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hear about this eventually, but we’re keeping it quiet until Mac is off campus. We don’t want things to be any more awkward for him than they are already – and some of the little red shirts aren’t exactly masters of tact.’
    ‘Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone,’ James said as he shook his head numbly. ‘Poor bloody Mac.’

6. PUNCH
    Fahim Bin Hassam sat on the edge of his bed pulling a long grey school sock up his chubby leg. The eleven-year-old lived in a newly built six-bedroom house which overlooked Hampstead Heath, six kilometres from the centre of London.
    His room was large, with a computer, an LCD TV and Nirvana posters on the wall. CDs and Playstation games were scattered across the floor and a trail of damp footprints led from the en-suite bathroom to a luxurious salmon-pink towel and a designer bathrobe balled up on the oak floor. His mum would complain if she saw the mess, but Fahim expected the cleaning lady to get there first.
    He found a pair of grey shorts and a short-sleeved beige shirt in his wardrobe, then picked a pre-knotted brown and yellow tie off the floor. It was the uniform of Warrender Prep, a fee-paying school with a proud record of preparing students for entry into the finest English upper schools. However, if the one o’clock showdown between Fahim, his mother and his headmaster went badly this might be the last time he ever wore it.
    After buckling a digital watch to his wrist, Fahim exited through a set of double doors on to a thickly carpeted balcony that overlooked his home’s grand entrance. There was polished marble below and a miniature dome above.
    His feet enjoyed the bouncy flooring as he moved down a curving staircase to the ground floor. At the bottom a blue-smocked housekeeper polished the marble tiles on her hands and knees. They had a machine, but Fahim’s dad hated the noise.
    ‘Good morning, Fahim,’ the woman said, in a dense Scottish accent.
    He’d preferred her young Polish predecessor, who his dad had sacked after catching her on the phone to her boyfriend in Warsaw.
    ‘I left a skid mark down the side of my toilet,’ Fahim said, grinning cheekily. ‘Enjoy!’
    The woman tutted, but she didn’t blame Fahim for his attitude. He’d picked it up from his father, who expected her to work overtime for no pay, despite the fact that he lived in a three-million-pound house and had two BMWs and a Bentley in the garage.
    Fahim was tempted to glide into the kitchen on his socks, but he was in trouble at school so it wasn’t a good time to go around the house looking cheerful.
    ‘Mum,’ Fahim yelled, when he stepped into the kitchen and found it empty. ‘Mum, I’m starving.’
    The room was more than ten metres long, with swanky black cabinets and granite worktops. Fahim opened the door of a giant Sub Zero fridge-freezer that cost as much as most families spend on their car.
    He was pleased to find a pack of the Waitrose microwavable pancakes that he liked and he spread them out on a plate. After zapping them for thirty seconds, he squirted on chocolate sauce and added a handful of overripe strawberries.
    He sat at the breakfast bar and grabbed a remote for the screen mounted on the wall. As usual his dad had switched the TV to the Al Jazeera news channel. Fahim had intended to flip around looking for a cartoon, but he was intrigued by the images of the downed airliner. As he turned up the sound he recoiled at the words scrolling across the bottom of the screen:
    BRITISH GOVERNMENT SPOKESMAN SAYS THAT PROXIMITY OF ATTACK TO 6TH ANNIVERSARY OF 9/11 MAKES INVOLVEMENT OF TERRORISTS ‘HIGHLY PROBABLE ’.
    There were no other Arab boys at Warrender Prep and no matter how much Fahim explained that the Bin part of his name simply meant son of and was no different to a British boy with a name like John son or Steven son , his schoolmates couldn’t resist calling him Bin Laden. They made jokes about his lunchbox being packed with explosives and refused to sit