Card School

A boarding school is not always the first choice for parents or children but Michael Dawson did not have the luxury of choice. At ten years of age he had to deal with the loss of both parents who had been abroad on a church mission. He never had the chance to say goodbye, only see you later. He believed when they went they would return, but they didn't. Not only having to contend with the biggest loss known to a child he was thrust into the full time guardianship of his uncaring Auntie who he had been staying with but only until his parents came back. Now they were not coming back, his future had to be decided.
Saint Sebastian's Academy for Young Men is a boarding school on the North Yorkshire moors which prides itself on the creation of the next generation of gentlemen who will make names for themselves in the world outside. Michael finds himself at ten years old standing in the doorway of the building he didn't even recognise as a school. With Auntie gone without even a goodbye he tries hard to accept his fate but with great hardship and after sleepless nights and bed wetted sheets he knows he has to pull himself together. He forms a close friendship with a fellow pupil and becomes an enemy of another. After a crunching tackle on the rugby field, a game he has no idea how to play he believes his parents have come to take him home. His heart breaks for a second time when reality hits home that it had all been a dream. Michael senses that the school hides a dark secret, one which reveals itself to him in part, yet punishes him for being inquisitive.

Aware that he can only trust himself, he sets out to unravel the answers and find questions to fit. He has no intention of getting too close but ends up being in the direct firing line. When all hope is lost, the person he expects least of all to be there comes to the rescue, but is it all too little too late?