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Turning the final curve of the staircase, she emerged slightly dizzy into a connecting corridor. The light was dim and there was ice on the windows; she put her hands deep in her pockets and
struggled on in the gloom. Somewhere off to the right, she became aware of running feet. In fact, they were pounding, getting louder and louder, and a shrill shriek was gathering force and volume.
The bicycle bells were getting nearer too and she snarled with irritation. Cycling inside the building! It was just the kind of nonsense she hated most. So – bracing herself and getting ready
to grab whatever child was hurtling towards her – she stepped round the corner, right hand upraised.

She was just in time to be knocked, reeling, into an oil painting. Lady Vyner saw a blur of grey shirt spin and zoom off. It seemed to flip and was all hands and feet, zipping down the corridor.
The picture she’d dislodged came away from the wall and she was pressed to the floor under its weight.

The boy – half child, half jet – careered onwards, engines roaring. Then the bicycle bells tinkled past unseen.

The headmaster heard the howl as well and a small shock of memory jarred his bones. He stood up, putting a half-eaten cup-cake down on a plate. He removed his glasses as the
shriek got louder. Then the door was flung open and he was looking into the wild eyes of the wildest boy he’d ever known.

Miles braked and skidded. He hovered. He panted for breath then stretched out his arms. His face transformed into a delighted smile and the engine-screech reached a new level of happiness.

The headmaster backed away in fear, hands upraised, and Miles leaped forward. He bear-hugged the headmaster, harder and tighter than ever before.

‘Sir,’ he was shouting. ‘Sir! I’m back!’

‘Miles!’ cried the headmaster. ‘No!’

He was crushed against the wall and the window. The frame was rusty and the catch broken – in a moment he was being forced out over the sill.

‘Sir, thank you, sir – thank you! You are the best!’

‘No, Miles! Please!’ The headmaster felt a rush of cold air. He got an arm free and grabbed at the masonry, and a lump of stone came away in his hand. ‘Please!’ His feet
weren’t on the floor.

‘You are my best friend! I am so, so different! You won’t believe it!’

‘Miles! I’m falling! Help me!’

The headmaster tried to break the boy’s grip, but Miles was strong as twisted wire. He hugged his old teacher and it was only by a superhuman effort that the elderly man managed to wrench
himself back to safety. He fell against his desk and the lamp buckled under him in a tinkle of broken glass.

‘I thought you’d kicked me out,’ said Miles, tearfully. ‘I thought I was sacked!’

The headmaster couldn’t speak. Broken glasses dropped out of his pocket. He was shaking, trying to breathe. He managed to get to the other side of the desk, but Miles followed him
round.

‘No second chance,’ cried Miles. ‘That’s what you said, and Mum was just crying and crying . . . but then we got your letter, like you changed your mind at the last
minute, and by that time we were out of the country . . .’ Miles had him by the hand and was shaking it. ‘It got forwarded to her office and when we read it! Wow! We just burst into
tears, both of us!’

‘Miles—’

The boy pushed back his hair and clutched a pair of torn shirt-cuffs together, as if at prayer. ‘Mother said the first thing I had to do was write to you and say sorry – but then we
got stuck on this island, so she said the first thing I had to do, to
say
, I mean, was I am so sorry!’

‘Sit down, Miles – please. Let’s have a—’

‘Do you forgive me? I got you a present.’

The headmaster was breathing hard. Miles was fumbling in his shorts’ pocket, and after a moment of searching, withdrew, amongst sweet-wrappers and tiny toy soldiers, an apple-sized lump,
in tissue paper.

‘It’s a shrunken head,’ he said. ‘From the island we were on; they were selling them and they are totally real. I put it in our maid’s bed, on the pillow, wearing
this little T-shirt, and she went completely crazy, but I know you love stuff like this, so . . .’ He unwrapped it and put it on the desk. ‘Mum and I call him Gilbert.’

The headmaster managed to get back into his chair and sat staring. The little head looked as amazed as he did – it had to be some kind of nut or fruit, it couldn’t be human. He tore
his eyes away and looked at Miles. The boy was grinning, eagerly, and the headmaster – through the trauma of the embrace – was filled with an aching tenderness.

The child wore the regulation grey shirt, but it was three sizes too big and torn already, the collar round his ears. Two buttons at most were done up – the rest were missing; the tie was
loose, the sleeves flapped, and the cuffs were gnawed and frayed. Miles drew the shirt around him like a shawl and peered from under a fringe of hair that was desperately in need of combing and
cutting. In his chair he was a coiled spring – the energy was flammable, rising in waves . . .

‘I’ve changed,’ said Miles, softly. ‘I am a different person now – and I’ve got a shrink in London too.’

The headmaster licked his lips and tried to find words. Why Miles had set fire to the dining hall was still a mystery, and he knew that he would never unpick the complexities of that strange,
desperate little psyche. He realised in an instant how much he had missed him. It was for boys such as Miles that Ribblestrop had been conceived! A school of second, third, infinite chances . .
.

Dr Norcross-Webb sighed. ‘I’m just very glad to see you,’ he said. ‘Welcome home.’

‘I tell you, I am so
not
the same,’ cried Miles, standing up. He was breathing hard. ‘I’ve had counselling – I’ve had so much work done on my head. I
am going to be your best,
best
pupil. I passed them on the drive, by the way. Where’s Sanchez, though?’ He was at the window, pushing it wider.

‘Delayed, but on his way . . .’

‘Tomaz!’ Miles shrieked. He was waving again. Then he gathered the snow from the sill and started to pack it. ‘Ruskin! It’s me! Look out below!’

‘Miles, please! Come away from there . . .’

Miles turned, the snowball ready. ‘I wrote to him, but he didn’t reply. Where d’you get the bikes? There’s loads of kids now! Oh, and where am I sleeping?’

‘Miles, we have to go slow . . . The first thing is that I need to speak to your mother. We’re going to put you on a
contract of behaviour
, so everyone knows what to expect.
We need to establish a few ground rules and then—’

Miles turned again and threw the snowball hard. ‘Tomaz!’ he shouted. ‘Get up here!’

‘Giles,’ said a voice. ‘I can hear you but I can’t see you . . . Oh my, now I can! Look at you!’

The headmaster stood up and peered. Without his glasses, everything was blurred. In the doorway there seemed to be a fire of red and gold, and from it came a smoky, transatlantic voice.
Miles’s mother seemed poised on a catwalk, a tangle of blonde hair strewn over one shoulder, wild as her son’s. Peeling her gloves off she came closer, and the silk turned from crimson
to wild vermilion as she came into focus, offering a long, slim hand. The headmaster wondered for an absurd moment if this was Miles’s sister rather than his mother – she was thinner
and younger. Above him, two parrots found their voices and cackled in appreciation.

‘You have got more handsome, Giles,’ said Miles’s mother. ‘Damn you, but you’ve turned into a
distinguished gentleman
– not that you weren’t
beautiful before, but look at that chin. Miles, you can learn even from the way this man
holds
himself.’

‘I’m going down! I’ve just seen Tom!’

‘Mrs Seyton-Shandy. It’s lovely to see you. I was just saying to Miles—’

‘And your school is blooming in the snow . . . Come here, you!’ She grabbed her son’s arm and started to haul his blazer on. ‘It is a picture! We just parked up and
there’re so many little ones . . . Stay where you are, Miles – look at him.’ Her hands were round her son’s throat now, folding his collar down, and they stroked upwards to
rest on his cheeks. She slid into his chair and drew him onto her lap. ‘I hope this little boy has said an important word?’ she crooned.

‘Well, we haven’t really had time—’

‘Have you done that, Miles?’ Miles was nodding. ‘I just hope so and you look a mess again. I buy him new clothes and he turns them into rags, he just tears things up –
it’s a compulsion – it’s a
bad
habit!’ She kissed him. ‘And I told you not to show him that dreadful thing,’ she said, noticing the head. ‘We were
in the Philippines, on this crazy island – I do not believe it’s real, but he’s been scaring everyone on the plane. I hope he told you how he’s changed?’

‘Yes, he did—’

Children were shouting in the corridor and the bicycle bells were now frantic.

‘We were on what they call
the island of healing
. We met a man there – some kind of witch-doctor – and he and Miles were like blood-brothers. I tell you, Giles, if you
need a man to run meditation classes, I still have his number.’

The headmaster moved quickly to the door, trying to ignore the noise outside. He pressed his back to it and spoke loudly and firmly. ‘Mrs Seyton-Shandy, we do have to talk about
this.’

‘Call me Alia, please, and—’

‘Nobody is more delighted than me to see Miles back with us. However, there are a few ground rules that must be discussed.’ There was hammering on the door, and cries of
‘sir!’

‘Rule number one—’

‘Money,’ said Mrs Seyton-Shandy.

‘Money?’

‘I’m just thinking, if we get the financial side sorted now, we can do the rest over the telephone. I was supposed to be in Cadiz by lunchtime – they will not stop calling. By
the way, we left his trunk in the hallway. I asked the cleaning lady to bring it up, but she looked a little confused.’

‘We don’t have a cleaning lady.’ Hands were now rattling the door.

Miles’s mother stood, a brick of banknotes in her hand, and the door finally burst open, knocking the headmaster forwards.

‘This is for the year,’ she said, but the words were lost in a new din, as orphans nosed in their bikes. A parrot flapped overhead and settled on a crossbeam. It started to imitate
the tinkling of a bell at a horrible volume.

‘Wait!’ cried the headmaster. ‘There’s one or two things . . .’

Captain Routon was dragging in a box that had split and a hundred ice-skates were skittering over the floor. The papers on the desk lifted and whirled as the parrot dived for the half-eaten
cup-cake, and suddenly, a snow-covered Tomaz was clambering over the mess and he and Miles were staring at each other.

‘Miles!’ cried Tomaz. ‘It
is
you, I don’t believe it, what are you
doing
here?’

‘Tom!’ shouted Miles.

They hugged each other and then it was Ruskin’s turn. Henry had to be dragged over – he was too shy to approach – and then there were introductions, and Anjoli appeared
twirling on a pair of the ice-skates, slicing long scratches in the granite floor. The noise was incredible and now there were two parrots, showering crumbs and ringing like telephones.

Even without glasses, the headmaster was able to lip-read Mrs Seyton-Shandy’s words: ‘I’ve got to go!’

He called out to her. He tried to get to her, but there were bicycles in the way and more boxes. He struggled after her, but hands were holding his jacket. He tripped, but was held up and
turned. Oli was saying something about engines and showing him a spinning propeller. By the time he found the door, Miles’s mother had gone and Millie was saying, ‘Shall I show him his
dorm? Is he with Sanchez?’

Doonan was there, with a child on his shoulders, and there was a large pile of animal dung in the centre of the corridor.

‘Giles,’ said Professor Worthington, ‘can you take a telephone call from Sanchez’s father?’

The headmaster tottered back to his window and was just in time to see the red Porsche manoeuvre carefully between three donkeys and a camel, and accelerate away up the drive.

‘I can’t believe he never showed you this,’ said Miles.

They were climbing into the turret of the boys’ dormitory – Millie, Tomaz, Anjoli, Israel, and Miles. Miles was leading. He’d unpacked, had supper, and had spent the entire
time talking to anyone who’d listen. Now he clambered from chair, to cupboard, to wardrobe; at the top of the wardrobe he moved the ceiling panel. He pulled down a rope and was soon hauling
himself upwards, Millie and the boys close behind.

‘This is where we spent all our time,’ he said. ‘This was the special place, so I guess Sanchez thought it was our secret. This is where I saw the ghost!’

‘Here?’ said Anjoli. ‘It’s dark, man, I can’t even see you!’

Miles hammered at something with bare fists, and there was a sudden rush of cold air and a great stream of moonlight. There was a tiny door, out onto the parapet.

‘I saw him from out here!’ said Miles. ‘We used to sit out here and talk, Sanchez and me. This was our place, Tomaz too – remember?’ He laughed. ‘Little
Ruskin couldn’t climb the rope, but I got Caspar Vyner up here once – ha! I got him to sit up on the edge, I was going to dangle him over, but Sanchez stopped me. Remember that, Tom?
Huh?’

The children crawled out and stood together in the freezing wind. Their tower wasn’t the highest, but it still afforded a wonderful view. The new roof, the curling drive, the lake with its
tiny bridges: the world spread beneath them, in vivid black and white. They could hear the laughter of children, floating past. There was the distant roar of an animal and the flash of welding
torches. The rest of the orphans were finishing the cages with Oli.

‘We’ve got to talk, seriously,’ said Miles. ‘I’ve done some homework and you are not going to believe what I found out. I saw the ghost twice, alright? I was the
one who talked to him. I tell you what, though: we need to talk to him again . . . that ghost is looking after secret stuff. That’s why he’s here!’

‘What stuff?’ said Millie.

‘Treasure. This place is loaded with treasures, some of them totally, totally priceless. You won’t believe it. When is Sanchez getting back? I might wait till he’s here. You
went to Colombia with him, didn’t you?’