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it might have been much longer. He’d better go.
    He reached out his hand, not daring to touch a bird, but wanting to make a gesture to them, to tell them how wonderful he thought them. The birds huddled together and settled themselves, smoothing their fronts with their beaks, butting their shoulders with their cheeks, folding themselves into themselves and puffing and ruffling their feathery duvet-coats. As Ricky raised his hand, a ripple went through the burbling, billowing, shuffling company, as if the whole colony was acknowledging Ricky’s salute. Good night, goo-ooo-ood night. Ahhh! Good night.

CHAPTER 9
The Blockade
    When he came out into the evening light after the shadowy shed, Ricky was blinded. He could hear Rosheen and just make out her shape coming fuzzily up the steps, but he couldn’t really see her with his eyes crinkled up against the sun. He blinked a few times and concentrated on seeing her.
    It wasn’t Rosheen after all. It was that other one, the one with shiny, putty-coloured skin stretched over her nose. Helen.
    Helen was quite close now, close enough to touch. She stood stock still and stared at Ricky. She had a bunched-up plastic bag in her hand, which she carried at an awkward angle. It creaked and rustled a lot, as if it was alive.
    Ricky smiled and transferred the jug to the same hand as the bucket. That gave him a free hand to put over his eyes to create a sun shade so he could see Helen better, but still all he could really see was the shape of her body and the flossy outline of her hair against the sunlight. Her face was a mess of shadows.
    He stepped forward, sidling to edge past Helen, but Helen didn’t sidle to the opposite side of the step. She stood her ground. In fact she moved her feet so that Ricky couldn’t get past her without stepping on her toes. There was nothing for it but to shuffle off the step and onto the steeply sloping bramble-covered earth, so Ricky did that, sidling again to keep as close as possible to the steps and not get snarled in the brambles. Helen moved her feet again, stomping one shoe right in front of Ricky’s, crushing a scraggy bramble bush. Ricky moved edgeways, farther from the steps and into the brambly wilderness, feeling his ankles being scratched, but Helen was ahead of him, her foot again blocking his way. Reddening slightly, Ricky tried going back towards the steps, but Helen’s other foot stomped down in front of him again. They were like two people meeting in a narrow doorway and bobbing about politely, each trying to let the other through, only it wasn’t politeness – Helen was deliberately blocking Ricky’s way.
    ‘Excuse me,’ she said to Ricky then.
    Ricky put up his hand to acknowledge her words and to accept her apology.
    But Helen wasn’t apologising.
    ‘Excuse me,’ she repeated. ‘It’s what you say when you want to get past somebody on a narrow path.’
    Ricky nodded frantically, desperate to humour her.
    ‘Well then, say it,’ said Helen, firmly setting her foot right in front of Ricky’s feet.
    Ricky nodded again and waved.
    ‘Say it!’ hissed Helen, her face pressed very close to Ricky’s now, their noses almost touching.
    Ricky opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
    ‘Excuse me,’ said Helen, her breath on his face. ‘It’s not so difficult. Just two little words. Come on. You have to learn your manners, you know.’
    He hasta learn manners, Nancy, I keep telling you, it’s for his own good. I’ll put manners on him, so I will. Kids have no manners these days, but I was brought up to have manners to my betters, and he will too, if I have to beat it into him.
    If!
    Suddenly Ricky let fly with the bucket and jug and hit Helen a clattering wallop on the hip. She gasped, more in surprise than pain, and stepped back, holding her side. ‘You hit me!’ she shouted in outrage. ‘You hit me! I never touched you and you hit me!’
    The back door opened with a wham and Mammy Kelly came rushing up the steep