“Two minutes, five seconds,” Danny said, his voice barely a whisper.

I didn’t care any more. I’d won the dare. And if Patrick Kelly was a boy of his word, then Peter’s secret was safe, at least for a while. “Let’s call it quits.”

Patrick’s mouth tightened into a bleak line. He shook his head. “No fucking way. Whoever was slower had to do it again. That was the deal.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said.

I saw the jut of the older boy’s jaw. “It does to me.” And he grabbed the spikes and pulled himself back on to the parapet.

Tam said, “Come on, Paddy, let’s just go home.”

Patrick dropped down on to the ledge. “Just start the fucking watch, will you?”

Danny looked at me as if there might be something I could do about it. I shrugged. I’d done my best. Catherine started the watch. “Go!” she shouted, and Patrick set off, adopting my technique this time. But even from the start I could see that it wasn’t going to work for him. His shoes didn’t appear to be providing the same grip as mine. He stopped several times during the span of the first arch, fighting to regain his balance. Tam and Peter and I ran along beside him, jumping up every few feet to get a clearer view.

I could see the sweat beading across his forehead, catching the light of the moon, his freckles a dark splatter across the whiteness of his face. The fear in his eyes was clear, but displaced by his own desperate need for self-esteem. To prove himself not only to us, but to himself. I heard him gasp as he lost his footing, saw his hand grasping at fresh air, and thought for one awful moment that he was gone. But his hand found the curve of the parapet, and he steadied himself.

We were about halfway across when I heard Danny’s voice shouting from the Kirkbrae end. “Police!” And almost at the same time I heard the sound of a car’s engine approaching from the direction of Randolph Place. He and Catherine ducked into the shadow of Kirkbrae House, but we were totally exposed out there on the bridge, me and Peter and Tam, with nowhere to hide.

“Down!” I shouted, and crouched against the wall, pulling Peter down with me. Tam dropped to his hunkers beside us. We could only hope that somehow the black patrol car would pass by without seeing us. For a moment we seemed caught in its headlights, before it appeared to accelerate past. I felt a huge wave of relief wash over me. And then there was a squeal of brakes, and the sound of tyres skidding on frosted tarmac. “Shit!”

“Run for it!” Tam shouted.