'Learn that at yer meetin',' the mother scowled at me, 'did yer?'

'Once they get us tied down,' Clem Ostler didn't let me reply, 'then they'll be crammin' our chavvies into their schools, turnin' us all into Yessirs, Nossirs, Three Bags Full, Sirs. Turn us into a bunch o' didicois an' kennicks, stuffed up in brick houses. Wipe us off the Earth, like Adolf Hitler tried to. Oh, more gradual like, much gentler, but get rid of us all the same.'

'"Assimilation".' Bust-nosed Boy glared my way. 'That's what social workers call it, ain't it?'

'I' I shrugged 'don't know.'

'S'prised a gyppo knows a big word like that? Yer don't know who I am, do yer? Oh, I remember you all right. These yots don't forgets a face. We was both at the littl'uns school in the village. Frogmartin, Figmortin, the teacher's name was, summat like that. Yer was stuttery then, too, wasn't yer? We was playin' that game, that Hangman game.'

My memory passed me the gypsy kid's name. 'Alan Wall.'

'That's my name, Stuttery, don't wear it out.'

'Stuttery' was an improvement on 'Spy'.

'What,' the mother lit a cigarette, 'gets my goat about gorgios is how they call us dirty when they have toilets in the same room they wash in! And all use the same spoons and cups and bath water and don't throw their rubbish for the wind an' rain to sort out natural, no, they keep their muck to go rotten in boxes!' She shuddered. 'Inside their houses!'

'Sleepin' with their pets an' all.' Clem Ostler poked the fire. 'Dogs're mucky enough, but cats. Fleas, dirt, fur, all in the same bed. Ain't that right? Oy, Stuttery!'

I'd been thinking how gypsies wanted the rest of us to be gross, so the grossness of what they're not acts as a stencil for what they are. 'Some people let their pets sleep on their bed, sure, but-'

''Nother thing.' Bax spat into the fire. 'Gorgios don't just marry one girl and stick with her, not nowadays. They'll get divorced quick as changin' cars, despite their fancy weddin' vows.' (Tuts and nods all round the fire, 'cept for the whittler. By now I'd guessed he was deaf or dumb.) 'Like that butcher in Worcester who divorced Becky Smith when she got too saggy.'

'Gorgios'll rut anythin', married or no, livin' or no,' Clem Ostler went on. 'Dogs on heat. Anywhere, any time, in cars, down alleys, in skips, anywhere. And they call us "anti-social".'

Everyone chose the same moment to look at me.

'Please,' I had nothing to lose, 'has anyone seen my school bag?'

'"A school bag", is it now?' Tyre Man sort of teased. '"A school bag"?'

'Oh, put the boy out of his misery,' muttered Knife Grinder.

Tyre Man lifted up my Adidas bag. 'A bag like this?' (I choked down an Oh of relief.) 'Yer welcome to it, Stuttery! Books never taught a man to mong or ducker.' A circle of hands passed the bag to me.

Thanks, blurted out Maggot. 'Thanks.'

'Fritz ain't too picky 'bout what he brings back.' Tyre Man whistled. The wolf who'd robbed me lolloped out of the dark. 'My brother's juk, ain't yer, Fritz? Stayin' with me till he's let out of his lodgings in Kiddyminster. Greyhound legs, collie brains, ain't yer, Fritz? I'll miss yer. Drop Fritz over a gate an' he'll get yer a fat old pheasant or a hare without you settin' foot past that farmer's "No Trespassin'" sign. Won't yer, Fritz, eh?'

The whittling kid stood up. Everyone round the fire watched.

He tossed me a heavy lump. I caught it.

The lump was rubber, once part of a tractor tyre, maybe. He'd carved it into a head the size of a grapefruit. Sort of voodooish, but amazing. A gallery like my mum's would snap it up, I reckon. Its eyes're spacey and sockety. Its mouth's this gaping scar. Its nostrils're flared, like a terrified horse's. If fear was a thing and not a feeling, it'd be this head.

'Jimmy,' Alan Wall studied it, 'yer best ever.'

Jimmy the Whittler made a pleased noise.

'Quite an honour,' the woman told me. 'Jimmy don't make them for every gorgio who falls into our camp, yer know.'

'Thanks,' I told Jimmy. 'I'll keep it.'

Jimmy hid behind his mop of hair.

'Is it him, Jimmy?' Clem Ostler meant me. 'When he came a-tumblin' down? This is what he looked like when he fell?'

But Jimmy'd walked off behind the trailer.

I looked at Knife Grinder. 'Can I go?'

Knife Grinder held up his palms. 'Y'ain't a prisoner.'

'But you just tell them,' Alan Wall pointed towards the village, 'we ain't all the thieves an' that they say we are.'

'The boy could preach till he's purple,' the daughter told him. 'They'd not believe him. They'd not want to believe him.'

The gypsies turn to me, as if Jason Taylor is the ambassador of the land of brick houses and mesh fences and estate agents. 'They're scared of you. They don't understand you, you're right. If they could just...Or...It'd be a start if they could just sit here. Get warm, round your fire, and just listen to you. That'd be a start.'

The fire spat fat sparks up at pines lining the quarry, up at the moon.

'Know what fire is?' Knife Grinder's cough's a dying man's cough. 'Fire's the sun, unwindin' itself out o' the wood.'

Goose Fair That ace song 'Olive's Salami' by Elvis Costello and the Attractions drowned out whatever Dean yelled at me, so I yelled back, 'What was that?' Dean yelled back, 'Can't hear a word yer sayin'!' but then the fairground man tapped him on his shoulder for his 10p. That's when I saw a matt square on the scratched rink, right by my dodgem.

The matt square was a wallet. I'd've handed it in to the fairground man but it flipped open to show a photo of Ross Wilcox and Dawn Madden. Posed like John Travolta and Olivia Neutron-Bomb on the Grease poster. (Instead of sunny America, mind, it was a cloudy back garden down Wellington Gardens.) Ross Wilcox's wallet was stuffed with notes. There had to be fifty quid in there. This was serious. More money than I've ever had. Putting the wallet between my knees, I looked round to check nobody'd seen. Dean was yelling whatever it was at Floyd Chaceley now. None of the kids in the queue was paying me any attention.

The prosecution (a) pointed out it wasn't my money and (b) considered the panic Ross Wilcox'd feel when he discovers he's lost all this money. The defence produced (a) the dissected mouse head in my pencil case, (b) the drawings of me eating my dick on blackboards and (c) the never-ending Hey, Maggot? How's the s-s-s-ssssssspeech therapy going, Maggot?

The judge arrived at his verdict in seconds. I stuffed Ross Wilcox's wallet in my pocket. I'd count my new fortune later.

The dodgem man waved at his slave in a booth, who pulled a lever, and every kid in the bumper rink went At last! Sparks blossomed off the tops of the poles as the dodgem cars wheezed into electric life and Elvis Costello turned into Spandau Ballet and dazzling oranges, lemons and limes lit up. Moran banged me a beaut from the side, howling like the Green Goblin decking Spiderman. I twisted my wheel to get him back, but I bumped Clive Pike instead. Clive Pike tried to get me back and it went on like that, swerving, eddying and ramming for five minutes of heaven. Just as the power died and every kid in the bumper rink went Not already! a Wonderwoman dodgem bashed into me. 'Oops.' Holly Deblin, at its wheel, laughed. 'I'll get you back for that,' I called to her. 'Oh,' Holly Deblin shouted back, 'poor me.' Wilcox's wallet was snug against my thigh. Bumper cars're ace, just ace.

'Yer know why yer barred!' By the out-gate, the fairground man was snarling at Ross Wilcox by the in-gate. With him was Dawn Madden in lizard jeans and a furry neck thing. She crumpled a stick of Wrigley's Spearmint into her bitter-cherry mouth. 'So drop the "What've I done?" bollocks!'

'It's got to be on the rink!' Ross Wilcox in despair was a glorious sight. 'It's got to be!'

'If yer jump from car to car stuff's gonna fall out! Not that I give a toss if yer 'lectricute yerself but I do give a toss about my licence!'

'Just let us look!' Dawn Madden tried. 'His dad'll murder him!'

'Oh, and I care, do I?'

'Thirty seconds!' Wilcox was hysterical. 'That's all I'm askin'!'

'An' I'm tellin' yer I ain't fannyin' about fer the likes o' you when I got a business to run!'

The fairground man's slave'd counted in another bunch of kids by now. His master clanged the gate shut, missing Wilcox's fingers by a tenth of a second. 'Whoops!' Black Swan Green's hardest third-year looked round for allies in his hour of need. There was nobody he knew. The Goose Fair brings people from Tewkesbury and Malvern and Pershore, from miles around.

Dawn Madden touched Ross Wilcox's arm.

Wilcox slapped her hand off and turned away.

Hurt Dawn Madden said something to Wilcox.

Wilcox snapped, 'Yes it is the end of the world, yer dozy cow!'

You just don't talk to Dawn Madden like that. She looked away for a moment, scalded. Then she gave Wilcox a crushing whack on the eye. Just watching, me and Dean jumped.

'Ouch!' said Dean, delighted.

Ross Wilcox sort of crumpled in shock.

'I warned yer, yer knob-head!' Dawn Madden was fangs and claws and screaming fury. 'I warned yer! Yer can find yerself a real dozy cow!'

Ross Wilcox's hesitant fingers went to his pounded eye.

'I'm chuckin' yer!' Dawn Madden turned and walked.

Ross Wilcox cried after her, 'DAWN!', like a man in a film.

Dawn Madden turned round, fired Wilcox a twenty-thousand-volt 'Fuck off!' Then the crowds swallowed her up.

'That'll be one doozy of a shiner,' Dean remarked, 'will that.'

Wilcox looked at us and his wallet in my pocket shrieked at its master to rescue it, but he didn't even see us. He ran after his ex-girlfriend for a few frantic paces. Stopped. Turned. Checked his eye, for blood, I s'pose. Turned. Then a black hole between a Captain Ecstatic's Zero Gravity Dome and the Win-A-Smurf stall sucked Ross Wilcox in.

'Oh, my heart's bleedin'.' Dean sighed, happily. 'Gospel. Let's go find Kelly. I promised we'd look after Maxine for a bit.'

Passing the SCORE-LESS-THAN-20-WITH-3-DARTS-AND-PICK-ANY-PRIZE! SCORE-LESS-THAN-20-WITH-3-DARTS-AND-PICK-ANY-PRIZE! darts stall someone called out, 'Oy! Oy, Deaf-aid!' It was Alan Wall. 'Remember me? And my Uncle Clem?' darts stall someone called out, 'Oy! Oy, Deaf-aid!' It was Alan Wall. 'Remember me? And my Uncle Clem?'

''Course I do. What're you doing here?'

'Who d'you think runs fairs?'

'Gypsies?'

'Mercy Watts's people own all of this. Have for years.'

Dean was pretty impressed.

'This is Dean and his little sister Maxine.'

Alan Wall just nodded at Dean. Clem Ostler solemnly presented Maxine with a shiny windmill. Dean told her, 'Say thank you, then.' Maxine did, and blew on her windmill. Alan Wall asked, 'Fancy yerself as a bit of an Eric Bristow, then, eh?'

'Mr One-hundred-and-eighty,' said Dean, 'that's what they call me.' He slid two 10ps from his pocket over the counter. 'One for me, one for Jace.'

But Clem Ostler slid the coins back. 'Never refuse a gift off of a gypsy, boys. Or yer balls'll shrivel up. Ain't jokin'. Drop off, in the worst cases.'

Dean got an 8 on his first throw, a 10 on his second. His third throw blew it with a double 16. I was just about to take my throw when a voice stopped me. 'Aw, looking after baby sister, are we?'

Gary Drake, with Ant Little and Darren Croome.

Moran sort of flinched. Maxine sort of wilted.

Stick your darts, urged Unborn Twin, into their eyeballs.

'Yeah. We are. What the fuck is it to you?'

Gary Drake wasn't expecting that. (Words are what you fight with but what you fight about is whether or not you're afraid of them.) 'Go on, then.' Gary Drake recovered quick. 'Throw. Amaze us.'

If I threw it'd look like I was obeying him. If I didn't I'd just look like a total wally. All I could do was try to blank Gary Drake out. My strategy was to aim at treble 20 so carefully that I'd end up missing a fraction and getting a 1 or 5. My first dart got a 5. Quickly, before Gary Drake could put me off, I threw again and got a double 5.

My last dart was a clean 1.

Clem Ostler did a fairground shout. 'A winner!'

'Oh, right!' Ant Little jeered. 'A born winner!'

'Born laughing-stock.' Darren Croome snorted his sinuses clear.

'You lot had five goes yerselves earlier,' Clem Ostler told him. 'Cacked it up every single time, didn't yer?'

Gary Drake didn't quite dare tell a man who worked in a fair to piss off. Fairground worker laws aren't quite the same.

'You choose the prize, Max,' I told Dean's sister. 'If you want.'

Maxine looked at Dean. Dean nodded back. 'If Jace says so.'

'Shame you can't win any friends here, Taylor.' Gary Drake couldn't walk off without the last insult.

'I don't need many.'

'Many?' His sarcasm's thick as toilet bleach. 'Any.'

'No, I've got enough.'

'Oh, yeah,' snided Ant Little, 'like who exactly? Apart from Moron Bum-chum?'

If your words're true, they're armed. 'No one you'd know.'

'Y-y-yeah, T-t-t-Taylor,' Gary Drake resorted to a stutter joke, 'that's 'cause your m-m-m-mates are all in your f-f-f-fuckin' head!'

Ant Little and Darren Croome dutifully snorked.

If I got into a scrap with Gary Drake I'd probably lose it.

If I retreated I'd lose too.