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cry out. But not tonight.
    Three, four...
    Tommy didn't know if there was a God, but in case there was, he began to pray. And not just for Dickie, that he might bear the pain, but also that he would forgive him and still be his friend.
    Five, six...
    Then silence. The listeners began to breathe again.
    Now Dickie would be putting his dressing gown back on and then suffering the final humiliation of having to shake Whippet's hand. To absolve him, to thank him for his trouble.
    When he came back to the dormitory, Dickie didn't say a word. There were a few whispered hard lucks and well dones and one idiot even asked him how it had felt. But Dickie didn't answer, just climbed back into bed, turned on his side and pulled the sheet and blanket up above his ears. Tommy couldn't tell if he was crying. For a long time nobody spoke. Then, across the darkness from the other side of the room, he heard Pettifer's venomous whisper: "Should have been you down there, Log Boy."
    Tommy wet the bed that night. It was just after three in the morning and he lay weeping in the soggy warmth, wondering what to do. As quietly as he could, he pulled off the bottom sheet and tiptoed with it to the bathroom, wincing at every creak of the floorboards. Not daring to switch on the light, he sluiced the sheet in one of the big cast-iron baths then did the same with his pyjama bottoms, wringing them out as best he could. Then he tiptoed back to the dormitory and remade the bed, freezing whenever anyone shifted in his sleep, hardly daring to breathe, scanning the other beds in case someone was awake and watching him in the dark. He climbed back into bed and spent the rest of the night shivering and wet, his head churning with fear. Perhaps no one would notice.
    Routine required that the boys strip back their top sheets before breakfast to let the beds air. And the yellow wet stain on Tommy's was as plain to see and almost as fascinating to his peers as the dried blood on the seat of Dickie Jessop's pyjamas. Dickie's stain was a badge of heroism, Tommy's of undiluted shame. Pettifer was the first to notice. He held his nose as he walked past.
    "Bloody hell, Log Boy, what a stink! How revolting."
    Tommy wet the bed again the following night and every night for a week. No one called him Log Boy any more, though not for fear of reprisals from Dickie Jessop, who now mostly ignored him. It was simply that someone had come up with a better nickname, the obvious one. He found it painted on his tuck box one morning in a sniggering amendment to his proper name.
    To all of Ashlawn, from now on, he was no longer Bedford, but Bedwetter.

Chapter Three
    TOM REGRETTED coming almost as soon as he got there. He'd never much liked the man and liked even less the twist of jealousy that seeing him always inspired. Some people just brought out the worst in you. Truscott Hooper, known to friends and sycophants alike—both well represented here this evening—simply as Troop, was sitting at a little table in the far corner of the crowded college hall, signing copies of his book. There was a long line of adoring fans, some of whom Tom recognized. They should have known better.
    Troop was on tour, publicizing his new bestseller, a thriller set in postinvasion Iraq. He was on the cover of this week's People magazine and Tom had seen him on the Today show. The book was already being made into a movie. It featured the same hero as the last three books, finely tailored to the spirit of the age (former Special Forces operative Brad Bannerman, dangerous but with the heart of a poet, wrongly disgraced for a misunderstood act of bravery, et cetera). Tom hadn't read any of them. It was hard enough to watch them sit gloatingly at the top of the bestseller lists without running the risk of discovering they were also actually rather good. That was what the critics said anyhow. There was nothing more galling than a fellow writer who managed to sell millions of books and get good reviews. It stole