‘So,’ said the headmaster to Tina with a doleful smile, ‘what are these three scallywags up for, then?’

Wearily, Tina read out the three counts of ‘mari-jew-ana’ possession. Irie put her hand up to object, but the headmaster silenced her with a gentle smile.

‘I see. That’ll be all, Tina. If you could just leave the door ajar on your way out, yes, that’s it, bit more… fine – don’t want anyone to feel boxed in, as it were. OK. Now. I think the most civilized way to do this,’ said the headmaster laying his hands palm up and flat on his knees to demonstrate he was packing no weapons, ‘so we don’t have everybody talking over each other, is if I say my bit, you each then say your bit, starting with you, Millat, and ending with Joshua, and then once we’ve taken on board all that’s been said, I get to say my final bit and that’s it. Relatively painless. All right? All right.’

‘I need a fag,’ said Millat.

The headmaster rearranged himself. He uncrossed his right leg and slung his skinny left leg over instead, he brought his two forefingers up to his lips in the shape of a church spire, he retracted his head like a turtle.

‘Millat, please.’

‘Have you got a fag-tray?’

‘No, now, Millat come on…’

‘I’ll just go an’ have one at the gates, then.’

In this manner, the whole school held the headmaster to ransom. He couldn’t have a thousand kids lining the Cricklewood streets, smoking fags, bringing down the tone of the school. This was the age of the league table. Of picky parents nosing their way through The Times Educational Supplement, summing up schools in letters and numbers and inspectors’ reports. The headmaster was forced to switch off the fire alarms for terms at a time, hiding his thousand smokers within the school’s confines.

‘Oh… look, just move your chair closer to the window. Come on, come on, don’t make a song and dance about it. That’s it. All right?’

A Lambert amp; Butler hung from Millat’s lips. ‘Light?’

The headmaster rifled about in his own shirt pocket, where a packet of German rolling tobacco and a lighter were buried amidst a lot of tissue paper and biros.

‘There you go.’ Millat lit up, blowing smoke in the headmaster’s direction. The headmaster coughed like an old woman. ‘OK, Millat, you first. Because I expect this of you, at least. Spill the legumes.’

Millat said, ‘I was round there, the back of the science block, on a matter of spiritual growth.’

The headmaster leant forward and tapped the church spire against his lips a few times. ‘You’re going to have to give me a little more to work on, Millat. If there’s some religious connection here, it can only work in your favour, but I need to know about it.’

Millat elaborated, ‘I was talking to my mate. Hifan.’

The headmaster shook his head. ‘I’m not following you, Millat.’

‘He’s a spiritual leader. I was getting some advice.’

‘Spiritual leader? Hifan? Is he in the school? Are we talking cult here, Millat? I need to know if we’re talking cult.’

‘No, it’s not a bloody cult,’ barked Irie exasperated. ‘Can we get on with it? I’ve got viola in ten minutes.’

‘Millat’s speaking, Irie. We’re listening to Millat. And hopefully when we get to you, Millat will give you a bit more respect than you’ve just showed him. OK? We’ve got to have communication. OK, Millat. Go on. What kind of spiritual leader?’

‘Muslim. He was helping me with my faith, yeah? He’s the head of the Cricklewood branch of the Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation.’

The headmaster frowned. ‘KEVIN?’

‘They are aware they have an acronym problem,’ explained Irie.

‘So,’ continued the headmaster eagerly, ‘this guy from KEVIN. Was he the one who was supplying the gear?’

‘No,’ said Millat, stubbing his fag out on the windowsill. ‘It was my gear. He was talking to me, and I was smoking it.’

‘Look,’ said Irie, after a few more minutes of circular conversation. ‘It’s very simple. It was Millat’s gear. I smoked it without really thinking, then I gave it to Joshua to hold for a second while I tied my shoelace but he really had nothing to do with it. OK? Can we go now?’

‘Yes, I did!’

Irie turned to Joshua. ‘What?’

‘She’s trying to cover for me. Some of it was my marijuana. I was dealing marijuana. Then the pigs jumped me.’

‘Oh, Jesus Christ. Chalfen, you’re nuts.’

Maybe. But in the past two days, Joshua had gained more respect, been patted on the back by more people, and generally lorded it around more than he ever had in his life. Some of the glamour of Millat seemed to have rubbed off on him by association, and as for Irie – well, he’d allowed a ‘vague interest’ to develop, in the past two days, into a full-blown crush. Wipe that. He had a full-blown crush on both of them. There was something compelling about them. More so than Elgin the dwarf or Moloch the sorcerer. He liked being connected with them, however tenuously. He had been plucked by the two of them out of nerddom, accidentally whisked from obscurity into the school spotlight. He wasn’t going back without a struggle.

‘Is this true, Joshua?’

‘Yes… umm, it started small, but now I believe I have a real problem. I don’t want to deal drugs, obviously I don’t, but it’s like a compulsion-’

‘Oh, for God’s sake…’

‘Now, Irie, you have to let Joshua have his say. His say is as valid as your say.’

Millat reached over to the headmaster’s pocket and pulled out his heavy packet of tobacco. He poured the contents out on to the small coffee table.

‘Oi. Chalfen. Ghetto-boy. Measure out an eighth.’

Joshua looked at the stinking mountain of brown. ‘A European eighth or an English eighth?’

‘Could you just do as Millat suggests,’ said the headmaster irritably, leaning forward in his chair to inspect the tobacco. ‘So we can settle this.’

Fingers shaking, Joshua drew a section of tobacco on to his palm and held it up. The headmaster brought Joshua’s hand up under Millat’s nose for inspection.

‘Barely a five-pound draw,’ said Millat scornfully. ‘I wouldn’t buy shit from you.’

‘OK, Joshua,’ said the headmaster, putting the tobacco back in its pouch. ‘I think we can safely say the game’s up. Even I knew that wasn’t anywhere near an eighth. But it does concern me that you felt the need to lie and we’re going to have to schedule a time to talk about that.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘In the meantime, I’ve talked to your parents, and in line with the school policy move away from behaviour chastisement and towards constructive conduct management, they’ve very generously suggested a two-month programme.’

‘Programme?’

‘Every Tuesday and Thursday, you, Millat, and you, Irie, will go to Joshua’s house and join him in a two-hour after-school study group split between maths and biology, your weaker subjects and his stronger.’

Irie snorted, ‘You’re not serious?’

‘You know, I am serious. I think it’s a really interesting idea. This way Joshua’s strengths can be shared equally amongst you, and the two of you can go to a stable environment, and one with the added advantage of keeping you both off the streets. I’ve talked to your parents and they are happy with the, you know, arrangement. And what’s really exciting is that Joshua’s father is something of an eminent scientist and his mother is a horticulturalist, I believe, so, you know, you’ll really get a lot out of it. You two have a lot of potential, but I feel you’re getting caught up with things that really are damaging to that potential – whether that’s family environment or personal hassles, I don’t know – but this is a really good opportunity to escape those. I hope you’ll see that it’s more than punishment. It’s constructive. It’s people helping people. And I really hope you’ll do this wholeheartedly, you know? This kind of thing is very much in the history, the spirit, the whole ethos of Glenard Oak, ever since Sir Glenard himself.’