Faadi sat on the top step of the staircase and listened to the argument that was escalating in the living room below. Syed had returned again to the house, bringing with him his usual torrent of bad feeling. He knew he wasn’t supposed to think it about his own brother, but Faadi sometimes wished that Syed had stayed in Cardiff when the rest of the family had moved to the Rhondda valleys. Their mother and father had hoped that moving from the city would keep Syed away from the gangs he had got involved with as a teenager, but from what Faadi knew of his brother, Syed didn’t need to find the company of trouble: it was in him anyway.

Things had been pretty miserable for Faadi in Cardiff, but at least there he’d been familiar with the misery. Here there were new faces to avoid in the school corridors, new rooms in which to feel lost, new things to worry himself sick about. And now Corey had been attacked, he felt even worse. He had invited him over to the house to play computer games, so it was his fault. If Corey had stayed at home on Saturday, he’d have been okay.

As awkward as it had been, the family meal on Saturday night had at least given Faadi an excuse to get Corey to leave. Inviting him over had been a stupid idea anyway. He didn’t know what to talk to Corey about, and Corey hadn’t spoken for much of the time he’d been at the house other than when the subject of the weather arose. Weirdly enough, as soon as the mild temperatures for this time of year had been mentioned – a subject even Faadi had thought it odd for a boy of his age to bring up – he hadn’t shut up, going off on a tangent about current temperatures in far-flung places Faadi had never even heard of. In a way, it was reassuring. Faadi had spent much of his life feeling that he didn’t fit in. Corey had at least proved that he wasn’t the only one.

As the volume of the voices from the living room grew louder, Faadi wondered if this was why Corey took such an interest in the climate of foreign lands he probably wouldn’t ever get the opportunity to see. At that moment – as in so many others – Faadi wished he was anywhere but there.

‘Everything has been for you and this is how you repay us,’ he could hear his mother saying.

‘I never asked you for it,’ Syed replied.

‘He’s unwell,’ Mahira said, her voice trembling and broken. ‘Can’t you see what all this is doing to him?’

‘We were fine where we were. If you want to blame anyone for this, blame him. Coming here … it was his idea.’

‘For you!’

Faadi had never heard his mother shouting. Even when the police had turned up at their doorstep years earlier – with a teenage Syed who had been cautioned for antisocial behaviour – Mahira had kept a quiet and controlled calm about her, dealing with things in her own patient way. Now Faadi was a little older, things were beginning to look different. All his life he had depended on her to be the strong one, the reliable and consistent presence in his life, but it had occurred to him recently that maybe she wasn’t in control at all.

He was beginning to wonder if that was why she liked to keep him close.

‘That’s how much he thinks of this family,’ she continued. ‘All the hours he works in a job he hates, all the comments he has to let pass over his head. He’s estranged from his parents because of you, Syed – because of what you’ve done. And this is how you repay him. And now you’re blaming him for saying enough’s enough?’

‘We could have stayed in Cardiff,’ Syed argued.

‘And then what? If we’d stayed, what would have happened next? How many more cautions were you going to get away with before you started facing charges? How much longer would it have been before you ended up in prison like the rest of them?’

‘You’re overreacting. All of this – moving us up here – it was an overreaction. I was just a kid. It was nothing until you two made a big deal of it.’

‘Nothing? Just like the other night with Jameel, eh? Was that nothing too?’

‘What Jameel does is his business.’

Mahira laughed, but there was no joy in the sound. ‘He’s always looked up to you, you know that. Ever since you were little it was Syed this and Syed that, and now you’re making him just like you. Your father’s right. You shouldn’t come back here … not until something changes.’

There was silence for a moment.

‘I don’t have anywhere to go.’ Syed’s voice was changed now, quiet and vulnerable. Out on the landing, even Faadi could tell what he was trying to do. And why not? Playing the victim had worked for him so many times before.

‘I’m sorry. That’s a problem you’re going to have to work out for yourself this time.’

‘But—’

‘Syed, you’re a man, not a little boy any more. You are to blame for this. Stop searching for excuses.’

The conversation was punctuated by the slam of the living room door. Syed appeared in the hallway, his face contorted with anger. He glanced at the staircase and caught a glimpse of Faadi as he disappeared onto the landing at the top, too slow to escape without being seen by his older brother.

Faadi hurried into his bedroom and closed the door behind him. Not for the first time, he wished he could just disappear.