Everything turned round in my head. It wasn’t about me, it was about him in school having to fight. He was in his big school, and Manus was in a different one. I was getting beaten up by Errol Clark but I hadn’t thought about him coming home with holes in his knees, my dad complaining about his jacket being torn. He was black there and they were making him fight. He was stopping all the punches in the air, talking about going mad. But you can’t pick your fights if you can’t think –

‘Can yer?’ he said.

I looked at him. It sounded clear but he felt confused, like he was looking at me but talking to himself. It wasn’t going to get better when we had to move school, it was going to get worse. He was out there having to fight and everyone was against him.

‘You got any friends?’ he said.

He was looking down his nose at me like I didn’t. I thought he was gonna bash me because I was on my own and a loser. But he shrugged and didn’t bother, I wasn’t worth it.

‘All the black boys are on my side,’ he said. ‘We’re picking off the ringleaders.’

Ian Barrett was avoiding me. I got him outside school on the swings behind the pub on Vauxhall Street. He was on his own smoking with a cloud round his face but threw it away on the ground when he saw me. He shifted on his swing, then changed his mind and picked it up again. As I came over he was sucking it to come alight and coughing. Then he chucked it away. I sat down on the swing beside him and rocked it with my feet on the ground.

‘Are you black?’ I said.

He’d been holding it in and let it cough and stream out in grey smoke between his lips. ‘You smoke?’ he said.

I shook my head.

‘Go on, have one.’

He held a fag out from his top pocket and got a box of matches out his shorts. I could smell his fingers and shook my head again. He lit up and made a big cloud of smoke blowing the match out. It looked like it was coming out his nose and ears as well as his mouth and I had to dodge it coming my way. He shook his head to clear it and turned the fag round for me.

I only took one drag but it burnt my mouth and came out my nose and made my eyes water. I felt sick and there was a taste that made me feel poisoned. He took it back while I tried to stop coughing and went on smoking.

‘My dad’s black,’ he said, ‘but I don’t know him, he doesn’t come round.’