Thomas sat down on the pebbled beach, waiting, hoping Squeak would know to come here. He should have been here by now. A chill wind came off the long stretch of water ahead of him. Thomas could see sheep on the hills ahead, tiny dirty-white dots on the exposed grass. They’d been for a visit to a farm once, long time ago. The annual day out was to a farming show as well. It was a holdover from a time when most of the boys at the school would be inheriting an estate and cared about sheep. No longer. They were a different crowd now. The talk in the bus on the way back from the farm was all of whether you could actually shag a sheep and how smelly and greasy they were.

The pebbles on the beach were black, not of the soil around here, dumped by a landscaping lorry. He picked one up to chuck it at the rippling water but stopped himself. Kids did that. He wasn’t a kid anymore. He put it down and heard a footstep behind him.

Squeak sat down next to him, a little bit away.

They both had their jackets zipped up to their chins, their hands tucked tight into the pockets. Lunchtime in the big hall followed by free association. Twenty-one minutes and counting before they were missed. They had arrived by different routes, Squeak through the woods because he was coming from the chapel, and Thomas by the cemetery so that if anyone saw them they could say they happened upon each other.

Though they hadn’t been to this bit of beach together for ages, Thomas had known Squeak would find him. They knew each other.

When they both started school at eight they were the only two kids in their year. Most families, most boarders, waited until later. Thomas’s dad had started at six but that was regarded as too young now, damaging. They started at eight and everyone pitied them, knew that either there was trouble at home or their parents didn’t like them. So they grew close to each other, grew into each other, developed a language almost, blinks and looks, names for kids who picked on them and words for why they picked on them. Games with rules no one else understood.

Squeak sighed at the water and Thomas glared at him. They had a lot to talk about but neither could find the starting point. They were each in their own private torrid stream, rolling through resentments against each other, secret worries, and shame, not of what they had done so much as what each thought of the other.

They hadn’t spoken since they got into the car at Thorntonhall, Squeak driving and smoking, Thomas busying himself with wet wipes for the entire two-hour drive. He’d used two whole packets and now smelled like the world’s biggest baby, the sickly perfumed oil stuck to his face, leaking into his eyes, under his nails. His bath day was two days away and the smell of the wipes made him want to vomit, made him think of Nanny Mary, disgust so intense it felt like his gut was rotting.

“There weren’t any kids,” said Squeak.

When they got back after the drive, Squeak had parked in the village. They scaled the school wall and crept through the grounds, coming through the back field, staying away from the trip-lights around the back of the boarding block. Thomas didn’t care if they were caught. He wanted to be caught. But Squeak insisted that they climb in Thomas’s window, left open for the purpose, and they stood in the dark, looking away from each other until Squeak muttered “g’night” and left for his own room.

They had seen each other at breakfast this morning, across the refectory floor. Squeak looked tired, red eyed, spooning porridge into his mouth mechanically, his blank eyes roving around the room, stalling on Thomas’s face, just for a moment, and then moving on.

Now the water lapped softly at the stones. Squeak pulled his tobacco tin out of his pocket and opened it, taking out a small smoke, lighting it and drawing hard. He held his breath, rolled his eyes back with relief and exhaled before offering it across.

Thomas took it, unable to refuse. He faked a draw, holding on to it for long enough, taking in a little but not breathing deep down. He handed it back.

“Not into it?” said Squeak, letting him know he’d noticed.

“Nah.” Thomas leaned back on his elbows, his quick furtive glance at Squeak’s back belying his relaxed posture. Suddenly convinced that Squeak knew he was pretending to be relaxed, he sat up. “You sleep?”

Squeak glanced back over his shoulder, looking down, in a way that seemed despising, or maybe it was just his position. “Not bad.” He looked away and took another draw. A deep draw, like he was stopping himself from saying something, swallowing it down.

Thomas couldn’t stand it anymore and snapped at him, “You got something to say to me?”

Squeak turned slowly. “Me? Have I got something to say to you?”

Blindsided by the strength of his reaction, Thomas flinched. Squeak flicked the spliff into the lake. “What the fuck would I have to say to you? There weren’t any kids.”

Abruptly, Thomas’s eyes brimmed. His chin convulsed into a tight ball and Squeak was in his face, fingernail an inch from his eyeball. “Don’t you fucking cry. You fucking took me there. You said it was her, you said you knew. Don’t you dare fucking cry.”

He let go and sat back, looking furiously over the water.

Thomas whispered, “He told me—”

“Did he say her name? Mention that house?”

He hadn’t. He hadn’t said any name in particular. Thomas got her number from his dad’s desk, tracked down her address from an old text.

Shocked into taking a deep breath, Thomas stopped his crying pang. His chin relaxed and he rubbed the wet off his eyes roughly as he imagined someone walking past the lakeside and seeing them and thinking it was some sort of lovers’ tiff.

A rumor like that would stick to you, follow you for the rest of your life even if you fucked every bitch in Fulham.

He was walking in a London street with his father once, last Christmastime; it was cold and everything had started to go wrong.

His father was being named publicly, on the internet first and then in the papers. They were shopping for gifts and they ran into a man his father knew.

The man was impressive, handsome and fit for a fifty-year-old. He was smug. Thomas remembered him pointing out a sports car and saying it was his Christmas present to himself. But his dad was dismissive of him, condescending. When they walked away his father said that the man had been in the year below him here and once got an inadvertent erection in the showers after rugby. He snickered about it, said they never let him forget it. He was called Stander forever after. Thomas laughed about it because his father said “erection,” and it seemed funny, but when he thought about it afterwards, really considered it, the story scared him. It wasn’t the suggestion of being a homo that frightened him, no one really cared about that, it was the vulnerability, being so raw in front of everyone, a private thing made public. Now he tried to avoid games when he couldn’t have a wank just before it, didn’t want to get that sort of name for himself.

Squeak took another smoke out of his tin and lit it, a cigarette this time, drawing hard, pulling his cheeks in, opening his mouth and letting the smoke curl into a fist outside his mouth before sucking it back in again.

“That’s how you get cancer, throat cancer,” said Thomas, he’d heard it somewhere.

“Right?”

“Letting the smoke linger in your mouth. Cig smokers get lung cancer but cigar smokers get face and throat cancer. Because they do that. My dad told me.”

Squeak looked angry again. “Does he know yet?”

Thomas shook his head. “He wouldn’t call until study anyway. He knows the rules.”

“Didn’t have mobiles when he was here, I suppose.”

“They used to ring the two big black telephones in the back corridor and a passer-by would answer it and then run off to find you, like a mug,” he smiled, knowing he sounded like his father. “Other end of the school sometimes but they’d do it.”

Squeak didn’t care. “Tastes nice, though, when you blow it out and suck it back.”

Thomas smiled, tentatively, sad really but a smile nonetheless. Squeak talked through a mouthful of smoke, “You should smoke. You’d look older if you smoked.”

“Hmm.” It wasn’t a dig. Thomas didn’t care that he looked so young. Squeak was more ashamed of how thin he was and how his ribs stuck out at the bottom. They knew everything about each other. Thomas suddenly realized that it explained why yesterday had thrown them so much. For the first time since they were eight they had surprised each other. Surprised by what had happened.

“Shock and awe,” he pondered aloud.

Squeak had to look at him to see if he was taking the piss or starting something. When he saw it was neither he smiled. “Shock and awe?”

Thomas nodded sadly at the lake. “Was though, wasn’t it? Yesterday.”

Squeak drew on his cig again. When he exhaled he was grinning. “Fucking A.”