Coming towards us from the other side of the promenade is Macca. He’s holding what looks like a bunch of sticks in his arms. He waves an arm above his head and shouts something, but it’s indistinct under the noise of the wind and the waves.

“Oh terrific. What does he want?”

He stops on the prom and waves for us to come down and join him. I point to him then to us. “No!” I shout. “You come here,” but he shakes his head, holds up the sticks, and waves us towards him again.

Pye says, “You go and see what he wants. I’ll ride down in a minute. I just want to shorten the string a bit.” He kneels down and starts untying the steering rope from the front axle. I figure it’s safe to let him ride the kart. After all, I’ve got rid of the brick and the shopping trolley now.

When I get near to Macca, I see that he is placing the sticks of three huge firework rockets into a hollow tube that’s he’s shoved in the ground, and he’s got the same mean grin on his face as he had the very first time I saw him.

“All right, boyfriend? You’ll never guess what I’ve got.” He gurgles a manic-sounding laugh and bares his yellow teeth.

I don’t know what to say. They are so obviously the rockets from Pye’s shed, and Macca just doesn’t care. He’s stolen them and what can I do about it anyway? Report him? Fight him? He knows I’m powerless and it enrages me.

“Those are ours! Well, Pye’s,” I hear myself shouting over the wind.

“What? These? Nah, man, they’re mine, left over from last Bonfire Night.” He’s lying, obviously, but so brazenly that he just carries on without a pause. “Look, I’ve taped them together wi’ Sellotape.” So he has, and the blue touchpapers of each rocket have been twisted together too. “And it gets better.”

Out of the pocket of his thin zip-up anorak he brings a jam-jar filled with liquid. Opening it up carelessly, he spills half the contents on his sleeve as he pulls from the jar a long string that has been soaking and chucks the jar on the ground.

“It’s lighter fluid,” he explains. “And this is the extra long fuse.” He twists the string round the blue touchpapers and trails it across the ground. It’s only about a metre long so I don’t really see the point, but what happens next changes everything.

Honestly: everything.

“Now for the masterstroke,” says Macca, proudly. “Get yersel’ a look at this, man.”

He turns the rockets around so that for the first time I can see the other side, and taped on to them is an empty toilet roll, with one end flattened down and stuck, so it’s a tube with a closed end.

“It’s going to be the first …” and he says something that I don’t catch because just then a big wave crashes into the seawall and sends a fine spray over the two of us. “Here, steady!” he shouts at the sea. “Don’t get me rockets wet!”

“The first what?”

“This is ace. It’s the first rat in space.”

Out of the other anorak pocket he takes Alan Shearer. “I found him in our bunker.” He’s holding him far too tightly, and Alan Shearer bites him. “Ow! You little bleeder, you deserve what’s comin’ to you!”

“That’s not a rat, that’s my hamster!”

“Your hamster? How come? How the hell can it be yours? Don’t be such a moron – it’s a rat with a deformed tail. Vermin, running around my bunker, and this is what we do to vermin, ’specially ones that bite, OW!” Alan Shearer bites him again as Macca shoves him headfirst into the toilet tube.

“No!” I shout, “You can’t!” I try to reach out for the rocket contraption but Macca shoves me away, then he turns to grab me, one hand gripping my jacket and the other grabbing a handful of my hair. He puts his face close to mine and I can taste his spit as he hisses.

“Who says I cannit, eh? I bleedin’ well can and I bleedin’ well will!” He practically picks me up and marches two or three steps up the grass bank before throwing me hard on the ground so that all of the air in my lungs is forced out. Just as I’m managing to draw in some oxygen, Macca delivers a brutal, vicious stamp with his boot on my stomach and I think I actually black out, just for a second or two, with pain and breathlessness. When I regain my senses, I can see Pye fiddling with the string on the kart but he hasn’t seen our confrontation. He’s just getting into the kart, preparing to set off.

Macca’s back at the rockets now, and bending over the fluid-soaked string, trying to coax a flame from a cigarette lighter but the wind is too strong. What happens next is something I can remember in every detail. I wish I couldn’t, but I can.