‘Irrelevant. It’s what she said that counts, not the exact hour and minute she said it. Anyway, enough chit-chat. Let’s get down to it. For the third and final time, what’s our first move?’

twenty-five. Troy

‘History, Government and Politics, English and Chemistry.’

Libby paused her digging for a moment to stare at me. ‘You’re doing History? Seriously? What a waste of time.’

I straightened up. ‘Excuse me?’

‘History is pointless.’

‘What the hell? How on earth is History pointless? It’s our past and tells us how we got to be where we are today.’

Libby sniffed. ‘Your past maybe, not mine.’

I frowned. ‘That’s not true.’

‘Of course it is. History is an erasure and an erosion of the truth about Noughts, so why should I care about it? It’s not my history, it’s yours.’ Libby resumed her digging.

‘History belongs to all of us,’ I argued.

‘Some more than others. Nought history shouldn’t begin with Crosses colonizing Albion. What about all the centuries of stuff before that? What about the Noughts who fought for our rights during the time of the eighth Ashanti empress? Or the Noughts who fought and died in the Great War only to see their contribution deliberately ignored? If you only read Cross history books, you’d think we Noughts have been sitting on our arses for centuries, doing bugger all except slaving for you lot and, more recently, receiving handouts. History is bullshit.’

Libby’s fiery eyes and raised eyebrows dared me to argue. I sighed. Life was too short. We both resumed our digging.

‘Troy, history belongs to those who get to write it. How many Nought historians can you name?’

‘I can’t name any Cross ones either,’ I told her. ‘So what’s your point?’

The wooden slat in my hand scraped my skin as I dug once again into the dirt by the cellar wall. When we’d finished digging, the blisters on my hands would be the size of beach balls. Dirt that had initially seemed soft underfoot was hard and unyielding now we were trying to clear it out of the way. I glanced behind me. We’d removed just a few centimetres of earth and we’d been at it for ages. Sweat was pouring off me, but with no fresh air or ventilation it didn’t evaporate; it just ran down my skin, soaking into my shirt and trousers. God only knew what I smelled like. And, with each accelerated beat of my heart, my ankle throbbed with renewed pain.

Beside me, Libby dropped her wooden slat and examined the palms of her hands. ‘This is shredding my skin.’

She wasn’t wrong. Beads of blood, dark and brooding in the cellar’s half-light, were dotted across her palms. As I took her hands in mine for a closer look, she winced. I immediately let go, but she pushed her hands back into mine.