Everyone told us not to go down by the Thames. Manus said the scaly fish wrapped round the lamp posts would come alive if the water splashed them, they were dredged up from the bottom, that’s why they were black. They had open eyes and fleshy mouths that dripped and glistened in the rain. It made them look like they came from the river. I knew the water was dirty, that you couldn’t swim, you’d get pulled under.

‘Don’t go to the river.’

‘All right, Mum.’

The way down was dank and slippery, and I was always down there where it opened on to a bend in the river. The water came in and out, and slopped with the tide on to the steps, or dropped below a shoulder of mud and shingle. There were old wooden posts sticking out the mud. It smelt old going down, which was one reason for going, it was where you grew up. Everyone said don’t go, but the river pulled you. You just found yourself there, where no one ever looked for you.

At low tide there was a rope slung under the bridge. You could go on the knotted tyre if you felt you could hold on. I didn’t like the green slime on the bricked foreshore, or the slow swing out over the river. I wasn’t going to risk going near the current you felt would drag you under as soon as you touched it. But some did – the brave ones, or the ones you knew something was wrong by the strangled laugh that hung there under the arch as they swung back.

They said there were rats that wee’d on the shingle and gave you diseases, that you could get sucked in the mud, or cut by bits of glass and broken pottery that washed up, that there were ghosts that clung to the steps and no one would hear you if you got into trouble. No one ever said you could watch drowned animals float past, or stone bits of driftwood that turned into table legs.

We were in morning assembly when Thaddeus’s mum came in with the headmaster. She was shaking, the way light does on water, going to and fro unsteadily. He told us she was going to talk to us about not playing down by the river – we all turned to look at her – that Thaddeus had drowned and ... I didn’t hear any more because of the surge of sadness and shock that came out of us. We were all sat there cross-legged on the floor, we knew that river and knew what it meant – I felt the rush of it in my ears and held out against breathing, but we all gulped for air.