Book excerpt: 'I was at boarding school in East Anglia, my third. I didn’t want to be there. But if there had been no school, there would be no Finn. He lived in a hut on the coast. He was like the hut, in fact – it took a while for both of them to warm up. But that is all I longed for. Finn, warming to me. A nod. Half a smile. Asking me to help on the boat. Not asking me to leave. I didn’t want it to end. Now I am waiting for the end, and looking back to the beginning.' Haunting, intense and with a surprising twist in the tale – What I Was is unlike anything you will have read before . . .