He felt like saying Just because I’m brown doesn’t mean I come from another planet – and by the way, my name is Vikram, not Victor; but what he actually said was, ‘Thank you, Mrs Johnson. I am not a fussy eater.’

Although his mother never ate meat, Vic’s father was a true carnivore and had insisted his son should eat everything on his plate. Even so, he’d always preferred the Hindu diet of spicy lentils, vegetables and rice, and had never really got used to the texture of meat. At school he’d found it even more disgusting, always swamped with glutinous gravy and so stringy that it was sometimes impossible to swallow. But, as with all things, he had grown used to it. There really was no alternative.

‘Oh, I didn’t mean to imply . . .’ she shrilled. ‘I only meant . . .’

‘It will be fine,’ Mr Johnson said, squeezing his wife’s knee as he navigated a sharp corner. Vic wished he would use both hands on the wheel, and anyway his parents would never have contemplated such a public show of intimacy. ‘Stop fussing about the boy, my dear, and let’s get on with enjoying ourselves. I suppose you like football, Victor? We could invite some friends round for a game.’

Kenny saved him. ‘Can we go out on the bikes instead? He can have my old one, ’cos it’s too small for me anyway.’

Next morning Kenny was keen to show off his tree house, but Vic blanched when he saw the ladder reaching high into the branches of an enormous oak. He’d been frightened of heights ever since he’d broken his arm falling off an elephant – a ride organised as a treat for his sixth birthday.

‘Looks great, Kenny. But I thought we were going to try out the bikes,’ he said, to distract his friend. ‘To get sweets.’ Mrs Johnson had pressed sixpences into their hands after breakfast, crooning, ‘Buy yourselves a treat, boys.’

‘Oh, okay then. Sweets it is.’

They parked the bikes outside a shop with a mouth-watering window display of jars: sherbet lemons, fruit jellies and liquorice allsorts. Inside it smelled deliciously of sugar and vanilla, but after a moment the shopkeeper whispered something to Kenny, and Vic found himself being dragged out of the shop.

‘But you said we could buy gobstoppers,’ he protested. ‘There were some right in front of us.’

‘There’s a better place down the road.’

Only much later, when they were in bed – Mrs Johnson had made up a mattress on the floor for Vic in Kenny’s room – did he find the courage to ask, ‘What did that man say to you?’

‘What man?’

‘You know who I’m talking about. In the first sweetshop we went to. Where they had the gobstoppers.’

‘It was nothing.’

‘It wasn’t nothing,’ Vic persevered. ‘’Cos you dragged me out right away. Was it about my . . .’ He swallowed, hesitating. It was hard to say out loud. ‘My skin?’