Manus came back with more sparklers and gave us one each and said that was the last. We lit them together and I lifted mine up against the stars and let it sparkle against stray fireworks still going off over by the river. I felt I was holding Fireworks Night in my hands, fizzing and burning and silver. I put my fingers up against the sparks and felt the tingle. The glow went out, but we stayed up at the window seeing who could throw the used wires furthest into the street.

Those boys came back. The brothers were there. They glanced up at us from the other side of the street and hurried on. No one said anything. We watched them all the way up to the corner, carrying what looked like cut-out shapes of trousers and jumpers under their arms.

‘Is that the Guy?’ I said.

‘No,’ said Manus, ‘they’re nicking clothes off people’s washing lines.’

I hadn’t heard that before, only people stealing things out the shops. The man Connor thumped came into my head, telling me I was stealing, that the sparklers were stolen. I shut him out.

‘They’re your mates,’ said Connor.

‘No, they’re not,’ said Manus, pulling back in from the window.

‘Come on, let’s shut it,’ said Connor, going in. ‘It’s cold.’

I looked down the street on my own, the tramps were huddled up under the big door but they weren’t moving. I thought about those boys flitting up the road like shadows, holding the clothes they’d stolen, stiff with frost, and the echo of them calling out, Penny for the Guy ...

‘You shouldn’t have hit that man,’ I said to Connor as I came in from the window, ‘just because he thought we were begging.’

He looked at me like I was asking for trouble, but Manus stopped it saying, ‘We weren’t begging. It’s only Daddy doesn’t know.’

‘You’re the one who’s stupid,’ said Connor. ‘We didn’t do anything to him. It was Penny for the Guy, and he knows it.’

‘But we have now,’ I said.

‘So shut the window.’

‘They can put that Guy on the bonfire,’ said Manus. ‘I don’t care. They can burn him till he goes black.’

Connor pointed his finger at me, ‘I hit him because you’re too stupid to. Remember that. No one likes you.’

A burst of cold air pushed past me into the room. I shut the window, and it came down with a bang.

Winning The Pools

‘Go and bury that cat,’ Gary’s mum said.

It was outside their door it died, but he didn’t want to – he was upset she wasn’t telling Julie, who was the one saying it was bad luck and making him be the one to get rid of it.