‘What?’ It was Connor pushing me out the way, ‘What d’you say?’

The man pushed up his glasses on his nose and shrugged, ‘Where’s your Guy?’ He was tall and stooped, his voice was English off the telly, like he was something to do with the cricket up the Oval. He had a tie on, a long coat and thick leather shoes. He blinked, and was looking round like he couldn’t see anything and said, ‘We haven’t let you into this country to beg.’

‘We have got a Guy,’ I almost said, but Connor punched him, shouting, ‘Come on!’ and ran off.

He was bent over double, trying to get his breath back where Connor hit him in the stomach, coughing and dripping from his mouth and nose on to the pavement. His face was going purple, and the top of his head was bald and flaking where the grey hair made it look whitish.

I waited for him to come up.

‘You all right, mister?’

He pulled his coat in and leaned up against the wall of the shops, steadying himself and wiping his mouth on a handkerchief. There were red sores and brown blotches on his hands. He was old.

‘You all right?’

‘What’s your name?’ he said.

I looked at the snot on his handkerchief, I didn’t know what to do. It was too late to tell him there was a Guy. He could have come round the corner and seen it. A whole gang of us made him out of old newspapers stuffed into a jumper, we put on two cardigans that had holes in, and a balaclava filled up with paper for his head. Manus put on a cardboard mask with elastic that came from a scary Halloween comic to make him a face. He was a skeleton. We sat him up on cardboard under the big factory door at the bottom of the street with the newspaper sticking out the bottom of the jumper and everyone spread out to start getting in money. But that didn’t feel right, so Julie went in and got him some old trousers her dad left and a pair of socks with holes in. The socks didn’t fit, so he had newspaper sticking out his trouser legs ready to be lit. Everyone’s mum and dad gave us money so I thought it was all right. Harry’s mum gave us some and his dad was a policeman until he broke his back and they moved in round the corner while they were working out the insurance. I wasn’t sure what my mum and dad would think, they’d gone up the hospital in the morning. I didn’t know when they were coming back. Would they know what a Guy was? Manus and Connor and Busola were doing it, everyone was, so I joined in and people were giving us money as we went along.