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steps.
    ‘What’s wrong now?’ she asked, looking from Ricky to Helen and back to Ricky.
    Helen was crying. Ricky was dry-eyed, but his chest was heaving.
    ‘He hit me, Ma, that new boy. With the bucket! I think he’s broken my hip-bone.’
    ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Mammy Kelly, but shepeered all the same at the reddened skin that Helen was exposing by turning down the waistband of her jeans. She gave Helen’s hip a soothing little pat and tucked her shirt in. ‘You’ll be better before you’re twice married,’ she said.
    ‘Huh!’ said Helen. She was still holding the lumpy plastic bag in her other hand. Ricky wondered vaguely what was in it. It crackled as if something inside it was moving.
    ‘Did you hit her, Ricky?’ Mammy Kelly asked then.
    Ricky nodded miserably, the bucket still swinging from his hand.
    ‘I never touched him, Ma,’ snivelled Helen. ‘I swear I didn’t.’
    Mammy Kelly cupped Ricky’s chin in her hand and asked quietly, ‘Did she touch you?’
    Ricky shook his head.
    ‘Well, what did you say to him then?’ asked Mammy Kelly, turning to Helen in exasperation.
    ‘I only told him to say excuse me if he wanted to pass me on the steps,’ said Helen self-righteously.
    ‘Oh Helen! You can be so mean-minded, sometimes,’ said Mammy Kelly, not looking at Helen, but at Ricky. She said it almost as if Helen wasn’t there. Poor Helen, she was thinking. Can’t cope with the least threat. Not even a poor little scrap like Ricky.
    ‘Well,’ whined Helen, ‘he started it.’
    ‘I have no doubt in the wide world that he didn’t,’ said Mammy Kelly.
    ‘You can’t prove that!’ said Helen indignantly. ‘How can you possibly prove it?’
    ‘It isn’t a question of proof,’ said Mammy Kelly. ‘Go on inside, the pair of you, and no muffins for either of you, just bread-and-butter with your tea.’
    ‘But he started it, Ma, and he hit me!’ Helen started whining again.
    ‘If I hear another word about it, Helen,’ said Mammy Kelly with sudden briskness, ‘there’ll be no tea at all for you.’
    ‘You can’t do that,’ said Helen. ‘I have to get my tea. That’s child abuse.’
    ‘Child abuse!’ snorted Mammy Kelly. ‘Oh, Helen, you haven’t the first clue about child abuse, you lucky, lucky girl.’
    She raised her arms, as if she was going to hug Helen, but Helen stepped back, so instead, Mammy Kelly just gave her a little nudge with her elbow.
    ‘Now you’re pushing me,’ said Helen. ‘It’s not fair. That really is child abuse.’
    ‘Give over, Helen, please,’ said Mammy Kelly wearily. She reached out and took the bucket from Ricky, and as she did so, she laid a hand on his shoulder and gave it a friendly squeeze. She had a big warm buttery smile. Ricky tried to give a little smile back, but it was all he could do to keep his mouth from going crooked. Then she took the jug from Ricky as well, and said softly to him, ‘Go on inside, now, Ricky, like a good boy. And don’t hitanyone again, no matter how badly you want to. That doesn’t solve anything, OK?’
    Ricky nodded. Then, slowly, dragging his feet, he followed Helen, who was holding her rustling plastic bag awkwardly in front of her, into the house.

CHAPTER 10
The Moon Chair
    ‘I’m going to tell your social worker you hit me,’ Helen whispered in Ricky’s ear as they jostled into the house together . ‘You’re not allowed to hit people, you know. She’ll take you away from here. Probably put you in a home, or one of those places for juvenile delinquents. That’s what you are, you know, a juvenile delinquent. We’ve had them here before, but we don’t keep them if they’re violent. Mammy Kelly is dead set against violence.’
    Ricky put his hands over his ears. He didn’t want to hear any more of what Helen had to say. He closed his eyes as well, and so he didn’t notice that Helen had slipped away and was tearing up the stairs, giggling softly to herself, her plastic bag crackling