Hifan stepped forward, looming over Irie like a bell tower. ‘Good to meet you, sister. I am Hifan.’

‘Great. Millat.’

‘Irie, man, shit. Could you just chill for one minute?’ He passed her the smoke. ‘I’m trying to listen to the guy, yeah? Hifan is the don. Look at the suit… gangster stylee!’ Millat ran a finger down Hifan’s lapel, and Hifan, against his better instinct, beamed with pleasure. ‘Seriously, Hifan, man, you look wicked. Crisp.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Better than that stuff you used to go around in back when we used to hang, eh? Back in them Kilburn days. ’Member when we went to Bradford and-’

Hifan remembered himself. Reassumed his previous face of pious determination. ‘I am afraid I don’t remember the Kilburn days, brother. I did things in ignorance then. That was a different person.’

‘Yeah,’ said Millat sheepishly. ‘ ’Course.’

Millat gave Hifan a joshing punch on the shoulder, in response to which Hifan stood still as a gate post.

‘So: there’s a fucking spiritual war going on – that’s fucking crazy! About time – we need to make our mark in this bloody country. What was the name, again, of your lot?’

‘I am from the Kilburn branch of the Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation,’ said Hifan proudly.

Irie inhaled.

‘Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation,’ repeated Millat, impressed. ‘That’s a wicked name. It’s got a wicked kung-fu kick-arse sound to it.’

Irie frowned. ‘KEVIN?’

‘We are aware,’ said Hifan solemnly, pointing to the spot underneath the cupped flame where the initials were minutely embroidered, ‘that we have an acronym problem.’

‘Just a bit.’

‘But the name is Allah’s and it cannot be changed… but to continue with what I was saying: Millat, my friend, you could be the head of the Cricklewood branch-’

‘Mill.’

‘You could have what I have, instead of this terrible confusion you are in, instead of this reliance on a drug specifically imported by governments to subdue the black and Asian community, to lessen our powers.’

‘Yeah,’ said Millat sadly, in mid-roll of a new spliff. ‘I don’t really look at it like that. I guess I should look at it like that.’

‘Mill.’

‘Jones, give it a rest. I’m having a fucking debate. Hifan, what school you at now, mate?’

Hifan shook his head with a smile. ‘I left the English education system some time ago. But my education is far from over. If I can quote to you from the Tabrīzī, hadith number 220: The person who goes in search of knowledge is on active service for God until he returns and the-’

‘Mill,’ whispered Irie, beneath Hifan’s flow of mellifluous sound. ‘Mill.’

‘For fuck’s sake. What? Sorry, Hifan, mate, one minute.’

Irie pulled deeply on her joint and relayed her news. Millat sighed. ‘Irie, they come in one side and we go out the other. No biggie. It’s a regular deal. All right? Now why don’t you go and play with the kiddies? Serious business here.’

‘It was good to meet you, Irie,’ said Hifan, reaching out his hand and looking her up and down. ‘If I might say so, it is refreshing to see a woman who dresses demurely, wearing her hair short. KEVIN believes a woman should not feel the need to pander to the erotic fantasies of Western sexuality.’

‘Er, ye-ah. Thanks.’

Feeling sorry for herself and more than a bit stoned, Irie made her way back through the wall of smoke and stepped through Joshua Chalfen’s Goblins and Gorgons game once more.

‘Hey, we’re trying to play here!’

Irie whipped round, full of swallowed fury. ‘AND?’

Joshua’s friends – a fat kid, a spotty kid and a kid with an abnormally large head – shrank back in fear. But Joshua stood his ground. He played oboe behind Irie’s second viola in the excuse for a school orchestra, and he had often observed her strange hair and broad shoulders and thought he might have half a chance there. She was clever and not entirely un-pretty, and there was something in her that had a strongly nerdy flavour about it, despite that boy she spent her time with. The Indian one. She hung around him, but she wasn’t like him. Joshua Chalfen strongly suspected her of being one of his own. There was something innate in her that he felt he could bring out. She was a nerd-immigrant who had fled the land of the fat, facially challenged and disarmingly clever. She had scaled the mountains of Caldor, swum the River Leviathrax, and braved the chasm Duilwen, in the mad dash away from her true countrymen to another land.

‘I’m just saying. You seem pretty keen to step into the land of Golthon. Do you want to play with us?’

‘No, I don’t want to play with you, you fucking prick. I don’t even know you.’

‘Joshua Chalfen. I was in Manor Primary. And we’re in English together. And we’re in orchestra together.’

‘No, we’re not. I’m in orchestra. You’re in orchestra. In no sense are we there together.’

The goblin, the elder and the dwarf, who appreciated a good play on words, had a snivelly giggle at that one. But insults meant nothing to Joshua. Joshua was the Cyrano de Bergerac of taking insults. He’d taken insults (from the affectionate end, Chalfen the Chubster, Posh Josh, Josh-with-the-Jewfro; from the other, That Hippy Fuck, Curly-haired Cocksucker, Shit-eater), he’d taken never-ending insults all his damn life, and survived, coming out the other side to smug. An insult was but a pebble in his path, only proving the intellectual inferiority of she who threw it. He continued regardless.

‘I like what you’ve done with your hair.’

‘Are you taking the piss?’

‘No, I like short hair on girls. I like that androgyny thing. Seriously.’

‘What is your fucking problem?’

Joshua shrugged. ‘Nothing. The vaguest acquaintance with basic Freudian theory would suggest you are the one with the problem. Where does all that aggression come from? I thought smoking was meant to chill you out. Can I have some?’

Irie had forgotten the burning joint in her hand. ‘Oh, yeah, right. Regular puff-head, are we?’

‘I dabble.’

The dwarf, elder and goblin emitted some snorts and liquid noises.

‘Oh, sure,’ sighed Irie reaching down to pass it to him. ‘Whatever.’

‘Irie!’

It was Millat. He had forgotten to take his joint off Irie and was now running over to retrieve it. Irie, about to hand it over to Joshua, turning around in mid-action, at one and the same time spotted Millat coming towards her and felt a rumble in the ground, a tremor that shook Joshua’s tiny cast-iron goblin army to their knees and then swept them off the board.

‘What the – ’ said Millat.

It was the raid committee. Taking the suggestion of Parent-Governor Archibald Jones, an ex-army man who claimed expertise in the field of ambush, they had resolved to come from both sides (never before tested), their hundred-strong party utilizing the element of surprise, giving no pre-warning bar the sound of their approaching feet; simply boxing the little bastards in, thus cutting off any escape route for the enemy and catching the likes of Millat Iqbal, Irie Jones and Joshua Chalfen in the very act of marijuana consumption.

The headmaster of Glenard Oak was in a continual state of implosion. His hairline had gone out and stayed out like a determined tide, his eye sockets were deep, his lips had been sucked backwards into his mouth, he had no body to speak of, or rather he folded what he had into a small, twisted package, sealing it with a pair of crossed arms and crossed legs. As if to counter this personal, internal collapse, the headmaster had the seating arranged in a large circle, an expansive gesture he hoped would help everybody speak to and see each other, allowing everybody to express their point and make themselves heard so together they could work towards problem solving rather than behaviour chastisement. Some parents worried the headmaster was a bleeding-heart liberal. If you asked Tina, his secretary (not that no one ever did ask Tina a bloody thing, oh no, no fear, only questions like So, what are these three scallywags up for, then?), it was more like a haemorrhage.