Never lie, that’s what mum and dad said to me, but I was seven and green. If the gang said it was a secret, then it was secret. So when mum asked if I had been with Jimmy, I lied. I did not tell her that we had gone to the local tip scavenging, and that Jimmy had spotted an old bike frame.

That when he had gone to examine it, the warm surface of the tip broke, and that he had fallen up to his waist in smouldering rubbish. That night I screamed as I dreamed about Jimmys blackened legs.