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Johnny’s a complete muppet. He’s been caught selling a strip of E tablets to a sixth-former outside the school gates. A plain-clothes officer carted him off to the local police station. Johnny isn’t one for dropping his mates in the shit. Johnny won’t squeal. If he does, he knows what’ll happen to him.

The boy’s got no income now, which is a pain in the arse. The money he received for being Johnny’s minder, even though it was only a fraction of what Johnny took, has been useful. With a sigh, he slumps in front of the television. His mother is at work at the pub. She does four evening shifts a week, along with her day job, in the office of a building company. He’s no idea what she actually does there, but she always looks shagged out when she gets home and has no time to cook or clean. The house is a pigsty again.

His mother went off on one earlier. ‘Clean it up before I get in. It’s about time you pulled your weight. You do nothing but loaf about all day.’ That’s true, but he can’t be bothered. It’ll only get messed up again.

He settles on an episode of Brookside about a bloke’s body being found under a patio. He wonders if his dad would be missed if they shoved him under the patio. His father will be getting out of prison soon. There’s no way he’ll be allowed back into the house. His mother’s started seeing a bloke from the pub. The boy doesn’t know much about him but hopes he’s decent. For a brief second he thinks about Clark the lodger, then, as always, blocks it from his mind. Some things have to stay buried, and memories of Clark are too awful to recall. His sister still has nightmares about the man. Nobody is taking either of them down that route again. As for his father, it’s best if he stays away. Things have changed in the five years he’s been gone, and he might find himself getting the good kicking he deserves.

His sister appears from her bedroom and slips onto the settee to watch the programme. Just as he’s beginning to get into it, the television goes off, along with the lights.

‘Bloody hell. The leccy’s gone off. Didn’t Mum top up the meter?’

His sister’s voice is calm. ‘Nah. She told me she was struggling this month. Asked me if I had any money. You got any?’

He snorts. ‘As if.’

‘I’m not stupid. I know what you and Johnny have been up to. I saw you both going into the toilets again with Kevin Blackford. Kevin was flipping all afternoon,’ she says.

He’s not sure how to respond. His sister is a clever cookie and she’s streetwise. If he denies it, she’ll know he’s lying. Kevin was an idiot to take the stuff before lessons. One of the teachers could have picked up on it. Still, Kevin is a prize twit at the best of times. They probably thought he was behaving as stupidly as usual.

He decides to come clean. ‘I ain’t doin’ it no more. Johnny got picked up by the cops today.’

She stares into the darkness. ‘You want to watch out. He’ll drop you in it.’

‘No, he won’t. He wouldn’t dare.’ He leans forwards on the chair and rummages for some matches in his pocket.

‘Don’t you believe it. He may look big but he’s a coward at heart. That’s why he keeps you beside him. You’re like his pet human Rottweiler. If the police press him, he’ll snitch.’

He gives up on the matches and cracks his knuckles instead. ‘He’d better be careful then.’

She laughs. ‘Yeah, right. You give him a seeing to and you’ll be in the slammer alongside him and Dad. You can be really dumb sometimes.’

He rubs his knuckles and glowers. Bloody electricity. Now there’s nothing to do and he can’t even go and visit Johnny. He’ll have to go to the park and join the skaters, have a few smokes. It’s boring listening to his sister.

‘You know, there’s a way we could both make some money,’ she says evenly.

‘What are you on about?’

She continues in a voice that sounds far older than her thirteen years. ‘You and me could take over Johnny’s business. You’re good at scaring people and I’m good at convincing them. I expect whoever was selling the E to Johnny won’t want to be involved with him any more, so there’ll be an opening for us. You know who he was getting them from?’

‘Yeah, I know.’

‘You got any cash?’

He hesitates before replying. A police car races past outside, its blue light illuminating the room and casting an eerie glow on his sister’s face for an instant. She’s a clever kid – cleverer than him. ‘A bit from the last couple of sales.’

‘Then we use it to buy stock,’ she says.

He thinks about the possibilities for a while, then pulls out a cigarette and lights it, drawing on and letting the smoke fill his lungs. It isn’t a bad idea. His dreams to be a footballer took a real bashing earlier. He didn’t get picked for the local team on Saturday. He took the coach to task over it. Coach told him he was too aggressive. That was bollocks! He wasn’t any more aggressive than the others. Just because he shinned one of the opposition last time, and after the match had headbutted that twat Mark for saying he played like a girl, he’d been dropped. Well, they could stuff it. They were all wankers anyway and the team sucked. See how they got on without him.

‘You going to give me one of those, or what?’ she asks.

He rattles the packet. ‘That’s the last one but you can have it.’ He tosses it to her.

She lights up and sighs with pleasure.

Eventually he speaks. ‘Let’s see what happens to Johnny first, and if he gets off, then we’ll approach his dealer.’

‘Okay, but think about it. It’s shit being poor.’

He couldn’t agree more.