There are no Wolves in Lancashire

Because of the requirement to be always travel-ready Simmon's people lived in vans. Not caravans, because they were neither Roma nor Pavee, but proper vans, motor-vans such as Dormobiles and camionettes and old yellow GPO telephone vans. Bailey lived in the aluminium-sided camionette with his wife Phoebe and their twin sons Tawney and Bray. Coster had the GPO van, which was a small van, really an ordinary car with a box on the back, with Pallas and Tennan and little Petrey. The Dormobile was just for Simmon and his dad Riley, which didn't seem fair when you considered how many bodies Coster had to cram into the yellow box on the back of an old Ford car, but was nonetheless right and proper because Simmon's dad Riley was the leader, the senior member, the fount of all knowledge, loosely related to all, closely related to none. Coster and Bailey, for instance, were first cousins, their wives sisters. The four of them were always quarrelling over something or other, the children always fighting. Only Riley could smooth the waters with the grown-ups. Simmon, unwittingly, performed a similar role with the young ones. Instead of squaring up to one another, the junior Costers and Baileys came together as one to bully Simmon. He didn't mind, really. It was life as he had always known it.

What had become of Simmon's mother was never discussed. "She left" was the likely answer if ever the question arose, or the more enigmatic "She couldn't settle to our ways." Simmon drew his own conclusions. He decided his mother must have been very beautiful or else Riley would never have chosen her, and that she was the love of Riley's life because, obviously, he had not replaced her. The females remaining in the camp – Phoebe and Pallas and Pallas's daughter Tennan, who was virtually grown and was old enough to remember Simmon's mother – they had not approved. Simmon knew this from the occasional low comment as he passed, such as "bitch's whelp" and "bloody mongrel." To be fair, Tennan had not made either comment; she just stared at him from under her bushy black eyebrows. Simmon thought he would take Tennan as his other half when the time came. She wasn't bad looking, he told himself, in a dark, hairy sort of way. As he grew older and picked up hints about such things, he tried to imagine coupling with Tennan, but didn't let that put him off.

During the daytime – and most nights – the three men were out of camp, collecting scrap and, as they called it, "moving stuff on". One day Simmon knew he would join the communal trade. With him, three would become four, and it would remain four when Riley and Bailey and Coster passed, as they surely would, because the team would then be Simmon and Tawney and Bray and young Petrey. Naturally, Simmon saw himself as the camp leader, a status that would pass down to him from Riley and then on to any male offspring he might have with Tennan by means he preferred not to think about. That, he believed, was the way of the travelling folk.

Quite how all this tallied with his plan of becoming a wolf when he grew up was hard for him to fathom. He had hoped for Riley's guidance but that door had been firmly closed. Still, there was time, and time in his experience tended to unravel most mysteries. So Simmon spent his days keeping out of the way of the Costers and the Baileys if confined to camp and keeping out of the way of other boys, town boys, if allowed to wander further afield.

This last injunction came about because Simmon had once spoken to other boys, boys from the town he had encountered on the Platts one summery day when he was eight or nine years old. He had not spoken first; he had no interest in town boys. It was they who started it.

"Hey up, bollock face!"

Simmon looked around him. Saw no one else they could have been addressing.

"Yer – you!" the boy with the blue zipper jacket called out. "Come over here!"

They were standing on a wedge of hardstanding where the townsfolk had decided they needed a bench. These boys clearly didn't need a bench. They preferred to stand with their hands in their pockets and sniffing a lot. Being a well-brought up youngster, Simmon joined them.