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to recover, return the next day and face the same smell and sickness.
    “Why can’t anyone else smell it?” she had begged anyone who would listen. “Something’s gone bad in school. I’m not making it up.”
    But everyone around her put it down to a bug or something she had eaten or the fact that her life had been a bit difficult of late. And then everyone around her no longer had to put it down to anything because the teacher left; the vomiting stopped and was quickly forgotten. It was years later, when Kathy was maybe thirteen or fourteen, that she put two and two together and realised that this was where it all began when she read a news report about the sub.
    More former students come forward as Mr Weslake goes to trial.
    By this time she had started taking vapour rub with her wherever she went to put into her nostrils and had worked out the cause of the stenches that accompanied certain people. She was also beginning to hear the murmurings of their perverse minds and other harmful thoughts. The only person she told about it all was Brady, who thought that it was the most amazing thing in the world. She still thought it was the most amazing thing in the world to this day.
    “But it’s like someone pouring a mix of off-milk and orange juice down my throat and rotten eggs and meat that’s been eaten by someone else and vomited into my face.”
    The description made a thirteen-year-old Brady smile. “But don’t you see,” she told her friend, ignoring the temptation to laugh. “We can go after them. We can get them.”
    “Yeah, with our massive muscles and guns,” Kathy shrugged dismissively.
    “Don’t take the piss. I’m serious.”
    Kathy looked Brady in the eye and could see that she was deadly serious despite the beaming smile on her face. It was a smile of determination that told Kathy they were going to take a great big bite out of the world together, chew it up and spit it out.
    As a teenager, Brady looked very similar to the way she would look as an adult: bushy, unruly black hair gathered into a high ponytail; caramel skin; dangerous eyes that glowed and challenged everything they looked at; it’s also quite likely that she was wearing combats on the day of this conversation, as she would for most of her adult life. While most young girls were finding out which shade of foundation matched their complexion and how to make the most of a reluctant bosom, Brady was pumping iron, drilling with cadets and generally hatching outrageous plans like this one.
    By contrast, Kathy didn’t look much like her adult self at all. She was much plumper and had longer hair that she let fall haphazardly around her shoulders. She tried the makeup and the outfits that the other girls seemed to get such a kick out of, but it all left her a bit cold. Looking back, it’s easy to see that she was in a strange kind of limbo, waiting for some kind of identity to emerge. And as she waited, she was happy to shade herself in Brady’s massive personality. 
    “Okay, what, so we just go around attacking paedos?”
    “Pretty much,” Brady agreed, not quite sensing the doubt in her friend’s voice. “The next time you get a whiff of one just let me know.”
    “I’m not doing that.”
    “But –”
    “No, Brady. You’re nuts!”
    “And you’re a chicken.”
    “So we just attack them?”
    “What, am I speaking French?”
    “Hmm!” Was it possible? It was the stuff of novels. They were only kids really, even though Brady was convinced she was Sylvester Stallone.
    “Just need to take your temperature, Miss Smith.”
    “Brady?”
    “Shhh! You were dreaming.”
    Kathy suddenly opened her eyes and looked around her, expecting to see anything but the ward of sleeping women. “I wasn’t asleep,” she said harshly and her tone seemed to momentarily crush the young nurse, but she bounced back quickly. She looked just the same as the nurse from earlier, but surely nurses either worked days or nights, not both. Maybe