‘What you in for then?’ A kid – he looked about fourteen – was calling to him across the rec room. Jake had been sitting in it on an uncomfortable plastic seat for – oh, he couldn’t remember. Hours. Days. Over and over, every time he closed his eyes or couldn’t manage to hold the thought back like a door in the wind, he saw it. Mike going down. The way he’d held up his hands, the way he’d jumped in front of Cassie, like Jake was going to hurt her. The way Mike’s face had changed, from thinking Oh it’s Jake, Jake won’t hurt me to Shit he’s going to. And then the look when the knife had gone in. The terror. No one had ever been afraid of Jake before, and the power was terrifying in itself. He’d made that happen to Mike, Mike who he’d first known as part of Uncle-Mike-and-Auntie-Ali, then Cassie’s dad – and Jake had no dad of his own – but also as the man who came round sometimes without Cassie or Auntie Ali, and when he went away his mother cried. Jake was not supposed to tell when he came round, but one time he forgot and then his mum and Mike went quiet, and Auntie Ali looked between them, and his mum quickly said something about having to go, and it was all fine, but Jake knew he’d made a big mistake. He was seven, but he knew this was something he was meant to lie about. Even to Cassie, his best friend. Not long after that, Ali and Mike and Cassie and the bump in Ali’s tummy moved away, and Jake knew it was all his fault. His mother cried even more then, in the kitchen when Jake was supposed to be sleeping on the other side of the thin wall. Back then, he’d sworn not to trust the Morrises again, not ever. They pretended you were family, but then didn’t mean it. They didn’t mean anything.

Something hit him on the face and he flinched. A bit of paper, soggy with spit.

‘I said, what you in for?’

He cleared his throat. ‘Stabbed someone.’

The kid whistled. He was skinny, his arms like broom handles, and he had freckles all over his white face. ‘No shit?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Who’d ya stab, fella?’

Jake shrugged. ‘This guy. He hurt my mum.’

The boy was nodding. ‘You stood up for her. Good on ya.’