At the dawn of the War, Great Britain trembled beneath the threat of a global conflict, under a sky fractured by bombs and shells. The pupils of St Edmund, that cream-walled, whitewashed institution, should have been seeking refuge on the other side of the Atlantic. Who could have imagined that they would wage their own war, beneath the shadow of scorched palm trees? And what was this beast, crouched in the tropical night? Simon's madness, Ruth's singularity-or Roger's violence? [𝘭𝘰𝘵𝘧 𝘹 𝘰𝘤]