I got in behind the corrugated iron across from Brian’s house and peered through the gap to see what was going on. I saw my dad walking up the street on his way home and leaned back out of sight with my heart thumping, trying to stop it being so loud. Some people walked by on my side of the street with their heels clicking on the pavement. A car turned the corner and went past. I kept still against the wooden post of the fence. A cat came up out the bomb site and had a look and slipped past my feet and stopped and looked back and went on, sniffing the weeds and peeing against a bed frame. The hole in the ground was spread out from under my feet and I could feel myself tipping forward on the slope like I was standing on the edge of a crater. There was a rusty tin bath upside down, a burnt mattress with springs, a broken television set. It was like being on the moon. The cat looked back at me and disappeared into the weeds. Everything went quiet. I had the feeling I shouldn’t be there, standing in someone else’s house, the shadow of the stairs going up the wall, brick fireplaces on the different floors and rooms up in the air with layers of wallpaper peeling off. A door opened and closed shut across the road. I heard steps running towards me and the corrugated iron being pulled open. I crouched down. It was Brian, breathing like someone was after him.

‘I saw you from the window,’ he said.

I got out the five pounds and gave it to him as he got down beside me.

‘What’s that for?’

‘For you,’ I said, ‘for going away.’

He shook his head and held it back to me, ‘It’s your money, you keep it.’

‘It’s not,’ I said. ‘I stole it – from my dad.’

He blinked at me and put his head on one side. ‘You can’t do that,’ he said. He put the money in my hand and steadied himself on the wooden post. ‘I didn’t tell you to do that.’

‘I don’t want you to go away,’ I said.

It was half dark, the light was going. We looked round at the rubble of broken bricks from the house that wasn’t there any more, at the gaping hole that was full of rubbish people had thrown out. The empty space between the walls had tall weeds growing up into it. We were on our own.

‘My mum says people got killed in this house,’ he said.

He picked up a pebble and threw it down on to the tin bath, making an echoey metal sound snake up the walls. We listened for anyone moving on the street.

‘How’s your uncle?’ I said.

‘He’s got holes in his hands.’

I looked at him because – ‘What?’