He pushed me off and made a big bang kicking up against the metal fence. People came out the shops along the street to see what was happening. They saw us and shook their heads – Connor with his bloody nose, me with my cuts – and Mr Edwards the greengrocer shouted, ‘Get outta there! Go on, bugger off!’

I followed Connor down the road, keeping my distance, waiting for it to start up again.

We got home and went straight out the backyard. He got a dirty shirt out the washing and a towel to clean up in the bathroom, and put some of the brown ointment from the medicine cupboard on the scratch across my stomach telling me to let it dry before I put the shirt on. It stung the tears out my eyes but he told me not to make a noise. He had dried blood round his nose and washed it off with a bit of water.

‘What you gonna do?’ he said.

I shrugged.

‘You’ll get yourself killed. You have to stop.’

‘You fight.’

‘Not like you. You fight to lose.’

I wanted to hit him again, but I stopped myself. Because that would make it true. He wasn’t fighting me, he was talking. I was the one punching out with no one there. I was losing because I couldn’t stop. I was always going to be losing to Errol Clark, I was fighting for breath.

He tapped his forehead. ‘They wanna drive you bonkers,’ he said. ‘You’re stupid if you let ’em.’

‘Who?’

‘Because you’re black,’ he said.

‘No, I’m not.’

‘You are to them. You stand up for yourself and they say you’re aggressive, and push you into fights. What you gonna do about that?’

I wasn’t sure what he was on about, so I shrugged.

‘What you gonna do?’

‘Stop fighting?’ I said, but I was guessing.

‘They can’t treat you like that, it’s wrong!’

He looked angry, so I got ready. ‘I don’t want to win, I just don’t want to get beaten up.’

‘You’ve got to! Or you’ll always get beaten up!’ He was waving his arms with his fists clenched to stop all the punches, ‘But there’s more of them than you ...’

‘More of who?’

He looked at me like who was he talking to? ‘I’m telling you. Are you listening? You have to pick your fights. They want to see the black boys fight each other. You can’t give in.’