Milky Bar Kids

The milky bar kids. There are four of them and nowhere left to run. The oldest white-haired boy stretches out a grubby hand to take my cheap plastic whistle. ‘Give it over.’ ‘Get it yourself!’ I drop it into dog shit, stamping down hard. He scoops it up with a sweet wrapper, they run away screaming obscenities when a neighbour looks over the fence. The next day, there’s a headless badger in the gulleyway outside our gate. The stink is rancid as Mam burns it. Three days later, I hear they all had the shits, and I am glad.