years old. My dad still thinks God put the fossils in himself, to test men’s faith. He’s a very traditional Anglican.’

Harry had never seen Forsyth like this before. His face was alive with excited interest, his uniform streaked with chalk and his thick black hair, normally neatly combed, stood up in little tufts. He smiled. ‘I often come out fossil hunting. This is a good one. I don’t tell people – they’d think I was a swot.’

Harry studied the stone, cleaning mud from the whorls of the shell with his fingers. ‘It’s amazing.’ He thought it was beautiful, but you didn’t use words like that at Rookwood.

‘Come out with me some time if you like,’ Sandy said diffidently. ‘I’m building a collection. I’ve got a rock with a fly in it, three hundred million years old. Insects and spiders are as old as the dinosaurs, much older than us.’ He paused, reddening slightly at his display of enthusiasm.

‘Are they?’

‘Oh, yes.’ He looked out over the Downs. ‘They’ll be here when we’ve gone.’

‘Taylor’s frightened of spiders.’

Sandy laughed. ‘What?’

‘I found out once.’ Harry reddened, he wished he hadn’t said that.

‘Stupid old bugger. I’m going to go in for hunting fossils when I leave this dump, go on expeditions to places like Mongolia.’ He grinned. ‘I want to have adventures, far away from here.’

AND SO THEY became friends of a sort. They went on long walks hunting fossils and Harry learned about the life that had heaved and rolled in the ancient seas that had flowed where they stood. Sandy knew a lot. Once he found the tooth of a dinosaur, an iguanodon, buried in the side of a quarry. ‘They’re rare,’ he said gleefully. ‘And they’re worth money. I’ll take it up to the Natural History Museum in the hols.’

Money was important to Sandy. His father made him a generous allowance, but he wanted more. ‘It means you can do what you want in life,’ he said. ‘When I’m older I’m going to make a packet.’

‘Hunting dinosaur bones?’ Harry asked. They were exploring one of the old iron workings dotted around the woods. Sandy studied the horizon, the bare brown trees. It was an early winter’s day, still and cold.

‘I’ll make my fortune first.’

‘I suppose I don’t think much about money.’

‘Piper would say that’s because you’ve got plenty. We all have here. But it’s our families’ money. I want to make my own.’

‘My money was left me by my father. I wish I’d known him, he was killed in the war.’

Sandy’s eyes went back to the horizon. ‘My dad was a padre on the Western Front. Telling all those soldiers God was with them before they went over the top. My brother Peter is following in his footsteps, he’s at theological college now and then he’s going to join the army. He was Head Boy at Braildon, Head of Games, Greek Prize, all that.’ Sandy’s face darkened. ‘But he’s stupid, as stupid with his religion as Piper is with his socialism. It’s all nonsense.’ He turned and looked at Harry and there was something strange, fierce, in his eyes. ‘My mother left when I was ten, you know. They don’t talk about it but I think it was because she couldn’t stand all the rubbish. She used to say she wanted some fun in life. I remember feeling sorry for her, I knew she didn’t have any.’

Harry felt uncomfortable. ‘Where is she now?’ he asked.

He shrugged. ‘They don’t know. Or won’t say.’ He grinned broadly, showing square white teeth. ‘You need some fun in life, she was right. Why don’t you come out with me and my crowd? There’s some girls we meet in the town.’ He raised his eyebrows.

Harry hesitated. ‘What do you do?’ he asked diffidently. ‘When you’re with them?’

‘Everything.’

‘Everything? Really?’

Sandy laughed. He jumped off the rock he’d been sitting on and slapped Harry on the arm. ‘No, not really. But we will, one day. I want to be the first.’

Harry kicked a stone. ‘I don’t want to get into trouble, it’s not worth it.’

‘Come on.’ Harry felt the force of Sandy’s personality bearing down on him. ‘I plan it all, make sure we always leave when there’s no one around, never go anywhere the masters might come – or if they did, would be more worried than us about being seen.’ He laughed.

‘Some dive? I’m not sure I fancy that.’

‘We won’t get caught. I got caught breaking the rules at Braildon, I’m more careful now. It’s fun, knowing they’re out to get you and you’ve got them fooled.’

‘What did you get sacked for? At Braildon?’

‘I was in the town and this master caught me coming out of a pub. He reported me and I got all the usual stuff, why couldn’t I be like my brother, how much better than me he was.’ The hard angry look came into Sandy’s eyes again. ‘I got him back, though.’

‘What did you do?’

Sandy sat down again and folded his arms. ‘This master, Dacre, he was young. He had this little red car. He thought he was the bee’s knees, driving about in it. I know how to drive; I sneaked out one night and took it out of the masters’ garage. There’s a steep hill near the school. I drove the car right to the edge, jumped out, and over it went.’ Sandy smiled, his happy smile, all white teeth. ‘It was amazing watching it go down the hill, smashing up bushes. It hit a tree and the front caved in like cardboard.’