Shat myself. I shat myself.

Mr Moran had hysterics.

'Dad!' Dean groaned.

'Sorry, lads, couldn't resist it!' Mr Moran wiped his eyes. 'Just came out to plant next year's daffodillies, heard what you were talking about, and I could not resist!'

'Well, I don't half wish,' Dean replaced the lid, 'you had of!'

Dean's dad set up ping-pong by balancing a wall of spine-up books across the kitchen table. Our bats were Ladybird books. (Mine was The Elves and the Shoemaker and Dean played with Rumpelstiltskin. Right spazzers we must've looked, specially Mr Moran, who played cradling a can of Dr Pepper. (Dr Pepper's fizzy Benylin.) Brill laugh it was, mind. More fun than my portable TV, any day. Dean's little sister Maxine kept score. The whole family call her Mini Max. We played Winner Stays On. Dean's mum got home from the old folk's home where she works, on the Malvern Road. She just took one look at us, said, 'Frank Moran,' and lit a fire that smelt of dry roasted peanuts. My dad says real fires are more faff than they're worth, but Dean's dad says in a Tavish McTavish voice, 'Neeever buy ye a hoose wi'oot a chimberly pot.' Mrs Moran pinned her hair back with a knitting needle and thrashed me, 217, but instead of staying on Mrs Moran read aloud from the Malvern Gazetteer: BURNT CRUMPETS UNLEASH ANARCHY AT VILLAGE HALL! BURNT CRUMPETS UNLEASH ANARCHY AT VILLAGE HALL! '"Black Swan Green villagers learnt you can have smoke without fire on Wednesday. The inaugural meeting of the Village Camp Crisis Committee, set up by residents to fight a proposed gypsy site in Hakes Lane, Black Swan Green, was interrupted by a fire alarm which triggered a frantic stampede..." Well, dearie, dearie me.' (The article itself wasn't funny but Mrs Moran read it in this yokel news-voice that made us pee ourselves.) '"Emergency services rushed to the scene, only to discover the alarm had been triggered by smoke from a toaster. Four people were treated for injuries caused by the stampede. Eyewitness Gerald Castle, of Kingfisher Meadows, Black Swan Green-" That's your neighbour, ain't it, Jason? "-told the Gazetteer, 'It's a minor miracle nobody was maimed for life.'" Oh, sorry, I shouldn't be laughin'. It's not funny at all, really. Did you actually see this stampede, Jason?' '"Black Swan Green villagers learnt you can have smoke without fire on Wednesday. The inaugural meeting of the Village Camp Crisis Committee, set up by residents to fight a proposed gypsy site in Hakes Lane, Black Swan Green, was interrupted by a fire alarm which triggered a frantic stampede..." Well, dearie, dearie me.' (The article itself wasn't funny but Mrs Moran read it in this yokel news-voice that made us pee ourselves.) '"Emergency services rushed to the scene, only to discover the alarm had been triggered by smoke from a toaster. Four people were treated for injuries caused by the stampede. Eyewitness Gerald Castle, of Kingfisher Meadows, Black Swan Green-" That's your neighbour, ain't it, Jason? "-told the Gazetteer, 'It's a minor miracle nobody was maimed for life.'" Oh, sorry, I shouldn't be laughin'. It's not funny at all, really. Did you actually see this stampede, Jason?'

'Yes, Dad took me. The village hall was packed. Weren't you there?'

Mr Moran'd gone sort of stony. 'Sam Swinyard came sniffin' round for my signature but I politely declined him.' The conversation'd taken a wrong turn. 'Impressed by the level of debate, were you?'

'People were pretty much against the camp.'

'Oh, doubtless they were! Folks'll do bugger-all while the unions their grandfathers died for get dismantled by that creature in Downing Street! But once they smell a threat to their house prices they're up in arms faster'n any revolutionary!'

'Frank,' Mrs Moran said, like a handbrake.

'I ain't ashamed of Jason knowing I've got gypsy blood in my veins! My grandfather was one, Jason, see. That's why we didn't go to the meeting. Gypsies ain't angels but they ain't devils neither. No more an' no less than farmers or postmen or landlords, anyhow. Folks ought to just leave 'em be.'

I couldn't think of anything to say, so I just nodded.

'Nattering won't get supper on the table.' Mrs Moran got up. Mr Moran got out his Word Puzzler's Weekly. Word Puzzler's Weekly's got ladies in bikinis on the cover but nothing nudier inside. Maxine, Dean and I put the Ladybird books away till the smell of gammon and mushrooms filled the small kitchen. I helped Dean lay the table to postpone going home. The Morans' cutlery drawer isn't scientifically divided like ours. It's all higgledy-piggledy. 'You'll be stayin' for a bite, Jason?' Dean's mum peeled potatoes. 'Mi'lady Kelly phoned me at work. They're all off for pie and chips after work 'cause it's somebody's birthday, so we've got room for one more.'

'Go on,' urged Dean's dad. 'Ring your Mum on our jellybone.'

'Better not.' Actually I'd've loved to stay, but Mum throws an eppy if I don't book meals at other kids' houses weeks in advance. Dad goes all policeman-like too, as if the offence is too serious to merely get cross at. Dad eats dinner in Oxford more often than he eats at home these days, mind. 'Thanks for having me.'

Dusk'd sucked mist from the ground. The clocks're going back next weekend. Mum'd be home from Cheltenham soon but I wasn't in any hurry. So I went the long way via Mr Rhydd's shop. Less chance of running across Ross Wilcox's lot if I avoided the mouth of Wellington Gardens, I thought. But just as I passed the lychgate of St Gabriel's, kids' shouts spilt out of Colette Turbot's garden. Not good.

Not good at all. Up ahead were Ross Wilcox himself, Gary Drake and ten or fifteen kids. Older kids, too, like Pete Redmarley and the Tookey Brothers. War'd broken out. Conkers for bullets, crab apples and windfallen pears for heavy artillery. Spare ammo was carried in pouches made of turned-up sweaters. A stray acorn whistled by my ear. Once I'd've just picked the side with the most popular kids on and joined in but 'once' isn't now. Chances are the cry'd go up, 'G-g-g-get T-t-t-tttaylor!' and both armies'd turn their fire on me. If I tried to leg it, there'd be a fox hunt through the village with Wilcox as the huntmaster and me as the fox.

So I slipped into the ivy-choked bus shelter before anyone spotted me. The buses to Malvern and Upton and Tewkesbury once stopped here, but they've mostly been cancelled now 'cause of cuts. Snoggers and graffitiers've taken it over. Fruit bounced past the doorway. I realized I'd just trapped myself. Pete Redmarley's army were falling back this way with Gary Drake and Ross Wilcox's lot war-crying after them. I peered out. A cooking apple exploded spectacularly on Squelch's head, ten feet away. In seconds the defenders'd draw level and I'd be found hiding. Being found hiding's worse than just being found.

Squelch rubbed apple from his eye, then looked at me.

Shit scared he'd give me away, I put my finger on my lip.

Squelch's gurn turned to a grin. He put his finger on his lip.

I darted out of the shelter, across the Malvern Road. I had no time to find a path so I just jumped into the denseness. Holly. Just my luck. I sank down through prickly leaves. My neck and bum got scratched but scratches don't hurt like humilation hurts. Miracle of miracles, no one trumpeted out my name. The battle spilt this way and that, so close to my hiding place I heard Simon Sinton mumble instructions to himself. The bus shelter I'd left twenty seconds ago was requisitioned as a bunker.

'That hurt, Croome, you tosser!'

'Oh, did it hurt, poor little Robin South? I'm so sorry!'

'C'mon, you lot! Show 'em who this village belongs to!'

'Kill 'em! Massacre 'em! Dump 'em in a pit! Bury 'em!'

Pete Redmarley's forces rallied. The battle stayed vicious but stalemated. The air thickened with missiles and the cries of the hit. Wayne Nashend foraged for ammo just feet from my hiding place. It looked like the war'd spilled into the woods. My only way out was deeper in.

The wood invited me on, curtain after curtain, like sleep. Ferns stroked my forehead and picked my pockets. Nobody knows you're here, murmured the trees, anchoring down for the winter.

Picked-on kids act invisible to reduce the chances of being noticed and picked on. Stammerers act invisible to reduce the chances of being made to say something we can't. Kids whose parents argue act invisible in case we trigger another skirmish. The Triple Invisible Boy, that's Jason Taylor. Even I don't see the real Jason Taylor much these days, 'cept for when we're writing a poem, or occasionally in a mirror, or just before sleep. But he comes out in woods. Ankley branches, knuckly roots, paths that only might be, earthworks by badgers or Romans, a pond that'll ice over come January, a wooden cigar box nailed behind the ear of a secret sycamore where we once planned a tree house, birdstuffedtwigsnapped silence, toothy bracken, and places you can't find if you're not alone. Time in woods's older than time in clocks, and truer. Ghosts of Might Be run riot in woods, and stationery shops and messes of stars. Woods don't bother with fences or borders. Woods are fences and borders. Don't be afraid. You see better in the dark. I'd love to work with trees. Druids don't exist nowadays, but foresters do. A forester in France. What tree cares if you can't spit your words out?

This druid feeling I get in woods's so thrilling it makes me want to crap, so I dug a hole with a flat stone inside a clump of mitten-leafed shrubs. I pulled down my cacks and squatted. It's ace shitting outside like a caveman. Let go, thud, subtle crinkle on dry leaves. Squatted craps come out smoother than craps in bogs. Crap's peatier and steamier in open air, too. (My one fear is bluebottles flying up my arsehole and laying eggs in my lower intestine. Larvae'd hatch and get to my brain. My cousin Hugo told me it actually happened to an American kid called Akron Ohio.) 'Am I normal,' I said aloud just to hear my voice, 'talking to myself in a wood like this?' A bird so near it might've perched on a curl of my ear musicked a flute in a jar. I quivered to own such an unownable thing. If I could've climbed into that moment, that jar, and never ever left, I would've done. But my squatting calves were aching, so I moved. The unownable bird took fright and vanished down its tunnel of twigs and nows.

I'd just wiped my arse with mitten-leaves when this massive dog, big as a bear, this brown-and-white wolf, padded out of the murky bracken.

I thought I was going to die.

But the wolf calmly picked up my Adidas bag in its teeth and trotted off down the path.

Only a dog, trembled Maggot, it's gone, it's okay, we're safe.

A dead man's groan unwound itself from deep inside me. Six exercise books including Mr Whitlock's plus three textbooks. Gone! What'd I say to the teachers? 'I can't hand in my homework, sir. A dog ran off with it.' Mr Nixon'd bring back the cane just to punish my lack of originality.

Far too late I jumped up to give chase, but my snake-clasp belt twanged undone, my trousers unhoiked and I flew head over arse like Laurel and Hardy. Leaf mould in my underpants, a twig up my nose.

Nothing for it but follow the way the dog might've gone, scanning the clotted woods for patches of trotting white. Whitlock's sarcasm'd be everlasting. Mrs Coscombe's fury'd be hot as ovens. Mr Inkberrow's disbelief'd be as unbendy as his blackboard ruler. Shit, shit, shit. First every kid labels me as a tragic case, now half the teachers'll think I'm a waste of space. 'What were you doing traipsing through the woods at that hour?'

An owl? Here was a bent glade I knew from when us village kids used to fight war games in the woods. Pretty seriously we took it, with prisoners of war, ceasefires, flags one side had to steal (footy socks on a stick) and rules of combat that were half tag, half judo. More sophisticated than those Passchendaeles back on the Malvern Road, anyhow. When field marshals picked their men I was snapped up 'cause I was an ace dodger and tree-climber. Those war games were ace. Sport at school isn't the same. Sport doesn't let you be someone you're not. War games're extinct now. Us lot were the last ones. Apart from the lake where people walk dogs, every season chokes up more and more paths in the woods. Ways in've been wired off or walled up by brambles and farmers. Things get dense and thorny if they're left on their own. People're getting edgy about kids running around after dark like we used to. A newspaper boy called Carl Bridgewater was murdered not long ago, in Gloucestershire. Gloucestershire's only next door. The police found his body in a wood like this.

Thinking about Carl Bridgewater made me a bit scared. A bit. A murderer might dump a body in a wood but it'd be an idiotic place to wait for victims. Black Swan Green Wood isn't Sherwood Forest or Vietnam. All I had to do to get home was backtrack, or keep going till I reached fields.

Yeah, without my Adidas school bag.

Twice I saw a patch of white and thought, The dog!

One time it was just a silver birch. The second time, a placky bag.

This was hopeless.

The lip of the old quarry reared up. I'd forgotten it since the war games stopped. Not a big drop, but you wouldn't want to tumble down it. The bottom was a sort of three-sided basin with a track going out that led to Hakes Lane. Or is it Pig Lane? I was surprised to see there were lights and voices on the quarry floor. Five or six caravans, I counted, plus motor homes and a truck, a horsebox, a Hillman van and a motorbike and sidecar. A generator was chugging. Gypsies, I thought, has to be. At the foot of the scree below my overhang about seven or eight figures sat round a dirty fire. Dogs, too.

No sign of the wolf who'd robbed me, and no sign of my Adidas bag. But surely, it was likelier my bag'd be here than anywhere else in the wood. Problem was, how does a kid from a four-bedroom house down Kingfisher Meadows with Everest double glazing go up to gypsies and accuse their dogs of nicking stuff?

I had to.

How could I? I went to that Village Camp Crisis Committee meeting. But my bag. At the very least, I figured, I should come into their camp by the main track, so they didn't think I was spying on them.

'Gonna stay spyin' on us all evenin', are yer?'

If Dean Moran's dad'd put five shits up me, this rammed home ten. A broken-nosed face appeared in the clotted dark behind me. Fierce. 'No,' I might've begun pleading, 'I just thought-' But I didn't finish 'cause I'd taken a step back.

Empty air.

Stones, soil sliding, me sliding with it, down and round and (You'll be lucky if you only break a leg, said Unborn Twin) round and down and ('Feck!' and 'Mind it!' and 'MIND IT!' shouted real humans) and down and round and (dice in a tumbler) round and down and (caravans campfire collarbones) breath whacked out of my lungs as I came to a dead stop.

Dogs were going wild, inches away.

'GERROUT O'HERE, YER GERT DAFT BUGGERS!'.

Streams of pebbles and dirt caught up with me.

'Well,' the voice rasped, 'where in bugger did he drop from?'

It was like when someone on TV wakes in hospital and faces swim up, but spookier 'cause of the dark. My body ached in twenty places. Scraper pain, not axed pain, so I reckoned I'd be able to walk. My vision spun like a washing machine at the end of its cycle. 'A kid's skidded down the quarry!' rang out voices. 'A kid's skidded down the quarry!' More people appeared in the firelight. Suspicious if not hostile.

An old man spoke in a foreign language.

'Don't have to bury him yet! T'ain't a cliff he dropped!'

'It's okay,' grit clogged my mouth, 'I'm okay.'

A near one asked, 'Can yer stand up, boy?'

I tried but the ground hadn't stopped tumbling yet.

'Wobbly on his trotters,' the raspy voice decided. 'Park yer arse a mo, mush, round the fire. Help us, one of yer...'

Two arms supported me the few steps to the fire. An aproned mother and daughter stepped from a caravan where Midlands Today was on. Both women looked hard as hammers. One held a baby. Kids jostled to get a better look. Wilder and way harder than any kid in my year, even Ross Wilcox. Rain, colds, scraps, bullies, handing in homework on time, such things didn't worry these kids.

One teenager was whittling at a lump and not paying me the blindest bit of notice. Firelight flashed off his sure knife. A mop of hair hid half his face.

The raspy man turned into the knife grinder. This reassured me, but only a bit. Him on my doorstep was one thing, but me crashing down here wasn't the same. 'Sorry to...thanks, but I'd best be off.'

'I caught him, Bax!' Bust-nosed Boy came bum-skiing down the scree. 'But the divvy fell off himself! I never pushed him! But I should of! Spyin', he was, the spyin' bugger!'

Knife Grinder looked at me. 'You ain't ready to leave yet, chavvo.'

'This'll, er' (Hangman blocked 'sound') 'appear weird, but I was in the woods over by St Gabriel's the church and I'd just' (Hangman blocked 'sat') 'I'd just rested when this dog' (God, this sounded so pathetic) 'this massive dog came up and grabbed my bag and ran off with it.' (Not one flicker of sympathy on not one face.) 'It's got all my exercise books and textbooks in.' Hangman was making me duck words like a liar does. 'Then I followed the dog, well, I tried to, but it got dark, and the path, well, kind of path, just led me to...' I pointed up behind me. 'Up there. I saw you down here but I wasn't spying on you.' (Even the baby looked dubious.) 'Honest, I just wanted my bag back.'

The whittler still whittled.

A woman asked, 'Why was yer in the wood in the first place?'

'Hiding.' Only the unpretty truth'd do.

'Hiding?' her daughter demanded. 'Who from?'

'A bunch of kids. Village kids.'

'What yer do to 'em?' asked Bust-nosed Boy.

'Nothing. They just don't like me.'

'Why not?'

'How should I know?'

''Course yer know!'

Of course I do. 'I'm not one of them. That's it. That's enough.'

Warmth slimed my palm and a fangy lurcher looked back up. A man with greased-back hair and sideburns snorted at an older one. 'Should o' seen yer face, Bax! When the boy came tumbling down out of nowhere!'

'Frit as sin, I was!' The old man chucked a beer can into the fire. 'An' I don't mind ownin' it, Clem Ostler. Thought he was a mulo up from the graveyard. Or gorgios chuckin' stoves or fridges down like that time up Pershore way. Nah, I never got a good feelin' about this atchin-sen.' (Either gypsies bend words out of shape, or they have new words for things.) 'This 'un' (I got a suspicious nod) 'a-creepin' up on us jus' proves it.'

'Ain't it more polite,' Knife Grinder turned to me, 'just to ask' bout yer bag, if yer thought we had it?'

'Reckon we'd skewer yer an' roast yer alive, didn't yer?' The woman's folded forearms were thick as cables. 'Everyone knows us gypsies're all partial for a bit o' gorgio in the pot, ain't that right?'

I shrugged, miserable. The whittler still whittled. Wood smoke and oil fumes, bodies and cigarettes, bangers and beans, sweet and sour manure. These people's lives're freer than mine, but mine's ten times more comfortable and I'll probably be alive longer.

'S'pose, now,' a short man spoke from a throne of stacked-up tyres, 'we help yer look for this bag o' yours? What'd yer give us back?'

'Have you got my bag?'

Bust-nosed Boy shot back, 'What you accusin' my uncle of?'

'Steady, Al.' Knife Grinder yawned. 'He ain't harmed us so far as I can see. But how he might earn a bit o' goodwill is tellin' us if that carry-on at the village hall Wednesday last was over that "perm'nent site" the council're after building down Hakes Lane. Half the bones o' Black Swan Green was sardined in there. Never seen the like.'

Honesty and confessing're so often the same. 'It was.'

Knife Grinder leant back pleased, as if he'd won a bet.

'You went along, did yer?' asked the one called Clem Ostler.

I'd already hesitated too long. 'My dad took me. But the meeting was interrupted halfway because-'

'Find out everything about us,' demanded the daughter, 'did yer?'

'Not a lot' was the safest thing to say.

'Gorgios,' Clem Ostler's eyes were slits, 'don't know one fat rat squeak about us. Yer "experts" know even less.'

Bax the old man nodded. 'Mercy Watts's family got moved on to one o' them "official sites" down Sevenoaks way. Rents, queues, lists, wardens. Council houses on wheels, they are.'

'That's the dumbfool joke of it!' Knife Grinder poked the fire. 'We don't want 'em built any more'n yer locals. That new law, that's what this whole blue-arsed carry-on's about.'

Bust-nosed Boy said, 'What new law's that then, Uncle?'

'Goes like this. If the council ain't built their quota o' perm'nent sites, the law says we can atch wherever we please. But a council what has got the quota can get the gavvas to move us on if we're atchin' anywhere what ain't a perm'nent site. This is what this place down Hakes Lane's about. Ain't 'bout kindness.'