A suckling pig, six weeks old, roasted in its entirety, in an enormous pan, covered in salt and slices of lemon. ‘The most delectable way to eat pork,’ I heard Mother whisper to Mr Knox. Papa brought it out, with help from the kitchenhand, on a tray like a bed-base. It was orange-coloured, in places brown. An effigy. A small sleeping baby pig on a baking tray. The smell was intense. The pig’s eyes were closed in two small crescents on either side of its face. Its snout curved upwards—Papa had propped something under its chin. Kitten’s lips glistened as she watched. Hot roasted suckling pig. Mouths opened around me, and Papa got his knife ready. My soup came up into my mouth.

I didn’t care about the dessert menu. Fruit. Cheese. Torte. I stood up. I pulled out the napkin I had tucked in my shirt collar. I knocked a Poems of Veda Gray onto the floor. Cannibals! I said to the whole lot of them. The baby pig on the table like a fruitbowl! It felt like some kind of ancient sacrifice. Like the Aztecs. Or the Mayans. Mrs Parish rubbed my arm absently. Rosa speared a piece of baby pig on her fork and opened her mouth wide. Cannibals! I roared. A pig was like a dog in its intelligence. I hated them.

The air outside in the courtyard was crisp, but the rain had stopped. A steady drip fell from the guttering. The seats and the table were wet. My old tricycle was still there, tangled in the ivy. I pulled it out. The ivy felt poisonous, like a snake.

I sat on the tricycle even though I was too big for it. I rolled slightly forwards and slightly backwards over the concrete. There was an outdoor light rigged up to the eaves on the back of the kitchen wall, and I rolled in and out of the yellow pool it made on the ground. Drip drip went the rainwater into a terracotta pot plant base filled with wet cigarette butts. I stayed there for a long time, it seemed, long enough for plates to get cleared, and mouths to stop chewing and throats to stop swallowing. I heard Mother’s voice coming down the passageway.

‘O-wen,’ she called. ‘Are you out there?’

Her shoes were drunk. They clittered and clattered like wobbly old goat hooves. When she got to the doorway, she stopped to steady herself in the doorframe before coming down the step.

She carried a bottle of wine by the neck and two glasses between thumb and forefinger.

‘Oh bloody hell, it’s saturated out here,’ she said. She put the bottle and the glasses down, wiped the seat with the back of her hand, then sat and poured some wine and lit a cigarette. ‘So hot in there,’ she said. ‘And all of that food! Poor O-yo. Suckling pig and the whole lot!’

I rolled back and forth on my tricycle.