I step through the gate and walk down the side path to the back garden. The security light flashes on. I hold my breath and suddenly I’m seeing all the garden at once. There’s a plastic table and chairs, pots of flowers and one of them oil-drum barbecues they have at Caribbean food stalls. I see that the bolt’s rusted open on the inside of the gate. Then the security light flashes off. A bus goes past on the road in front. Even the bus engine ain’t louder than my heart right now.

Nobody opens the back door or calls out of a window. Maybe the cats and the foxes set the light off all the time. I look up at the windows. One room has closed blinds. Another has curtains with a pale yellow glow leaking out between the edges. Kandi! That’s her! That’s the Barney the dinosaur night light I bought her when she was still little. Man, she’s almost at big school and she’s still got it.

Social workers and teachers and counsellors are always telling me that I’ve got choices. My choices right now are to turn around and leave my little sister’s garden, or to wake her up and plunge myself in a massive pit of crap. While my brain’s working this out, I’m already fumbling on the ground for a stone. Then I’m throwing it hard towards that yellow glow. It cracks against the glass and I almost regret this choice. The curtain sweeps aside and the window opens.

Kandi’s dad stares down at me. I haven’t got no flight and no fight neither. I seriously can’t move.

“Who’s down there?” he yells.

I realise that he can’t see me. I need to wait until he leaves the bedroom, then make a run for it. Please, body! Please! Help me get out of here!

I see the cat just as it jumps over the neighbour’s fence. It runs towards me and the security light flashes on. Me and the cat might as well be main stage at the O2.

“Charlene?” Kandi’s dad yells. “Is that you? What the hell are you doing here?”

Kandi’s dad is called Sheldon. I was once gonna knit a devil’s face that looked like his, but I ran out of wool.

Sheldon was sorry he couldn’t take me after Mum died. He said there was no room and he didn’t know me that well anyway. They were together for a couple of years, but he never lived with us.