‘Has anyone got a weapon?’ Gabriel asked. Nobody laughed, but they all looked at him and then at each other, and he realized that there had been a conversation – an in-joke – that he had missed.

‘How are you feeling, Gabe?’ Jimmy asked. ‘Are you feeling angry?’ He laughed, and slapped Gabriel on the shoulder. ‘I could really do without this shit,’ he said.

The hallway doors were opened; the students shuffled inside, clutching clear plastic pencil cases. The clock loomed at the front of the room.

Gabriel’s seat was at the back. He rested his chin on his arms and surveyed the rows of heads. The clean, functioning brains within them, awaiting further instructions. Closer to the front, Jimmy turned to find him, and winked. The scripts were already on the desks. The invigilator directed the students to begin. When would be the right time, Gabriel thought, and could he really do it, here, on purpose – this strange, private thing, which he and Mandy had spent so many months trying to subdue?

It was a two-hour examination. He waited until half an hour had passed. He guessed at a few token questions, reluctant to commit to more. With every shift of the clock, his opportunity diminished; if too much time went by then the scripts might be counted anyway. At forty minutes, he stood up so quickly that his chair toppled to the floor. Then, with every head turning through the silence towards him, he began.

He threw himself onto the desk behind him and its occupant shrieked and darted from his path. With his tongue lolling, he slumped to the floor and began to hammer upon it, as though the ground might split and – at last – swallow him up. He hissed and howled every terrible word he knew, and, seeing the teachers advance, he flipped away from them, a fish on the deck, gasping and gnawing and seizing anything in his reach: the legs of desks and chairs and pupils retreating, and, at some point, a Hello Kitty pencil case, which he hurled at the advancing charge, scattering a whole rainbow of BIC Magic Felt Pens across the hall.

It took four of them to capture him, and, swaying mazy and half mad, march him to the headmaster. The students lined the corridor to watch him pass, and a few blinks of applause fluttered in the crowd. ‘Amazing,’ mouthed Jimmy, and Gabriel smiled.

After the examination, he did it on request. He performed at the leisure centre and at the cinema; at the supermarket, while The Clan carried out a few six-packs; at the entrance to an expensive restaurant, which the Coulson-Brownes booked for special occasions. There were moments, in the midst of it, when he couldn’t tell if he was suffering from a Rage or feigning it; when he couldn’t tell where his sickness ended and Jimmy’s bidding began. The Coulson-Brownes balked at the school’s suggestion that Gabriel succumbed to the Rages at particularly opportune times, and threatened what Mr Coulson-Browne’s solicitor called a two-pronged reprisal: litigation, and the press. The school, conscious that Gabriel would be leaving at the end of the year, agreed to tolerate him for a few more months.

He took his real exams in isolation. He didn’t know many of the answers. When school was done with, The Clan gathered at a table outside one of the town’s more lenient pubs, and he drank until all he could see was Jimmy’s face, floating in plural at the more important end of the table.

He had promised the Coulson-Brownes that he would look for a job, but for some months he left the house each morning and wandered the streets, applying for nothing. He dropped in on members of The Clan, most of whom had started college or apprenticeships, and who rarely asked him in. Jimmy, who had crammed for his exams, decided that he might want to go to university, after all. He was studying serious subjects, which took up all his time, and whenever Gabriel called by, he wasn’t at home. Gabriel took night shifts at the bigger supermarket in town, which meant that he could sleep for much of the day; that prevented him from having to think about how to fill the hours.

He turned nineteen at the Coulson-Browne dinner table, two years later, over salmon en cro?te and a shop-bought Victoria sponge. ‘I hate to bring this up tonight,’ said Mrs Coulson-Browne. ‘But we need to know your plans, Gabriel.’ She turned to her husband, encouragingly, and he nodded.

‘As you know,’ said Mr Coulson-Browne, ‘we’ve been very generous.’

That was reasonable, Gabriel thought. He had first come to this house half his life ago, on an introduction weekend. He had sat on the plump leather sofas and listened to how welcome he would be. He had mistaken the neat, beige rooms for things that he could fill. He looked at the wooden placemats, with scenes of the English countryside, and at the crystal animals, and at the piano which nobody could play. He would miss none of it. That night, he found Matilda’s notepad, sat in his tepee, and called Oliver Alvin.

Oliver Alvin’s office wasn’t what Gabriel had expected. It was in East London, above a wholesale fabric store, and in the waiting room there was a woman wearing square black sunglasses, threading a tissue between the plastic and the skin to dry her eyes. Oliver’s secretary, who was seventeen and still using Tipp-Ex on her nails, asked Gabriel to wait. There was nothing to read, so Gabriel surveyed the room. Framed photographs of Oliver and his clients looked back at him. He didn’t recognize anybody.

Forty minutes after his scheduled appointment, the secretary asked him to go through: Oliver was ready to see him. Nobody appeared to have left the office. He stood, straightened his tie (which was Mr Coulson-Browne’s tie, and which he had spent half an hour tying and untying that morning), and collected the portfolio which he had assembled over the last week, and which commenced with his photograph, beneath the words: ‘Hello. I’m Gabriel Gracie, a survivor.’