Kyle took the Kurtis Blow cassette, and didn’t seem to know what to say next. He dropped his board and ollied down the steps, clattering off, the board going AWOL. His brother headed towards the bench, ollied up and did an effortless rail slide along the edge. Normally Benedict would be here, or maybe Tyrone, and it would be in term time so they could talk about school things or football. But this summer was a bridge between an old world and a new one. Everything had to be reset, like shaking an Etch-A-Sketch.

It had been all right at primary school. Everyone knew Matty. It would be different, come September. Kyle would be going to St George’s, too, though not in the same class. But he already had a big brother who would look out for him.

The memory of those big girls, shrieking.

Kyle wheeled back up. ‘You going on holiday?’ His voice had got a bit lower recently.

Were they? Normally they went out to Italy for two or three weeks in the summer, or sometimes half term, Dad joining them a few days in.

‘Dunno,’ said Matty, watching Kyle head for the steps again before following him.

***

Once, when Matty had gone into the living room at night, Dad hadn’t been watching a war video but a film on the telly in which the actors all spoke like him. Black and white, with a grubby-faced boy and a man who was a tinker.

Dad hadn’t said anything for ages, not like he normally did, explaining where the soldiers were attacking or why the bridge was being built. ‘My people used to move about like that,’ he’d said eventually, in a strange, distant voice.

Matty had looked at him. ‘In a cart?’

‘Almost. A caravan.’ He’d looked over. ‘You know the sort?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, my dad had one.’

‘What for?’

‘To live in. Know what travellers are?’

Dad had never said much about his family. He’d left Ireland at sixteen, the age you were when you’d done your O-levels. ‘Not for me,’ he’d said, finding Matty looking at a map once. ‘The whole bloody lot of it.’ His sister sent a card every Christmas, and Matty would read the writing and try and imagine what they were like. Love from Maureen, Kevin, Carly and Michael. So Matty had Irish cousins as well as the Italian ones. But they’d never come over.

The three of them had once gone on holiday to Ireland when Matty was seven, staying in a caravan, the normal kind. Dad had sighed the whole time and it had rained loads and he and Mamma had argued, more than usual. ‘No wonder you left,’ she’d said. ‘Yep,’ he’d said back, though he didn’t really sound like he was agreeing with her. ‘No bloody wonder.’