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hates you,’ snips Dirty Alice.
    ‘Away and have a bath, you stinky cow,’ I say.
    Alice is all red and gives me the finger. ‘Fuck off,’ she spits.
    ‘No, you fuck off,’ I say.
    Then Katie Calderwood dumping a TV in the Woody goes mad and tells us we can’t say ‘fuck’ to each other or she’ll tell our mas and our das, except Dirty Alice doesn’t have a ma and her da never opens the door, so it’s all right for her.
    I go home straight away but Paul MacDonald’s ma has already been on the phone and told my ma about the fight, but Ma tells Paul MacDonald’s ma a few things about her ‘precious son’ and doesn’t care too much I thumped him. Later she tells me it’s good I stood up for myself and that Paul MacDonald needed a good hiding. I am still worried Katie Calderwood will tell on me for saying ‘fuck’ to Dirty Alice, but Katie Calderwood doesn’t say a word. She just walks past our window and gives me a bad look. I feel worried for saying ‘fuck’ and also scared because one day when I’m least expecting it Katie Calderwood might tell Ma and Da, maybe when it’s my birthday and then I wouldn’t get anything. If she did that I would hate her for ever and I’d tell her she looks like a man. She would hate that because she thinks she looks like a woman. I wish I’d never said ‘fuck’ to anyone in my life.

EIGHT
    WHEN YOU FIGHT the toughest kid in the land and win then you are the toughest kid in the land except girls don’t care about that. Marianne wants me to say sorry to Paul. She says if I say sorry then I can be in the talent show, although that’s never going to happen, but just in case it does I go look for Paul. I find him playing with Fat Ralph in the Woody, but I don’t say sorry to him, I just ask to play soldiers. Paul says yes straight away. He doesn’t want to fight again either so we decide to shoot Fat Ralph, but Ralph hates being machine-gunned to the ground all the time and says he doesn’t want to play any more and we decide to go find the girls. Marianne is in tears because Bardo lost the Eurovision Song Contest and someone called Nicole from Germany won with a song about peace instead. Dirty Alice isn’t crying. She’s screaming it was a fix because of the war we’re having in the Falklands. She’s acting like she knows stuff about wars and Margaret Thatcher just like my da does, but she doesn’t, my da is the only person in the whole town that knows these things. He is a political person and says so. Dirty Alice doesn’t know anything. Everything she says gets on my nerves, even her face. It’s all screwed up and sweaty, as if she was running somewhere. She’s stupid, that Dirty Alice, and she’s always falling over on her arse. ‘It’s because of those long skinny legs,’ Ma says. If I hear a loud crying I don’t even have to look up, I know it’s Dirty Alice all hunched up like a ball sucking at her knee. Mrs Connor helped her one time and took her to her house for a plaster, but Ma said that was wrong and we should never go to anyone’s house by ourselves.
    ‘Everyone knows Mrs Connor, Ma,’ I say.
    ‘But what if she has a stranger with her, then what? She’s always running around with this one and that one.’
    ‘What do you mean, Ma?’
    Granny and Ma give one another a look, a look that means something I can’t know. They never tell me anything. Everything I find out is by accident and it’s not fair because I can keep a secret better than anyone.
    ‘Away out with your ball, Michael,’ says Granny.
    Anyway, Tracey and her mad red hair tells Marianne Bardo’s song was the best by far and we should sing it in the talent show. This cheers Marianne up and then I tell her it doesn’t matter anyway because there will be other times we’ll win the Eurovision Contest because Britain is brilliant at everything.
    ‘Bucks Fizz won, didn’t they? And we had a great song to sing for a really long time,’ I say.
    Everyone agrees and