And then, one day, after Bunny died, Mousey taught me another game. He called it Mousey, Mousey, and it’s why I gave him his nickname. But it was a top-secret game, that no one else could know about. Except maybe his fat brother, Piggy, who sometimes came to look after him, but who wouldn’t tell anyone, because he was scared of their ma finding out.

The game was pretty simple. We played it down by the clay pits. That was where you got the mouse. You needed a mouse to play the game, and there were lots in the clay pits. You get an empty milk bottle (those little ones from school work well). You put some food in the bottom; a sweet, or maybe a broken biscuit. You stick the bottle half in the ground but at a tilt, so the mouse can climb in, but it can’t get out again. Come back a bit later, or the next day, and—boom. You can have fun with the mouse.

We played on Saturday mornings, when Mousey’s mum often liked to lie in, and my mum and dad went to their support group. Mousey would bait the traps the night before, and by morning they were always full. We used the largest of the pits, the one we called the Long Pond, and we dropped the bottles in, one by one, and watched to see what the mice would do.

Mostly, they died almost right away. That was fun, but it didn’t last. So Mousey and I began to think up ways to make the game last longer. We used to make little boats from wood and float them in the Long Pond, or sometimes the shallow Crescent, or the three small pits that Mousey and I called the Little Injuns, but never the Pit Shaft, with its steep banks, which was much too dangerous.

Anyway, we’d launch the boat, and then we’d put the mouse on board. The mouse was always the captain, and then we’d bomb the boat with stones, or set it on fire with newspaper, or make giant waves with a piece of board and watch it pitch and rock until it sank. Sometimes the mouse tried to swim back. Then we’d just catch it and start again. Sometimes the mouse just stayed there, twitching a bit, but not moving. That was never as much fun. I preferred the lively ones.

After a while, our games began to get a bit more ambitious. We’d catch a dozen mice at a time, and float them away, like Noah’s ark. Sometimes the mice used to pray to God to save them from the rising flood. God never answered. But that was okay. After all, we were God.