The others cast dark looks at the newcomer, the one responsible for the fact that they’d had to sit in the draughty waiting room for two hours, dripping in their school-issue sou’westers, watching ferry after ferry disappear into the fog towards Lindsey Island. Ten minutes into the journey, one of them detached himself from a knot of boys to ask Barney what year he was in. Over the engine’s tinny drone, Barney told him. “You’re a bit big for the Second,” said the boy. “I’m fourteen,” said Barney. And then, because his interrogator was not going to say anything, he added, “I’ve been out of school for a while.” “Huh,” said the boy, and wandered off across the open deck to rejoin his friends. There was a big empty space below deck with wooden benches and misted-up portholes and rubber matting underfoot. Some of the boys hunkered down here, perching on their school trunks in groups of two or three, playing card games and swapping stories from their holidays over bottles of lemonade.
