I take a deep breath. This is going to have to work. “We’ve just moved here. My mum told me to look out for an Indian kid called Pye Chaudhury. She must know your mum or something. There’s not that many of us, so I just guessed.”

Even as I say it, it sounds brilliantly plausible, especially since I know that Pye’s mum – my Grandma Julie – died years ago. It’s like a double-bluff and I’m so pleased with the lie, that I extend it a bit. “Mums always know each other, don’t they?” I laugh, but the laugh hangs in the air, a bit hollow, and immediately I feel rotten for having 1) used the death of Pye’s mum to create a better lie, and 2) made Pye think about his dead mum.

He lets it go though, and says, “Where do you live, then?”

I choose somewhere far enough away to be safe. “Monkseaton village. The new estate.” No sooner are the words out of my mouth than I realise what I have said.

“New estate? I didn’t know there was one.”

“Oh, it’s er … quite well hidden. And very small. You’d hardly know it was there. Where do you live?”

“Sandview Avenue,” he gives that little nod. “As you come into town.”

We both get up and dust some of the sand off our pants. When I lift up my hand to pat some of the sand off Pye’s back he flinches, then he smiles and lets me do it. With his back to me, I notice his shoulders trembling and shaking like he’s crying.

“Hey – I said I was sorry,” I say as I move round to face him and that’s when I see that he’s not crying but laughing. Just a quiet laugh, with that little exhalation through his nose, but laughing nonetheless.

“What’s funny?” I say, starting to laugh myself.

“Dunno,” he says, still snuffle-chuckling. “You. Me. Us? Wrestling on the sand?” I start to laugh myself. I think for both of us it’s relief: in Pye’s case that I’m not going to beat him up, and in mine because I’ve not screwed up my plan by letting Pye get away. For a moment we just stand there, looking at each other and laughing.

“Come on,” I say. “Let’s sort that cat out.”

We’re heading up the alleyway back to Chesterton Road and Mr Frasier’s house, and Pye is being really strange, and almost hiding behind me and the box as we approach the street.

“What’s up with you?” I ask.

“Nothing. It’s just … um … that’s Macca’s house, and I don’t want to see him.” He’s nodding in the direction of number 40. My old house.

“That’s his house?”

Pye nods. I remember what Mum said once about the people they bought the house from. Rough. Mad.

“Is his name MacFaddyen?”

Again Pye nods. “Have you heard of them?”

“A bit.”

Great, I think, remembering Macca’s rant about the cat he’d shot. Alan Shearer’s in a drawer in the bunker under a psychopath’s house.

Mr Frasier’s house is the same as all of the others, except on the wall next to his front door is a rectangle of polished brass and engraved on it it says, “Duncan P. Frasier MRCVS.”

He answers the door himself, and looks at me standing there.

“Ah, hullo laddie. Ah see ye’ve brought yer twin brother with ye! Do you want to know the date again?”

Pye looks at me, baffled. By way of answering, I open the lid of the box, and taking one look at the cat, Mr Frasier ushers us through the empty waiting room (which is his front room, converted), and into the surgery (which is his back room, converted). So far he has hardly said a word. The surgery is clean-smelling, painted in light blue and white, and there are glass-fronted cupboards all around filled with books and packets of medicines and vets’ equipment.

He asks us to stand to one side, then he gently lifts the cat out of the box and on to a marble-topped bench in the middle of the room. He stoops closer and sniffs the cat.

“Lighter fluid?” he asks, looking over at us with an eyebrow cocked. We both shrug. He runs his hands gently over the cat’s sticky, wet fur, parting the fur to reveal the wounds, and the poor cat barely flinches.

“We found it on the beach. Some big kids were running away,” I say.

Mr Frasier shakes his head wearily as he fills a syringe and injects something into the cat. He smiles at us.

“Well done, lads. I’ll tell you the truth: there’s no guarantee that this cat’s going to survive. But I’ll do ma best. I have to remove these airgun pellets, and clean the wounds, and stitch her up, give her antibiotics. Do ye’s want to watch?”

“Awesome!” That’s me.

“Not really.” That’s Pye. I think he’s feeling too guilty about his involvement to take any pleasure from seeing a real-life life-saving operation.

So we sit in the waiting room.

Pye has gone a bit quiet, so I ask him the Universal Kids-Making-Polite-Conversation Question: “What school do you go to?”

He smiles. “Culvercot Secondary Modern. You’ll probably be going to Monkseaton High, if that’s where you live. Unless you’re at the Royal Grammar?”

I say, “Monkseaton High, I think?” It sounds OK.

“You’ve got more computers than us. We can use the computers in the technical lab, though – they’re ace. They’re new this term – there’s six of them!”

“Really? Six computers in the whole school?”

“Well, seven if you include the one in Mrs Spetrow’s office. Pretty neat, eh? There’s a Commodore, two Sinclair Spectrums, which are great because you get these games that are just ace, and Mr Melling lets me into the tech lab at lunchtime, and I’ve been practising how to link them all up with a motherboard to make a supercomputer.” He’s chatting away quite happily and I’m drifting off, wondering how I’m going to get back to my own world when Pye says, “Oh my God.”

There’s a glass cabinet opposite us and he is gawping at our reflection like an idiot.

“Look. Look at us. It’s incredible.”

I see what has astonished him. It is like looking at a picture of identical twins. Pye’s skin is very slightly darker than mine, but other than that – barely any difference at all.

He looks at the reflection for a while, and he keeps murmuring “Wow!” under his breath.

Then I hear steps in the hallway outside, the door opens and Mr Frasier’s standing in the doorway, but I can’t tell from his face whether it’s good news or bad. I just have to wait for him to speak.

“She was in a very bad way,” he starts, and I’m sure he’s going to tell us that the cat has died. “I’ve done everything I can.”

Pye and I are staring at the vet, expectantly. Eventually, a tiny, half-smile appears. “I cannit guarantee it, lads, but I think she’s going tae pull through. Come an’ see.”

Back in the surgery, Mr Frasier takes us over to a large cage on the floor where the cat is lying on a clean, folded blanket, totally still. Only the tiniest movement of her chest reveals she is breathing at all. Parts of her fur have been shaved off and there are dressings on her side and one back leg.

I see Pye swallow hard. “Wh … what will happen to her?” he says.

“Ah, well. I’ll make a few enquiries. She had a collar on and I don’t think she was a stray so I daresay I’ll be able to trace her owner. Bound to be someone local. I’ll make sure they know about your kindness.”

He walks with us to the front door and then says, “Ah … I don’t suppose you have any idea at all who these older boys were, do ye? Only this sort of thing can’t be allowed, can it?”

We shake our heads, answering both of Mr Frasier’s questions at once.

I’m aware that I haven’t said a word since the vet came into the waiting room.

“Thank you,” I say at last, as he’s shutting the door.

“No, laddie – thank you. That’s a grand thing you an’ yer brother have done!”

We’re on the path leading to the front door when I look across at Pye and his mouth is turned up in a perfect curve of happiness. The whole afternoon has been pretty intense, and for a second I think he’s going to cry (I can feel my own chin starting the first tremors of a wobble as well) so I turn to him and start to embrace him in a bro-hug, but if the other person’s not ready for you to do that – and Pye isn’t – then it can go a bit wrong, as it does now. Pye moves back warily and eases himself from me. I remember Grandpa Byron telling me that men didn’t hug much in the olden days anyway, and I’m hardly well-practised myself, as I think I’ve said.

(“Americans, close relatives and gay people were the only men allowed to hug, until the Male Embracing Act was passed by parliament in 1995,” he told me one day with a straight face. I believed him for a while.)

So Pye and I are both feeling a bit awkward when there’s a shout from the distance.

“Oi! Chow!”

At the other end of the street is Macca, and he’s coming in our direction.

“I’d better go,” I say. The thought of Grandpa Byron sitting in the cafe where I had left him has rushed into my head and I’ve got to go, even though I don’t want to leave Pye.

“No – don’t! I don’t want to see him either.”

But I’ve made my mind up. Before I turn to go, I fix Pye with a gaze. “Same time tomorrow? Same place?”

Pye gives a big grin and nods, before turning and waiting for Macca, even though he doesn’t want to meet him.