‘Cat and dog!’ my dad said, when I got my mouth home, crumpled and bleeding. ‘Chinese, Japanese, Congolese, Cat-and-Geese!’I started complaining they were out of control but I couldn’t get used to the new way my mouth felt, the feeling of being sore and sorry at the same time with my tongue in the way, I couldn’t get the words out. I was annoyed and ashamed – it hurt – and started blubbing, which made it worse, especially the way my mum was shaking her head, so I had to use the tight, angry look in my eyes until I found a way of spitting blood out through the gaps in my teeth to tell them I’d had enough.

Not even them getting beaten by my dad could stop it. Manus and Connor weren’t only the best fighters in the school, they were the only ones. There wasn’t room for anyone else. No one else got beaten up, and no one had to worry about being beaten up but me.

Manus left, but that left Connor, and people knew not to cross him. He tried to be fair and control his temper. When he had me on my back with my arms pinned down under his knees and he was going to punch me in the face, one of his mates said, ‘Mind his glasses!’ He stopped, and snorted up the snot from his nose instead and gobbed it on me the way Manus used to. He was saying he was the only fighter in the school and I shouldn’t challenge him. People were standing round in a big circle and even they went, ‘ Urgh!’ He looked up and shook his head like What you looking at? and they all moved back. It was Kat who stepped in and said, ‘Get off him.’

When Connor left everyone said I was the best fighter in the school. Until Ian Barrett said he was gonna kill me. Lots of people didn’t come back after the holidays, and more were leaving as their houses got knocked down, it felt in the playground anything could happen now to anyone.

‘What you gonna do?’ said Patrick.

It was the afternoon and the new teacher was letting us muck about while she did something out the room. It was only Patrick with his sticky-out ears who came up and said anything. He was a loner and everyone knew he didn’t speak much. If he hadn’t asked me, I wouldn’t have had to come up with an answer. I would have gone on avoiding it. But the way he asked didn’t let me – pulling on his ear which made it look bigger when he was so little.

‘I’m on your side,’ he said.