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Curt tries to walk away because he knows what they are after but they block his path making a wall. Then the leader of these three goes, ‘I could give you a grand right now or I could shank you. Up to you blood.’

‘Shank me,’ he goes.

The three look at each other like, what the fuck is going on? If it was me I’d be maybe trying to fast-talk my way out of it, but this is some new shit to these boys. The leader, a little guy with one of them five panel caps pulls a shank out of his pocket and shows it to Curt. Curt takes a long look at the blade and then says, ‘What about you two?’ he says looking at the other two. Curt is standing there like he has been cemented into place. I, though, am on my toes, getting ready to jump in if the shit gets feisty.

The others show their weapons, grinning, but Curt doesn’t move.

‘Shank me,’ he goes. His fists are still in his pockets.

The leader comes nearer and holds his blade low. ‘We ain’t even fucking wid you blood,’ he says.

Suddenly Curt whips his hand out of his pocket and grabs the knife by the blade.

‘Shank me,’ he says, his face flat like a plate.

The boy’s eyes all panic and he’s trying to pull the knife back but he can’t release it from Curt’s grip. There is blood coming from Curt’s hand but you wouldn’t know it from looking at his face.

One of the others steps forward with his own knife and takes a swing at Curt. But this is a boy who’s never used a knife before. I can tell that because of the way it’s in his hand. He’s holding it like he’s holding a phone. I know that if you want to use a knife you hold it in your fist with the blade down, sharp edge out. This gives me enough chill to step into him and give him a couple of quick punches to the face. He drops down and I jack his knife while he’s still dazed.

Curt is still holding the blade. The boy at the other end of it is still ashy from fear. He looks at me with his boy’s knife in my hand and then runs. ‘You fuckers are dead. Dead!’ he goes as he’s running. I look around for the third boy but it seems like he went a while back. They came with three blades and left with one.

‘Fuck man,’ I say to Curt, looking at his hand.

‘It’s nothing,’ he says and clenches it shut again, blood spilling out the sides.

‘Nah man, it ain’t.’ I go and take my bandana off and tie it round. I pull it tight until the blood soaks through the cloth and then tie a double knot. Curt doesn’t flinch the whole time. I look at him for a reaction but I can’t find one.

‘That don’t make me gay,’ I say and we both start creasing.

We got to be good friends while he was in the ends. Curt would come round my yard and Mum would cook him dinner. She liked him even though he usually ate twice what she had in the house. In fact I reckon deep down she wouldn’t have liked him half as much if he didn’t eat so much. It was just one of them things. When he sat there eating, he looked like a child. There was nothing in the world at that moment. Just him and his plate.

She would pretend to moan about it afterwards. ‘The boy’s father must be a horse. Next time he comes I will give him a bag of oats.’ But there was also the mum thing that kicked in. As far as any mum is concerned when she’s feeding her kid’s friend, she’s really just feeding her own kid. And then, she also knew that Curt didn’t have a mum like I did. I mean he had a mum, but she weren’t no real mum. I think at the end of it that is the reason he kept asking if he could come round. Just so that he could get the feeling of what it might have been like to have a normal mum. And even though sometimes she would say, ‘So the horse is coming to dinner again?’ I knew that secretly Mum liked him.

In fact when he came round one day two years ago to tell us that he was moving back up to North London I remember seeing the look on Mum’s face. She had the same look in her eyes that she had when I told her I was moving out. She was trying not to cry and to style it out but a tear sneaked out of the corner of her eye anyway.

‘I hope you will still be coming back to see your friend, eh?’

Curt just looks at the floor, saying nothing.

‘I will make you dumplings if you like them,’ she says and turns back to her cooking.

Every now and then Mum would mention him. ‘Have you seen your horse friend?’ or ‘Instead of sitting in front of games all day long you should call up your horse friend and speak to a person.’ So I would call him from time to time and see how he was getting on. Anyway once I heard the rumour that Ki might be somewhere up in North London, Curt was the natural person to call. In fact he was probably the only person I even knew from North London.

I met him up just after ten o’clock in the McDonald’s on Seven Sisters Road. I had forgotten how big the boy was. That or he had grown since I last saw him. He was sitting at one of the tables and I walked over and checked him. He stood up while I sat and then sat again and put his huge hands on the table in front of me.