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But no. All looked normal for a Saturday morning, with perhaps a little more animation among the boys, some kitted out for the inter-house sevens to be played throughout the day. I walked on air to the dining room. Breakfast was almost over but there was bacon left and some watery scrambled eggs and toast. I was fabulously hungry. I had the place to myself, but had barely applied the brown sauce when I felt my arms grabbed from behind and was aware of Marrineau’s looming presence in house rugby colours, the studs of his boots scraping on the tiled floor. Did he even mention Sarah? He didn’t need to. There was a punitive and sudden quality in this that spoke it. Everything was a blur. I was aware of some painful roughing-up and swearing and a chair going over, and I suppose I must have pulled free somehow because the next thing I knew there was screaming and commotion and grown-ups running, and at the centre, like a rearing, dancing horse, was an injured Marrineau holding his face, roaring displeasure at the heavens.
    And so the luck ran out. There was hell to pay, as Aunt Lillian was fond of saying – notably in the demand from Marrineau’s rich and influential parents and their lawyer that I be instantly withdrawn from school. It was either him or me. In return, they agreed not to involve the police. In fact, of course, it would suit no one to have me up in court on an assault charge – not me, certainly not the school, certainly not invincible Marrineau, whose reputation as a Goliath of cool would suffer the glare of public display. But I responded to all enquiries with an enigmaticsmile that transported me back to room 313. In the immediate storm of events I felt strangely out of myself, as if I was looking down on this tiny hullabaloo from a celestial height. I was banished to my room while the adults argued it out via faxes and phone calls.
    That should have been that. But there was one last thing I had to do. And it was surprisingly easy. There was no guard on my door. This wasn’t Soviet Russia. And with Marrineau not yet back from A&E and the story of my infamy not yet fully broadcast, there was nothing to stop me simply walking out of the house and across the playing fields – the pitches busy now with thudding tackles and cheering boys – and straight into the first-team changing room. No one challenged me. Marrineau’s black tracksuit, with its yellow captain’s stripe, was not hard to find. His keys, along with a few coins, were in one of his trainers, under the seat. I guessed Marrineau would come straight back to the tournament, and I was right. I watched from beneath the trees as he eventually arrived like a returning war hero to the cheers of his supporters, a bandage and sticking plaster across his face, his eye bloodshot. Now I saw that he was negotiating with Mr Frith, head of games. He couldn’t play, it seemed, but he could referee. He pulled on an official’s bib and swung a whistle on a ribbon while he talked. Mr Frith assigned him two teams of Minors and he ran off with them. The smaller ones struggled to keep up. How proud they would be to be refereed by Marrineau. His supporters watched him go, uncertain whether to follow and be obliged, like him, to stand among the Minors, or save their roars for the Majors of Hooke and Bentham. He was on his own.
    With Marrineau pinned down by the nonsense of rugby, I walked calmly to his room. And what satisfaction to turn the keyin that lock, to push open that forbidden door, to breathe the stale odours of that sacred place as if they were pure mountain air. There were things to see and appreciate. From all surfaces came the dull gleam of sporting trophies. On the wall were framed certificates, and a photograph of Marrineau shaking hands with a sporting personality. In a drawer I found the tan crocodile-skin shaving kit he deployed with such nonchalance in ablutions, drawing the razor smoothly through his enviable stubble with that natural grace only