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boy! – was Pete keen to go back and check out his new den properly. Sort it out.
    Thrashing through the garden, he almost felt happy. It was sunny. He liked the house. The space. The smell of the air outside: far fresher than London. And Dad had work. Best of all: Dad had work. Even better than best, Dad had let slip that Pete wouldn’t need to start whatever new school he’d be starting till after Easter.
    Pete was free – for nearly three weeks – to settle, explore. If only Simon and Alfie … he wished as he reached the doorway of the shelter again. The pair of them jostling at his shoulder: Whoa. Check this place out!
    Pete was so busy imagining his London mates were with him, he was less surprised than he should havebeen when something came hurtling at him through the gloom of the shelter. Or someone.
    “Oi. Trespassing, pal,” a boy growled, right up in Pete’s face. “Beat it.”
    He spoke like Dad: Scottish accent, but with added un-pally-ness. In a different place Pete might have been worried, but not here in his own garden, where this boy was trespassing. Oi yourself: my new den . And anyway, this boy wasn’t any taller than Pete. Skinny.
    “Nah, mate. I live ’ere, don’t I?”
    Pete didn’t know where that voice came from. Watching snatches of Eastenders before Mum turned it off, maybe. Not anything like how he normally spoke. He let the words dangle on his lower lip, fists clenched and swinging like those lads from his old school. Those lads he and Simon and Alfie tended to bodyswerve. Hide from sometimes. Inside he was praying he didn’t sound posh.
    “I live here too.”
    The boy wasn’t backing off. His tone, though, had lost its threat.
    “See, that’s my back garden,” the boy said, moving outside the shelter and pulling aside a chunk of hedge to reveal a smooth green lawn bordered with neat flower beds. “And the den belongs to it.”
    The boy was dodging back into the doorway of the shelter as he said all this, as if to stake his claim on it. He needn’t have been so worried; Pete was too busy making a mental note of one of those giant trampolines Dad just kept saying, “Sorry, pal, not when you live in a flat with no garden,” about. Pete couldn’t take his eyes off it, even when the boy toldhim, “You talk funny. Where you from then?”
    “London. Just moved in last night.”
    “ Lan don,” the boy repeated. When Pete glared, he grinned. “Don’t sound like you’re from Lan don. You sure?”
    Pete was secretly chuffed. “Born there, but my dad’s Scotch. From Glasgow.”
    “So you’re Scottish really.” The boy gave Pete two thumbs up but then he swiped them in front of Pete’s face like windscreen wipers. “Not Scotch. Only whisky’s Scotch. I’d remember that.” He clicked his tongue before swaggering to the back of the shelter as if their meeting was over.
    Not for Pete.
    “Excuse me, this is my den now.” He was trying to sound more definite than he felt. “My dad said it was shared by the two halves of our house. It’s the old air—”
    “—raid shelter. Yeah, he’s right. But our house shared it too,” the boy interrupted. “ And the houses next door, and I’ve lived here since I was two so it’s been my den for nine years. Beat that.” The boy’s chin was cocked at Pete. Trying to look hard , Pete decided, but something about his expression was too kind. In fact – despite his coppery red hair and pale skin, crocheted in freckles – he reminded Pete of Simon. Jamaican Simon.
    “We’re the same age then,” Pete heard himself say. “Well, when I’m eleven next week.”
    The boy looked at Pete and said nothing.
    Pete shrugged. “Could we… maybe… share the shelter?”
    The boy narrowed his eyes, looked Pete up and down, then down and up. “You play footy?”
    “Come on,” Pete snorted, the question not even worth answering, though he did add, “Support Scotland?”
    The boy nodded. “You like music?”
    Pete took a step further