‘I’m the odd one out. Not that they ever let me feel it, mind. I mean, they weren’t always staring at me over the table and saying things like, “What a shame Angie’s so dumb, maybe there could have been a mix-up at the maternity hospital when she was born.” Nothing like that, I haven’t got that as an excuse…oh hell, all it takes is one lousy party! Just one lousy rotten party and showing off, wanting to sparkle like a Christmas tree…Little smartypants Angie, in over her neck…I must have been a very big disappointment to my family, you know. I didn’t win anything, even when I was in Brownies. Only ever got one badge for First Aid and that’s just because the lady doing the testing was a friend of mum’s, so she couldn’t very well not pass me.’

‘I never won anything, either,’ Seymour said. ‘At school or anywhere else. I guess it’s because we move round a lot. It’s rotten. I don’t mean not winning stuff, but you don’t stay anywhere long enough to make friends, either. Not that I’m much good at that. Kids sort of pick on you when you’re new.’

‘Only if you let them. You’re not tough enough, Seymour.’

‘Can’t help it. I don’t know how to…you know, stand up to people.’

‘Well, you don’t have to be a prize fighter all covered in battle scars. There’s other ways of coming out top—you’ve just got to outsmart people when they start to hassle you, be one jump ahead. Sort of talk your way out of things if you can’t do it the other way. Like having a secret weapon.’

Seymour contemplated that advice dubiously and didn’t think it applied to him. He saw himself as a soldier with no weapons at all, secret or otherwise. Someone had forgotten right from the start to equip him with any weapons and soon there would be another stage in that long haphazard march.

‘Got my new school uniform yesterday,’ he said glumly. ‘Geeze, I’m dreading it. You just get used to one teacher and then you have to move on to some place else and start all over again…’

‘Some place else and start all over again…’ Angie murmured, and sighed.

Seymour remembered his pencil case and took it out of the paper bag to show her. A birthday gift, even if this wasn’t a spectacular one, was after all something out of the ordinary. The pencil case was made of stone-grey fabric with a strong zip, utilitarian, practical as concrete. As he gazed at it, he wished suddenly he hadn’t brought it across the alley, after all. ‘Got this for my birthday on Saturday,’ he explained, embarrassed.