Yesterday’s tormentors converged on him. “Found them yet?” said the boy with the tidemarked upper lip.

“What?” Jonathan was distracted enough to wonder.

“They’re a what now, are they?” said the boy whose chin flourished a lone hair. “Thought it was a who you lost.”

“She died,” Jonathan said, hoping that would silence them. “My grandma.”

“Was she old?” That sounded sympathetic until the greyish-lipped boy added “Did she smell?”

“Bet she does now,” his friend said.

“He was right after all. She’ll be a what by now.”

“Like the dead cat we found with maggots for eyes.”

“Looked like he was laughing about it.”

“Those girls didn’t laugh much when we threw-”

That was the last Jonathan heard as he dodged almost blindly through the crowd in search of somewhere he could be alone to talk to his grandmother. A smell of something like tobacco drifted out of the toilets, but even if they’d been deserted, how could he have invited her to follow him in there? He sneaked into the main school building by a side door and dashed along the overheated corridor to sit on the hard seat attached to his desk. “They don’t know anything about you, grandma,” he murmured urgently. “You’ll never be like that. They were just making it up.”

He couldn’t hear her voice, he reassured himself, but remembering was close to hearing. “Never speak ill of the dead or they’ll come back and haunt you. They’ll come back and show you how ugly you’ve made them.” When the bell shrilled he bruised his knees on the underside of the desk. He reached the hall in time to mingle with the others so that the staff wouldn’t realise he’d skulked into the school rather than being healthy in the yard.