This Time Next Week by Leslie Thomas

(By the age of twelve, Leslie Thomas, third of four sons of an unsettled family in a Welsh seaport, had lost both parents, and was sent off to a series of Barnado homes, an experience evoked in this book. Doing a bunk was an accepted tradition. It was a calculated policy to surrender to the police at about midnight. In this way you ensured a sympathetic supper before going to sleep in the police station, and a beneficial breakfast the next morning before being returned to retribution. Some boys were veteran bunkers working around police stations like travellers on a circuit..a variety of suppers and breakfasts.)