Manus folded his arms round the box and gave me the same look he gave Connor up out the hole, like he’d been right all along and it wasn’t dirty. But now we were out on the street, they weren’t letting me and Brian go with them.

‘Cos you can’t keep your mouth shut,’ Connor said.

‘You can’t come, you’re not old enough,’ said Manus, ‘they won’t let you in.’

Me and Brian had gone up the Imperial War Museum before. There were two giant World-War guns outside that weren’t working. We tried to climb up but a guard in a uniform came out and chased us off. Maybe he’d recognise us, but how would he know how old we were?

As soon as he got hold of how heavy it was, Manus scrambled up out the hole with the box and we all had to chase him out the bombsite to see what was inside.

‘You can’t take it home,’ Connor said.

‘Why not?’ said Brian.

‘I found it,’ Manus said.

‘We helped,’ I said.

‘Oh yeah?’

I could see what he meant about me. What about Brian?

‘Take it up the War Museum,’ Connor said. ‘Let them give you the reward.’

‘Open it up,’ said Brian.

Manus stopped like he wasn’t sure what to think. He stood still looking into himself like he didn’t deserve it.

‘We gonna be rich?’ I said.

He unlocked his eyes and stared at me, ‘Don’t you tell anyone. This is mine, I’m doing it.’ He turned to Connor and said, ‘All right, come on.’

Brian didn’t try and help me stop them. Manus and Connor walked off like they’d had a fight but were friends again, and it was only Brian left with mud all over him. But it was me who was left feeling dirty because I’d brought him.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know, they give rewards up the War Museum?’

‘Lucky it wasn’t a bomb,’ Brian said, and shrugged.

‘A bomb?’

‘It’s a bomb site.’

It took a while to sink in. A bombsite was a playground, a rough place you could play in between the houses – when you could get in past the corrugated iron. I didn’t know it was the place where a bomb fell. No one told me there was a bomb under there. Until it burst in my head, and the ground went out under my feet.