School was release. It was always harder over the holidays when there were fewer reasons to go out. His friends had packed holidays full of skiing and ‘getting out of London’. For those left in town, most of the mothers planned endless entertainment. Pete Thompson’s mum had organised Laser Quest for eight of them last Thursday and it wasn’t even anyone’s birthday. At least this year he’d been allowed to start travelling on public transport alone – that was a game changer.

Quinn liked the street where he lived. He liked the multicoloured houses and the symmetrical trees along the road. He liked the bakery on the corner and the bookshop that smelt of toasted cinnamon. He liked the old lady with the funny felt hat who sat on the wall with her cats and said, ‘All right young lad?’ whenever he passed.

When his parents split up there had been talk of selling the blue house and his mum moving out of London to somewhere quieter. Maybe she would have been better off in a small village, somewhere where people were nosy and wanted to know your business. In London, if you wanted to keep yourself to yourself there was no one to stop you.

Quinn crossed the railway bridge and London changed in an instant, like crossing through curtains from front stage to back. The scene transformed from boutique shops, flower stalls and cafés that sold four types of milk, to a road full of buses, noise, graffiti, and street vendors thrusting newspapers at you. Most of his friends lived on this side of the tracks. Often Quinn felt more at home here – people didn’t look at you so closely here, it was easier to get lost in the crowd. Up in the sky a single firework exploded. Quinn looked up to see tendrils of light cutting a slash through the grey sky, a loner firework breaking free.

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