“I only ever wear one button,” I told her, then blushed when she looked down at my jeans. “Spell your buttons and laces closed,” Miss Possibelf suggested. I’m supposed to practise during the summer-small, predictable spells when no one’s looking. I could cast a “Hurry up” on the train, but that’s a chancy spell at the best of times, and my first few spells of the school year are always especially dicey. Every year, I think about jumping from the train and spelling myself the rest of the way to school, even if it puts me in a coma. The closer I get to Watford, the more restless I feel. I change carriages and don’t bother trying to sleep again. “Short for ‘bone-teeth’ that’s what they get to keep if they catch you.”)

Or it could be a bonety hunter who knows about one of the prices on my head … (“It’s bounty hunter,” I said to Penelope the first time we fought one. Once I’m settled on the train, I try to sleep with my bag in my lap and my feet propped up on the seat across from me-but a man a few rows back won’t stop watching me.

I get to the bus station, then eat a mint Aero while I wait for my first bus. The way the fire consumed it from the inside out, like a cigarette burn eating a piece of paper.) Surely you can manage a long walk and a few buses.” But the next year, he told me I could make it to Watford on my own. The Mage fetched me for school himself the first time, when I was 11. It’s like this every September, even though I’m never in the same care home twice. “It’s a school for dire offenders,” she whispers.

They’re sitting in a Plexiglas box, and I slide my papers back to her through a slot in the wall. “He goes to a special school,” one of the office ladies explains to the other when I leave. All summer long, we’re not even allowed to walk to Tescos without a chaperone and permission from the Queen-then, in the autumn, I just sign myself out of the children’s home and go. There’s always a fuss over my paperwork when I leave.

Carry on simon and baz