‘I was speaking to my uncle. He told me what happened.’

‘He did?’

‘He said you and some guys beat him up.’

‘We did?’ Daniel took a few skips to catch a ball.

‘I didn’t believe him,’ Ben said. ‘It didn’t ring true. And, um, you wouldn’t do it anyway. You’ve got the surf carnival at Bluebird coming up on Saturday. It’d be silly to get into a fight four days out.’ ‘Well that’s good.’

‘So, yeah. And there’ll be parties afterwards, and you’ll probably want some cash.’ Lou was planning a fundraiser at The Lodge; maybe, Ben thought, he could tap Daniel for a donation.

Daniel studied Ben as if weighing up how much to tell him. He lobbed the cricket ball to Ben, who tossed it from hand to hand, as he had seen the good bowlers do, and windmilled his arms in a warming-up motion.

‘Carl sent me here to finish the deal,’ Ben said. ‘He’s given me the money.’

Daniel looked at him again, in a way that stripped Ben naked. His balls tingled. Daniel was keeping a secret. He was right about Daniel; it didn’t matter if it never came out, but he was right about him.

‘Mate,’ Daniel said. ‘Want a bowl?’

Ben looked down. ‘I’m in my school shoes.’

‘Borrow my spares.’ Daniel nodded towards his kit bag, lying open a few steps away. ‘We’re the same size. You’ve got big feet for a little guy. You’re going to be huge when your growth spurt hits.’ Daniel cruised to the bowling crease. Then he turned to Ben and said, ‘Hey. You do enough bowling. Want a bat? Use my gear.’

Ben’s pulse went to two hundred. He could bat? He looked down the practice net. They were only bowling slow. They could humiliate him—they would humiliate him—but they couldn’t hurt him. He sat beside Daniel’s kit, wrenched off his school shoes without untying the laces, and put on Daniel’s spares as reverentially as if they had belonged to Steve Smith. He sensed, from past experience, that he was falling into a trap. Being welcomed was the first step to being belittled. But he wanted so much to bat.

Ben would have blurted something about the bat he and Zane Dwyer had stolen, but he was in too much of a hurry to get into the nets. He was not humiliated; in fact, he batted his best ever. It might have been Daniel’s bat, gloves and pads (and his box, which Ben wore underneath his underpants, next to the skin, he hoped without Daniel noticing; but so what if Daniel did?). Wearing Daniel’s gear gave him the confidence to step forward and hit the ball truly, even to dance down the pitch. He was only dismissed six or seven times in fifteen minutes, which for Ben was a remarkable success rate. Only after he came down from the heights of the session—Batting! Daniel’s gear! Hitting the ball! Daniel’s box!—did Ben remember what he had come here to do.