the air, summons the Daddy People to appear,

phantoms perched in trees like owls, smiling, singing.

She spins on white sandals, giggles, giddy spinning top,

admires her new ankle socks fringed with white lace.

Suddenly, shocking the spring air, a missile hurtles

down, ‘Eenaaaarrrf!’ Taiwo’s vibrato, basso profoundo,

flies down before him. ‘Are you deranged, eh?’

He snatches the wand from her hand, breaks it in two.

Milk comes unexpectedly, dangerously, nay recklessly

to the boil. ‘I was talking to the Daddy People!’

she shouts back, stamping her feet, ‘Nosy Parker!’

Oh little piggy, who is going to eat you for dinner.

Incredulous he dances barefoot on burning coals.

‘What? How dare you!’, louder, ‘Bend over!’

Lara bears nine hard strokes from the broken wand,

runs up the garden an inferno of raging hysteria.

That night in bed she called the Daddy People to her,

said farewell, and willed them away forever.

NOTRE DAME’S regime was run by Mother Superior,

a bloated red-veined matriarch hidden behind thick

specs, swathed in a voluminous black habit, who’d

patrol the school’s stark polished corridors

to catch an errant child, late, running, or chewing gum.

Leaving home a minute before the clock hit nine,

Lara and Co., in berets, hats, blazers, tumbled out

their rusting gate straight into the convent’s biblical one

as pupils filed silently into the chapel for Mass.

Taiwo was pleased that he’d haggled for a bargain.

‘A job lot, like,’ he’d convinced Mother Superior,

so the da Costa fees to the school were at a discount.

For years he did overtime to meet the payments.

Religiously instructed every morning and country-danced

on Tuesdays Lara was three R’d the rest of the week,

digesting pease pudding and tapioca at dinner time.

‘Think of the starving children in Africa,’ the nuns

berated until their charges’ plates were scraped clean.

Fat Sister Nicodemus and six-footer Sister Mary Paul

headed the Juniors and Seniors with staccato wrists

ready to ruler-rap the knuckles of talkative children.

From the cloisters of school and the confines of home,

Lara inhaled fear masquerading as air.

1967-

LARA

Nineteen Sixty-seven, our father is crying.

We sneak outside, peer through the kitchen window,

watch him heave, blow his nose, raises his head

Mummy holds his hand, gives him toilet paper.

We try to be quiet, jostle for a better view. Ladipo whines.

I push him. ‘Shush. Quiet you two!’ Fabian snaps.

We settle, watching. ‘He’s crying!’ says Kenelm.

‘Makes a change,’ says Quentin.

Juliana creeps up behind us, hisses, ‘Stop spying!’

We bristle but do not budge. ‘Anyway,’ she says,

‘I know why he’s currently emotionally incapacitated.’

She relishes the status her long words give her,

runs down the garden, jumps on the apple tree swing,

then pushes off. We pause, scramble after her.

‘You’re lying,’ Ginevra challenges. / ‘Oh no, I’m noh-oht,’

Juliana sing-songs, swings away, grins between two Heidi plaits,

enunciates slowly, ‘Well, if you really must know,