It’s working. My breathing settles. Everything’s quiet, apart from some traffic a couple of streets away.

Wait.

I touch my head. There are blond kids at my school … but almost everyone has their hair short. Mine is a bit of a haystack, and it makes me stand out.

Still, I can’t worry about that now.

My chest is stinging like mad where I scraped it. I realise not everything is quiet: there is a gentle, rapid flapping noise coming from the other side of the bush. Nervously, I peep out and see a big overgrown garden with a flagpole in the middle of it. And now I can see what is causing the flapping sound: countless strings of little flags all tied near the top of the flagpole are rattling in the strong evening breeze. They stretch out from the pole to ground level, forming a large colourful cone like a circus tent. Next to them is what appears to be a bundle of rags.

As I watch, the bundle sprouts a pair of short, skinny legs, and in seconds it’s on its feet and a head pops out of the top and glares at me. I shrink back, but it’s too late: I’ve been spotted. It’s a tiny old lady with deep lines in her dark-skinned face. Her hair is straight, shiny and black with streaks of white. She releases the fabric over her thin legs and I see she has been gathering up a long sarong in her hands.

She waddles towards me, saying something fast and quite angry in a language I don’t recognise. Then there’s another voice, also coming from beneath the canopy of little flags. A girl emerges, holding my tattered paper bag by the handles.

‘Is this yours?’ she asks.

Chapter 8

Obviously, it isn’t mine, because I’ve just stolen it, but I can’t say that, can I? The girl squints, first at me, with small almost-black eyes, then at the bag. It’s bashed up now, and its bottom is ripped.

Did this girl hear the commotion: the dog barking, the lady shouting at me? If she did, then she’s not showing it.

‘Erm … no. That is, y-yes. I-it’s mine,’ I stammer. She smiles and holds it out to me. The old lady in the sarong exchanges a few words with her in a language that sounds sort of Chinese, but how would I know?

Then the old lady points at me. I look down at my chest, which is stinging from the bad scraping it received. You know when you graze your knee? It’s like that but about a hundred times bigger and more painful. My hoodie’s flapping open in the breeze, and blood is starting to ooze through my T-shirt.