He doesn't look back, and I'm left, breathing through my nose, with an audience of pensioners.

Nan said: Nothing teaches like a mistake.

I step through the sliding glass doors feeling stupid.

The sun's cutting through clouds and as I walk towards the supermarket car park. Rays hit my face like an idiot spotlight. Ladies and gentlemen, Luke Henry, the Bridge Burner!

The Fiat almost runs me over.

"Watch where you're going, you knob!"

The driver door opens. It's Noah.

"Get in."

He points to the passenger side. I don't move. Noah bangs the roof of the car. "I'm not playing, Luke. Let's go."

EXT. DAY Dull jagged letters scratched into wood. L + T.

He drives us to the woods.

Through the edge of trees I can see the grass sloping down to the brook and up the other side. We pull into the little car park and stop next to a Land Rover.

Noah turns the engine off.

"What's going on?"

"Get out," he says, stepping out himself.

I follow him around the wood-chip path, past the old white stone fountain that we used to drink from before it got turned off. The row of massive pine trees is still there. I get a flash of running down the slope, arms stretched out either side of me, pretending to be a kite. Noah's walking with purpose towards the bushes and, looking over my shoulders, I can't see a single other person.

This is well dodgy.

I stop walking. "Where we going?"

"We're not there yet." And he carries on.

I take another look round. Why is it so empty? Noah disappears between two trees. I could just leave. Walk home, right now. But I don't. I step through the trees.

He's sitting on the chocolate-coloured roots. Loose strands of the bark are frayed like horse hair. I stand just under the dark canopy.

"This is where we sat," he says, patting the ground next to him. "I was here, she was on this side and we just sat, staring out between the trees, not speaking. Year Nine, we were."

What's he talking about?

But I do the calculation. "I was one and a half."

For some reason I smile as I say it. Noah smiles too.

"Mad, right? I'm sitting under here getting my first kiss and you're five minutes over that way chewing the remote control." He points in the direction of our house.

"First kiss?" I say, taking a step closer to him.

He nods, grinning like he just tasted something amazing and I feel myself sitting down on the twigs and fallen leaves.

"Who was she?" I say.

I picture some kind of Super 8 footage of a boy and a girl standing in front of a tree, looking awkward, but happy.

"I haven't been here for years," he says, "but sitting here I can still see us."

"We used to climb the trees back there." I point. "Gave 'em names and everything." And I get a flash of looking down through the branches at a ten-year-old Tommy. Him daring me to climb higher and carve our initials into the bark.

"Noah, listen, about just now ..."

"Cut," he says, standing up. "You're giving too much weight to the wrong things, Luke. Come on. Your turn." He's looking down at me. I shrug.

"Fine," he says, "I'll go again."

EXT. DAY A crushed can of Relentless drops in the wet bus-stop bin.

We pull up outside Sandhu's.

Rusty metal mesh over the windows. Flaking maroon paint on the sign.

Noah turns off the engine.

"Right. So I'm on the wall there." He points. "Matho's next to me on my right, and Pete's placing an empty can of Tennant's Super three paces in front of us. Yeah?" He looks at me. I nod. "So, the bet is that he can't climb up on to the wall, jump off and crush the can perfectly flat in one stomp. If he does, me and Matho owe him a quid each. If not, he owes us. Zoom in on the can."

He makes a frame with his thumbs and index fingers.

"And?" I say.

"That's it. Can you picture it?"

"Yeah, but did he do it? Did he win the bet?"

Noah smiles. "Broke his leg. Still walks funny now. We let him off the two quid."

He starts the engine. I get the game.

"So?" he says.

I nod. "OK. I've got one."

EXT. DAY Charred bubbles in burnt plastic. The remains of something burned on the fire.

The bus stop outside The Bear Tavern.

We park in the little side road and walk round.

"OK, so you're Tommy." I shepherd him on to the metal seat. "Zia's next to you here, and I'm standing here near the kerb. We're waiting for the bus."

"Where are we going?"

"Nowhere. It's nearly half four and we know that the Girls' School bus'll be coming soon. We just want them to see us."

Noah's smiling. "How old?"

"Thirteen." I stare up the road. "So we see it coming and we're all leaning, acting casual, but what we don't see is the massive puddle." I point down to the gutter. "Like proper deep. Bus pulls in, boom! Total wipeout, watched by a bus full of laughing girls."

"Perfect!" says Noah.

"You mean painful."

"That too." He folds his arms like he's actually waiting for a bus.

"So was that before or after the scar?"

And I freeze.

EXT. DAY Shadows of tall trees cut across grass towards the skate park. Car pulls up. Engine off. Quiet.

The ramp looks the same. Covered in tags and graffiti.

The sun's going down and the cold moves through me.

"We didn't even skate," I say. "We just used to hang around here cos that's what everyone did."

I stare across the tarmac to the empty little kid's playground and I can hear muffled shouts.

"I was this side, with Tommy. Zia was way over there talking to some girls. Then people are just running."

Noah sits down on the edge of the ramp. "What happened?"

"Nothing," I say. "Somebody said Craig Miller was here with his gang, but we couldn't see anyone. There were too many people."

"And did you run?"

"Not at first."

I watch two BMXs roll down into the bowl of the tarmac and loop back up the other side like marbles.

"Tommy saw someone he knew, one of Craig's lot. That's when we ran. Up that way." I can feel Noah watching me, and I'm imagining the camera circling round, taking in the park from every angle.

"We knew who he was. Everybody did. So we knew it was best not to stick around." I scuff the floor with the sole of my shoe. "Maybe if we hadn't've run." Craig's boney face. "If we hadn't got split up. I dunno."

Looking down at my hands. The blood.

We don't speak. I've got no idea what Noah's seeing in his mind, what he's thinking, but I've never spoken about that day to anyone before.

Not like this.

"It didn't hurt," I say, looking at Noah. "But it should've."

The streetlights flicker on past the metal railings behind me.

"Then what happened?" says Noah.

"I went to hospital. Mum stitched me up."

"Mum?"

I nod. "She's a nurse. She wouldn't let anyone else touch me."

Noah's eyes narrow. "That must've been tough."

"Yeah. Then she phoned my brother."

Marc's eyes when he saw me, my sliced face. How he looked at Mum.

How she looked at him and how, even though I knew it would end badly, I felt the fire of pride in my gut as he took her keys and stormed out.

"I didn't see it happen."

Dark sky.

"But I've pictured it. I've pictured it a million times."

Fading light.

"We all did," Noah says and offers a smile.

He's heard the story. Course he has. My hands go into my pockets and I look at him. "I loved your film."

And I watch the words flow out of my mouth, snaking through the air towards him. Words I really mean. About the past and right now.

He opens his hands and we both watch them curl round into a snail-shell spiral across his palms. The story of my scar. Never told to anyone who wasn't there. How I feel. Now in his care.

He closes his hands like a book and they disappear.

We pull up right behind Mum's car. The front room light is on.

"Thanks," Noah says. "That was good."

"Yeah."

I thread my fingers through the carrier bag handles between my legs.