It wasn’t even a black cat. It got knocked down in the wet and crawled on to the pavement and stopped in front of their door with its mouth broken and its ear cut off, and its legs stretched out stiff in front like it was pushing something away.

‘I’m not touching it,’ he said.

‘Get a shovel and take it up the bomb site,’ Julie said.

‘You do it,’ he told her. Gary was waiting for their mum to go so he could thump her, but she was holding on to her mum’s arm and getting ready to cry, so he had to look at us and say, ‘Who’s got a shovel?’

Manus pushed up the front and said, ‘I’ll do it.’ He wanted to be in Gary’s gang because they were older than him and had metal studs on their shoes that clicked as they walked down the road. They could strike sparks on the pavement, Manus said. ‘Let me.’

Gary’s mum went in to get a shovel out the backyard and everyone crowded closer, but the door was left open and Julie didn’t back down, ‘You think you’re it,’ she said, ‘and you’re scared of a cat.’

‘I’ll do it,’ Manus said, and they looked at him like he was getting in the way. ‘I don’t mind.’

‘You haven’t even told him,’ Julie said, ‘you just let him do it. You don’t care about anyone but you. Just like your dad.’

Gary’s mum came back out with a shovel that was rusty and had a short handle, hollow on the inside. She said it was a coal shovel that she didn’t need any more and Manus could leave it there when he finished.

‘It’s your own fault,’ Connor said, because Julie and her mum went in and shut the door, and everyone else followed Gary up the road because he had long hair and was letting it grow.

Manus was on his own with the cat. Me and Connor were the only ones standing there to watch what he was gonna do. ‘I don’t care,’ he said, ‘it’s not fair on the cat.’

He bent down and started trying to scrape it up on the shovel, poking it and trying to get it on, but the cat wasn’t helping, only curling up as he prodded because its body was stiff. He dug in but it only skidded on the pavement, with its legs stuck out. Its fur looked wet and spiky, and one eye was only half closed.