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how easily she laughed, and how easily she shouted, and what she looked like when she got all done up
for a night out with Tess – how she would wear all black and no make-up except lipstick, and her hair would be piled on top of her head.
    He showed me how to dig under fire embers to bake corn on the cob, and told me about past evictions. If it was a big one, with lots of families, everyone did their bit, even the little ones.
They’d pull at the men’s legs, and cry. They’d end up getting pushed over or shoved aside, which would send the mums mad, though they should just have kept them safely indoors in
the first place.
    If Trick’s dad knew the bailiffs were coming, he’d get his brothers in. There were six of them. In the past, there had been proper stand-offs, bricks thrown and windows smashed and
fires set. Trick’s eyes lit up when he told me the extent they’d go to to stand their ground against the
gorgios
. It made me feel weird, listening to the stories.
    He told me that his Uncle Johnny, the one with the enormous chin, had his trailer burned down once, and I couldn’t believe it. Someone actually set it on fire? For no reason? Trick said
country people did stuff like that all the time.
    ‘They don’t like us when we travel, they don’t like us when we stop,’ he said.
    Dad was still waiting for the council to agree to help him with an eviction. Once they agreed, the travellers basically had to remove themselves, or face The Consequences, which as far as I
could tell meant being moved by force or, if they resisted, being moved by force
and
being arrested and having their vehicles and trailers confiscated.
    I thought it sounded cruel, but Dad said I didn’t understand. ‘You think everybody’s good,’ he said, like I was some kind of idiot because I didn’t want to make
people live on the dual carriageway. ‘You watch. They’ll stay here for as long as they can, make a bleeding mess, and clear off. And who d’you think’s going to sort out
their rubbish?’
    Me and Trick didn’t talk about the feud. As far as I could tell, neither of us had any say in the matter, so there wasn’t much point. Instead, we swam in the lake, climbed the oak
tree, built fires, ate corn, and talked about everything else, and just as it was getting to the point that I couldn’t remember what life had been like without him, a phone call to Silverweed
came and reminded me.
    ‘Have I done something to upset you?’ Matty burst out on the ‘o’ of my ‘Hello’.
    I’d almost forgotten she existed.
    ‘I thought you’d ring, or ask me round or
something
. Have we fallen out?’
    ‘Course we haven’t,’ I said. ‘It’s only been a week.’
    ‘Two!’ she said. ‘
Nearly
. Last year we spent the whole holiday together
and
we spoke on the phone every day.’
    I felt bad. Matty was right. Last year we had spent all summer together. And every summer for four years before that. Benjy and Matty would come over loads and we’d sit in the garden
drawing, or take sandwiches out to the paddock. Sometimes Matty would watch from her towel as we rode an inflated inner tube down the brook.
    I apologised, and she exhaled, sending vibrations down the phone.
    ‘Why don’t you come round, then? On Saturday.’
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘You come here. Tomorrow. They do the shopping on Fridays.’
    ‘Great,’ I said, but I had a feeling of dread.
    I ran a bath for Fiasco, because she’d been rolling in fox shit again, and because it always made me laugh to see her desperate expression when I rubbed soap on her long brown ears. She
jumped out midway and soaked the bathroom, and I could hardly lift her back in – she was so heavy when wet. I was in the middle of cleaning up the mess she’d made when there was a knock
at the front door.
    Nobody used the front. I shouted for whoever it was to come round the back, and I was so surprised to see Punky Beresford standing there that I didn’t even say hello. A tall,