"Eight of us who left Hailsham that summer ended up at the Cottages" (116). I'm on to part two of the book, which i find to be Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy's teenage years. The Cottages are co-ed housing, run by a man called Keffers. To be honest, I find this character more intriguing than any other because the reader never finds much out about him. However, through the whole time, he acts mad at the tenants, but really I think he's scared too. I think that he too knows what is going to happen to these people, and is worried by it. I think he is a symbol to the students of how they'll be treated by some people in the real world. I think that Keffers is trying-though maybe not consciously- to get them to understand that the real world is nothing like their happy-go-lucky world of Hailsham.