‘Turn it up, you little devils,’ said the man, pushing the ball away.

‘You never said anything about children,’ said Kirsty, so quietly that Johnny nearly didn’t hear her.

Johnny shrugged.

‘It’s all going to get blown up?’ said Yo-less.

Johnny nodded.

‘There wasn’t very much detail in the local paper,’ he said. ‘They didn’t used to put very much in, in case the enemy read it. It was all to do with something they called the war effort. You know … not wanting to let the enemy know you’d been hurt. There was a photo of a lady with her thumb up saying “Blackbury can take it, Mister Hitler!” but there was hardly anything else about the raid until a couple of years afterwards.’

‘You mean the government hushed it up?’ said Kirsty.

‘Makes sense, I suppose,’ said Yo-less gloomily. ‘I mean, you don’t want to say to the enemy, “Hey, you missed your target, have another go”.’

The football slammed against the factory gates, rattling them. There didn’t seem to be any teams. The ball just went everywhere, surrounded by a mob of small boys.

‘I don’t see what we could do,’ said Kirsty. Her voice sounded uneasy, now.

‘What? Just now you were telling me I shouldn’t do anything,’ said Johnny.

‘It’s different when you see people, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I suppose it wouldn’t work if we just told someone?’

‘They’d say “how do you know?” and then you’d probably get shot as a spy,’ said Yo-less. ‘They used to shoot spies.’

Chapter 7

Heavy Mental

The man in the khaki uniform turned Bigmac’s transistor radio over and over in his hands.

Bigmac watched nervously. There was a police sergeant in the room, and Bigmac was familiar with policemen. But there was a soldier standing by the door, and he had a gun in a holster. And the one sitting down looked tired but had a very sharp expression. Bigmac was not the fastest of thinkers, but it had dawned on him that this was unlikely to be the kind of situation where you got let off with a caution.

‘Let’s start again,’ said the seated soldier, who had introduced himself as Captain Harris. ‘Your name is …?’

Bigmac hesitated. He wanted to say, ‘You get Ms Partridge, she’ll sort it all out, it’s not my fault, she says I’m socially dysfunctional’, but there was an expression on the captain’s face that suggested that this might be a very unfortunate move.

‘Simon Wrigley.’

‘And you say you are fourteen years old and live in—’ Captain Harris glanced at his notes, ‘the Joshua Che N’Clement “block” which is near here, you say.’

‘You can see it easily,’ said Bigmac, trying to be helpful. ‘Or you could do, if it was here.’

The captain and the police sergeant glanced at one another.

‘It’s not here?’ said the captain.

‘Yes. I don’t know why,’ said Bigmac.

‘Tell me again what Heavy Mental is,’ said the captain.