‘Because the inmates were,’ said Friday. ‘You never knew who’d shank you with a sharpened toothbrush when you least expected it.’

  ‘Did anyone try to shank you with a toothbrush?’ asked Melanie.

  ‘No,’ said Friday. ‘Although, the prison psychologist lunged at me once because I kept correcting her grammar.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Dr Belcredi, ‘I have been thinking about the challenges you face re-assimilating to school life.’

  This only made Friday sadder. That everyone was apparently thinking about her epic levels of social dysfunction.

  ‘I’ve got a suggestion I want you to consider,’ said Dr Belcredi. ‘The history students are doing a two-week trip to Italy as part of their studies. I think you should go too. It will be a wonderful opportunity for you to see so many of the places you’ve been reading about, and a way for you to assimilate to being back with your peers away from the school environment.’

  ‘That’s a lovely idea!’ exclaimed Melanie.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ said Friday. ‘I can’t go to Italy.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Dr Belcredi. ‘I’ve got your passport. You are allowed to travel.’

  ‘And we’re going to Florence,’ said Melanie. ‘So, you’ll be able to see Uncle Bernie and, of course, Ian!’

  ‘I’m not going,’ said Friday.

  ‘Oh dear, this is all too much too soon, isn’t it?’ said Melanie. ‘But think of your new baby cousin. Little baby Bella. Don’t you want to give that sweet little baby a cuddle?’

  ‘No,’ said Friday. Babies horrified her. To her mind they were simply miniature inarticulate people with no bowel control. She did not understand the attraction at all.

  ‘The trip goes to Pisa and Siena,’ said Dr Belcredi. ‘You’ll visit the Forum and the Plaza Argentina where Julius Caesar was assassinated.’

  Friday thought about this for a moment.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ said Melanie. ‘She’s more intrigued by visiting a place where a general was stabbed 2000 years ago than she is in seeing her baby cousin.’

  ‘It’s academic,’ said Friday. ‘I can’t go. I don’t have any money left. I spent everything on legal costs and paying protection money to the daughter of a bikie so I wouldn’t get beaten up in jail.’

  ‘You should have thought of doing that while you were at Highcrest,’ said Melanie. ‘I’d love to see a biker’s daughter put Mirabella Peterson in her place.’

  ‘I’m sure we can arrange a scholarship . . .’ began Dr Belcredi.

  ‘No, no more scholarships,’ said Friday. ‘I just want to be left alone.’

  As with many people who are not very in touch with their emotions, Friday tended to speak with little inflection in her voice. It wasn’t a monotone, but it wasn’t far off. So, to hear her say these words with so much genuine feeling in her voice was gut-wrenching. Dr Belcredi fell silent. This was a big day for Friday. As headmaster, she really wanted to see her go to Italy, believing it would be good for her to get away and see family. But now was not the time to push.

  At long last the road began to seem familiar. The rolling green countryside. The luxury country mansions discreetly tucked away behind high hedges. The general rural affluence. They were entering the land of rich people’s weekend country retreats. They were also nearing Highcrest. You could practically smell the money, well, you could if the scent of cow poo didn’t overpower it.

  When Friday spotted the school’s clock tower in the distance, her heart rate accelerated. She felt warm. She hadn’t expected that sight to be so reassuring.

  ‘Is Mr Pilcher all right?’ asked Friday. It was the first any of them had spoken in nearly an hour. The question took Dr Belcredi by surprise. Mr Pilcher was the school’s groundskeeper and handyman.

  ‘Yes, he was fine when I saw him this morning,’ said Dr Belcredi.

  ‘No leg injuries?’ asked Friday.

  ‘No,’ said Dr Belcredi. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘The clock is three minutes slow,’ said Friday. ‘That’s not like him. If he knows, then he’s avoiding walking up the stairs, which could be an unconscious symptom of heart disease. Alternatively, if he doesn’t know that the clock is wrong, he should get his eyes tested. He probably needs glasses.’

  Friday was staring out the window. She still looked glum. But Melanie smiled, her friend was still in there, her deductive reasoning and innate curiosity were just dormant below the sadness on the surface. She would be all right, eventually, hopefully.

  Dr Belcredi pulled into the school’s driveway. It was nice to hear the familiar crunch of gravel again. Everything was so beautiful. The sports fields were green and immaculately cut. Students were practising cricket and hockey drills. Even the swamp looked pretty as the sun glinted off the boggy water. Friday let out a sigh. She hadn’t expected it to feel so good to be back. To be home.

  BANG! Something slammed into Friday’s car door. She threw herself into the footwell. In the detention centre she’d learned that diving for the floor was a good tactic in emergency situations.

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Melanie, kindly. ‘It’s only Parker.’

  Friday looked up to see Parker, now a year 12 boy, his face pressed up against her window.

  ‘Friday!’ exclaimed Parker, his voice only slightly muffled by the window. ‘Thank goodness it’s you! I need your help.’ Parker’s nose was squashed up against the glass and flattened. He resembled a cartoon version of himself. It was hard to take his anxiety seriously.

  Friday grabbed the door handle and pushed. It took a moment for Parker to realise he would have to step back if Friday was going to get out.

  ‘Leave her alone, Parker,’ said Dr Belcredi. ‘Give her a few days to settle in before you start badgering her to solve all your problems.’

  ‘But I don’t have a few days!’ complained Parker. ‘I need Friday now.’

  ‘I’m not problem-solving anymore,’ said Friday. ‘Sort it out yourself.’

  ‘Gosh, Friday, that’s just cruel,’ said Parker. ‘You know I’m not up to that sort of thing.’

  ‘Leave me alone,’ said Friday.

  ‘I will!’ said Parker. ‘I’ll go all the way to Italy. But you’ve got to help me. I’ve lost my passport. You see, if you help me find it, I’ll leave the country entirely for two weeks. That’s two weeks of peace for you.’

  ‘Why don’t you simply order a new one?’ said Friday. ‘Isn’t that what you rich people do?’

  ‘There’s no time,’ said Parker. ‘My parents are on a cruise to Antarctica, so it would take forever to get them to sign the paperwork and get it back here. Please, Friday, I’m begging you, after all we’ve been through together, you’ve got to help me.’

  ‘No,’ said Friday. ‘You’ve got to learn to take care of yourself. I’m not taking on cases anymore.’

  ‘It’s not taking on a case,’ said Melanie. ‘It’s helping a friend.’

  ‘Ex-boyfriend,’ said Parker.

  ‘You’re not helping,’ Melanie told him. She turned back to Friday. ‘You can be miserable and self-involved all you want. Yes, you have been hard done by. But that is no excuse for you to be anything less than a good person. Parker is your friend.’

  ‘I am,’ agreed Parker.

  ‘You may not want him as your friend,’ continued Melanie. ‘But that’s what he is. Good people help their friends.’

  Friday felt ashamed of herself. Melanie was a good person in every sense. She so rarely got firm about anything.

  ‘It’s because we broke up, isn’t it?’ said Parker. ‘Love can be so destructive.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Friday. ‘We didn’t break up. You asked me out and I said “no”.’

  ‘But you’ve come to regret it and resent me,’ said Parker. ‘I understand that girls are impossible to understand. I’m willing to move past this. If you’ll just help me this once.’

  Friday had an enormous intellect. She could comprehend quantum physics, the trajectory of asteroids and molecular biology, but she was entirely baffled by the train of Parker’s logic.

  ‘Huh?’ said Friday.

  ‘Just come to my room, find my passport. You’re so jolly clever it’ll only take you a few moments,’ said Parker. ‘Then you will be rid of me for two whole weeks.’

  Highcrest without Parker did sound more restful than Highcrest with Parker. ‘All right,’ said Friday with a sigh. ‘I’ll have a quick a look.’

  ‘Would you like me to arrange for your things to be taken to your room?’ asked Dr Belcredi.

  ‘I think I can manage,’ said Friday. She held up her garbage bag that contained her meagre possessions from the last eleven months.

  Dr Belcredi shook her head. ‘Sorry, I’m used to dealing with students who turn up with enough luggage to explore the Amazon for two years. You can probably handle that yourself.’

  So, carrying all her worldly goods, Friday put her hat on her head and went off with Melanie and Parker in the direction of his room.

  As Friday followed Parker towards the senior boys’ dormitory, she watched him walk. He had changed since she saw him last. He had swagger now. He had shot up at least ten centimetres and he had muscles. He was starting to be man-shaped. It happened to all the boys eventually, well, most of them. The hormones kicked in and, physically at least, they came to resemble men.

  ‘Are you objectifying Parker?’ Melanie asked.

  ‘What?’ said Friday. She took a moment to figure out what Melanie was talking about, it was so far from her own train of thought.

  ‘You’re staring at his butt,’ said Melanie.

  ‘I was observing the way he walks,’ said Friday.

  ‘You say potato, I also say potato,’ said Melanie.

  ‘Do you have a room to yourself now that you’re a senior?’ Friday asked Parker. She wanted to steer the conversation away from Melanie’s uncanny ability to notice discomforting things.

  ‘Oh, gosh, no,’ said Parker. ‘Only the smart fellows get that. Well the top 95 per cent. There aren’t quite enough rooms for everyone to get their own. So, the bottom six fellows have to share two to a room.’

  ‘Who is your roommate?’ asked Friday.

  ‘Rakete,’ said Parker. ‘He’s a good fellow. Does a lot of rowing at the crack of dawn. So, he’s dead to the world straight after dinner. Sometimes before dinner as well.’

  ‘Sleep is so important,’ said Melanie, approvingly.

  ‘I like running around as much as the next fellow,’ said Parker, ‘but I don’t understand why anyone would choose to play a sport that involved getting up so dreadfully early in the morning.’

  ‘It’s because the water is flatter,’ said Friday.

  ‘But isn’t water always flat?’ asked Parker. ‘I’ve had girls tip a glass of water over my head or throw it in my face several times and it always forms a very flat puddle on the floor about my feet.’

  ‘No, the wind makes the water wavy,’ said Friday. ‘And wind increases through the day as the air temperature over land differs to the air temperature over the sea. Choppy water makes the boats go slower. So, they row early in the morning.’

  ‘That’s a dreadful sacrifice to have to make in the name of sport,’ said Parker, as they approached the last door in the corridor. ‘Here we are! This is our room.’ He unlocked the door and threw it open for the girls to go through ahead of him.

  When Friday stepped into the room the first thing she noticed was the smell. ‘Oh dear,’ said Friday covering her nose. ‘Melanie, you might want to stay in the corridor.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Melanie, also holding her nose. ‘I’ve got four older brothers. I’m used to the stench of hormonal teen.’

  Friday stood just inside the door, to maintain her access to fresh air for as long as possible, but also to take in the scene. The room was only four metres by four metres, you would assume that such a confined space would make finding the passport easy. But that small room had so much dirty laundry, disused school stationery, candy wrappers and general detritus littered over every surface that it would be like finding a needle in a haystack. In fact, harder. Because at least a haystack is pleasant smelling.

  ‘So where do you normally keep your passport?’ asked Friday, pinching her nose and trying to will her eyes to stop watering.

  ‘The last time I saw it was when I put it away,’ said Parker.

  ‘Where was that?’ asked Friday.

  ‘In my underwear drawer,’ said Parker.

  ‘You do realise that is the least imaginative place to hide something of value?’ said Friday. ‘The underwear drawer is always the first place thieves look.’

  ‘To be fair,’ said Melanie, ‘they might look at Parker’s underwear drawer, but I doubt they’d want to touch anything, not if it smells as bad as the rest of his room.’

  Friday knew she had to be brave and see for herself. Luckily the chest of drawers Parker pointed out was on the less messy side of the room. Both sides were a disaster area, but one side looked slightly less likely to be overwhelmed by an avalanche of filth at any moment.

  The chest was a standard pine structure with three long drawers for clothes and two small drawers at the top for socks and underwear. Every student at Highcrest had exactly the same piece of furniture in their room.

  Friday reached out, tentatively grasped the handle of the top right drawer and pulled it. Bracing herself to see something horrific, she was surprised to discover that it was entirely empty.

  ‘Ahh,’ said Friday.

  ‘What?’ asked Parker.

  ‘Now it makes sense,’ said Friday.

  ‘What makes sense?’ asked Melanie.

  ‘Why Parker is walking funny,’ said Friday. She turned to look at Parker. ‘You’re not wearing any underwear, are you?’

  Parker blushed. ‘How did you know? Do you have some sort of x-ray vision?’ The thought of this made him blush harder. He quickly picked up a folder and held it in front of his pants.

  ‘No, you’re walking funny,’ said Friday. ‘I wondered if you had a groin strain or some sort of injury that made it more comfortable to walk that way, but now I realise you were merely trying to avoid chaffing.’

  ‘Friday, this is a very indelicate subject, even for you,’ said Melanie.

  ‘But it explains the missing passport,’ said Friday.

  ‘How does Parker’s lack of undies explain the theft of his passport?’ asked Melanie. ‘Was it a girl who was so entranced by his new suggestive walk that she had to have a photograph of his face?’

  ‘No, although your train of reasoning is not far off the mark,’ said Friday. ‘This is a cause-and-effect situation. But you’ve got the cause and effect around the wrong way.’

  ‘I’m not following a word of this conversation,’ said Parker.

  ‘Don’t worry, you never do, and it always works out in the end,’ said Melanie, kindly.

  ‘True,’ agreed Parker.

  ‘What if the thief didn’t intend to steal the passport?’ said Friday. ‘What if the thief wanted to steal the underpants?’

  ‘Wow, that would have to be a girl who really really liked the way Parker walked,’ said Melanie.

  ‘Or a boy who was so exhausted from constant early-morning training that he never had the time or energy to take his washing to the laundry,’ said Friday. ‘As a result, he ran out of clean underwear. What was he to do? It’s one thing to go commando when you’re only sitting around in class. But no undies when you’re sitting in a row boat at 5 am on a cold swamp – that would be deeply unpleasant. And if you’re really lazy, you wouldn’t want to steal a new pair every day. Better to steal a whole lot at once. And the laziest way to steal a whole lot at once would be to take your own empty drawer, pull out the whole thing, and swap it with the nearest full drawer.

  Friday went over to Rakete’s chest of drawers and pulled out his underpants drawer. It was full of at least a dozen pairs of clean underpants.

  ‘My undies!’ exclaimed Parker.

  ‘How can you be sure they’re yours?’ asked Melanie.

  ‘You see that hole in the front of the pair on top?’ said Parker. ‘I got that when I spilled hydrochloric acid on my pants during Mr Spencer’s science lesson. Gosh, I’m glad I had undies on that day.’

  ‘Now, Parker, I’d prefer not to stick my hand into your pile of underwear,’ said Friday. ‘Could you please reach underneath and see if the passport is still there?’

  Parker moved the undies to one side and there it was – his passport.

  ‘You did it again!’ exclaimed Parker. He grabbed Friday in a hug. It was a lot bigger than the impromptu uninvited hugs he used to give. Friday had to catch her breath as he squeezed her ribs.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ll reconsider my offer?’ asked Parker as he released his grip on Friday.

  ‘What offer?’ asked Friday.

  ‘To be my girlfriend,’ said Parker. ‘I know you were besotted with Wainscott. I don’t know why it is, but girls always seem to go for the miserable sullen types. Anyway, he’s been gone for two years now. It’s time to move on. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to settle for me?’

  ‘Quite sure,’ said Friday.

  ‘I don’t mind about your criminal record,’ said Parker.

  ‘I was exonerated!’ said Friday. ‘The fact that a member of my study group happened to be in a terrorist cell, and they took my work for our criminology project and used it to plan an attack on a military base, was determined to be no fault of my own. Once the special forces team raided their headquarters, translated their communications and cross-examined everyone involved, I was eventually cleared of all involvement.’

  ‘Yes, I don’t mind about that either,’ said Parker.

  ‘No,’ said Friday. She knew she had to be clear for Parker so there would be no confusion. ‘I will not be your girlfriend.’

  ‘Oh well,’ said Parker. ‘A fellow has to ask.’

  ‘Well done, Parker,’ said Melanie. ‘You got your passport and your undies back, and you had the courage to proposition Friday. It’s been a big day for you.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Parker, smiling proudly at that thought. ‘It’s been a jolly good day.’