Kids

You don’t notice these things — wealth or abject poverty or whatever — when you’re really young. I didn’t. It’s all play, friends, fun. Kids are dirty! That’s just the way it is.

Then, you go to secondary school and you see the other kids and it starts to click. The bags and uniforms, the food, the way they look at you.

Mrs Marriott used to say, you are as God made you, Jonathan. I felt a deep, burning sense of guilt. Probably what the old crow wanted — good, old fashioned hellfire punishment.

Maybe this is a cynical explanation.