My mum came in behind him.

‘Stand up,’ she said.

I kept my hands in front of me, shivering. She folded the towel around me and let the water out. ‘It’s cold. What’s going on?’

‘Nothing.’

She looked at me, pursing her lips. My dad shifted on to the other foot, shaking his head.

‘I don’t want you in that house,’ he said.

I waited, feeling the water trickle at my feet, but he wasn’t telling me why or what he meant. My mum helped me step out and started rubbing me dry with the towel. I took it off her to do by myself. He didn’t like that. I didn’t care.

‘I don’t want you going there, do you hear?’

I nodded.

‘His father’s back,’ my mum said quietly.

We were back in the playground, in the concrete tunnel. Brian was brushing sand out his ruffled up hair.

‘My dad doesn’t want me to go in your house,’ I said.

He stopped and looked at me. He nodded. We were even. ‘That’s all right, then.’

‘Yeah,’ I said.

Then, slowly, he shook his head and I had a pang. We weren’t happy.

‘Let’s be blood brothers.’

We both said it. We nicked the end of our thumbs with a dry stick and closed them together, our fingers clasped, letting the blood mingle. And that was it. We didn’t have to be friends to be together. We didn’t have to be apart any more.

‘We’re blood brothers now.’

‘What you gonna do when you grow up?’ I said. I was gonna tell him I’d be an astronaut, but he said, ‘I’m gonna work with my dad.’

I thought about that.

I could remember glimpses of his dad telling us to race to the car. It was a funny race because I wanted to let Brian win so his dad wouldn’t mind me. Brian pretended to have a limp too and we ended up leaning on each other and getting to the car at the same time. But I couldn’t go with them, and Brian didn’t look back as they drove off. I couldn’t remember his dad being around that much, and didn’t know where they went, and didn’t actually know what his dad did.

‘I don’t remember,’ I said, ‘what’s your dad do?’

He shrugged and opened his hands, ‘We’re thieves.’

‘Oh,’ I said.