Three other people cluster round Beige Mac, all of them about sixteen or seventeen. A dark-haired guy in a tracksuit stands a half-step back from the battle line, eyeballing Danny and kissing his teeth. A girl wanders in sweeping arcs around the Fiat, drawing on a cigarette and looking April up and down with an expression that implies something doesn’t smell too good. And there’s the guy in the green parka, who seems somehow less invested. He looks mostly at the ground, but when Will does catch a look at his face he recognizes him.

Benji Sanchez and Will have been at school together since they were four, and were friends from day one. They’d remained on decent terms until the late stages of year ten. He’d been a fun, soft-edged sort of kid, who often brought home-baked goodies to school. But Benji, like a few other boys Will could name, had the overnight compulsion to reinvent himself, returning after one half-term break thinking it necessary to belittle most of the people with whom he’d once been friendly. An unpleasant, but not especially unusual, transition from boy to man.

‘Apologize to my girl,’ Danny shouts, his eyes reddening. ‘Or I’ll floor the fucking lot of you.’

‘Let’s just go,’ April says over the roof of the car, her voice calm now, resigned.

‘Girl’s a slut, mate.’ Beige Mac takes half a step towards Danny. ‘What you got, Mr Muscle?’

Watching from such a distance, the night rendering him invisible, Will still shakes with nerves, but he’s oddly fascinated by this stand-off too: the silly faux-menacing looks the guys wear, their puffed-up postures, the stock phrases. Is this how all fights work? Like tomcats arguing over who can piss where? Will thinks back to the shoe-licking incident. Did he end up on his knees just because he can’t do the dance that these guys seem to so naturally perform? Maybe.

Or maybe he really is a coward. He’s hardly rushing to anyone’s aid right now.

Not one for playing the hero, are you? What Mick Touch said that night. You gotta act a bit braver than that when you’ve got an audience.

Danny slaps his chest. ‘Fucking talk to my girl like that.’

Beige Mac beckons him to close the gap. ‘Let’s have it then.’

‘Fucking come on!’ Danny yells, his voice echoing from all directions.

A realization comes to Will. He’d never scrutinized those words of Mick Touch’s. But now they make sense.

Play the hero … Act a bit braver … when you’ve got an audience.

This is all bullshit, Will realizes. This is all a show. That’s all these guys are doing: putting on a performance.

Yet even as he recognizes that fact, still there’s a part of Will that feels he should get involved. Inside, he still feels a wimp.