It’s early September and school starts tomorrow. Kez Becker and I are in the empty back lane behind the row of big terraced houses that overlook the river. It’s about seven p.m. and still fairly light. Between you and me, I don’t think I really like Kez Becker, but she’s an alternative to whiny Seb.

In order to ‘celebrate the end of the summer’, she has just dared me to commit a robbery.

I’m pretty sure she doesn’t mean ‘robbery’ or ‘celebrate’ exactly, and I am about to point that out, only now she’s got my phone, the one Dad sent me for my birthday last month, and she’s refusing to return it. She’s my friend (sort of) so I’m pretty sure I’ll get it back at some point, only she’s also the weirdest kid in the school and you can never be quite sure.

(‘Weird?’ you say. ‘How?’ Well, Kez’s dad is a funeral director, and Kez has offered ten pounds to anyone who’ll spend half an hour alone in his workshop after dark. I think there are dead bodies there. It’s another of her dares. She calls it ‘the Halloween Challenge’. That’s weird if you ask me.)

Kez is in the year above me and she has taken my phone because …

Banter.

That’s what she says, anyway. ‘Only bantz, innit, Bell! Lighten up!’

Kez was sitting at the top of the stone steps that lead up from the bay, examining the purple-dyed ends of her blonde hair, when I ran into her earlier.

‘A’reet, Bell?’ she grunted, barely looking up. She calls me by my last name. I don’t like it, but I haven’t said anything. Then she said something about a ‘nice evening’ and the sunset behind her turning the river-mouth a sort of brownish-pink. It was so unlike her that it should have made me wonder, right there and then, but my guard was down. So when she said, ‘Ha’way, I’ll take your picture! Your mam’ll love it,’ I handed her my phone …

… and ten minutes later she still has it. Like a hostage.

‘Please, Kez. Give it back. Me mam’ll kill me …’

I stop myself. Please? To Kez Becker? She’s got me now, and I know it, and she knows I know it.

‘Go on then, Bell. You’ve gorra do it. It’s the rules. Or you’re not gerrin’ this phone back. Or don’t you trust me?’ She leans against the high brick wall, arms folded across her beefy chest, my new phone clutched tightly in her fist. Kez talks with a strong accent, more like my old friends in Byker than most kids at school, although I think she puts it on a bit.

Next to us the wooden door to someone’s backyard is open a little, and my heart is thumping.

‘It’s easy, man,’ she says. ‘Just gan in, take somethin’ and come oot again.’

‘But take what?’ I’m trying not to sound scared, but I am: my voice has gone all high like it does sometimes. Kez wants me – requires me – to go into someone’s backyard and steal something. And I’ve never stolen anything in my life – well, nothing big.

‘Anything, y’great chicken. Anything that’s there. I bet there’s a bike. We can take that. Oh, don’t look at me like that: we’ll put it back. Honestly, we’re not thieves, man. It’s just borrowin’. This is a test of your courage: a “rite of passage” they call it. Years ago, they’d make you swim across a river with crocodiles in it, so count yourself lucky. I’ll wait here and keep watch. Off you go.’

‘But …’

Kez bends her head close to mine and I can smell her chewing-gum breath. ‘But what, soft lad? You scared? Good. You should face your fears! Stand up to them! Welcome to the grown-ups’ club.’

She prods me in the chest with a thick, nail-bitten forefinger.

‘Now go.’