I make a funny face to Hillie, squeeze it up at the risk of waking her mother, the little one wide-eyed with wonder; and carry her the few steps to the window, shift the curtain to one side.

Kids have hacked the old water main – I just catch sight of them, running, their bright clothes flashing like deers’ tails – and for a moment the leftover pressure pushes out the residual water, in a spray like a fountain. Catching rainbows of early morning light.

Hillie is a contained squeal of delight.

Laughter in the alley.

The dirt at the side of the street so dry it pushes the water away.

The pressure abating. Runnels of water thickly down the glass. ‘Stillicide’.

And the little one watches.

The street has changed colour. Birds have come to drink already. Sparrows and pigeons, as if from nowhere.

Hillie winds her hand in my hair, the way she does, teasing it into stiff clumps. In her other hand, the soft toy she is currently in love with that her mother made from scraps. She watches the street, mesmerised.

Winding my hair like my own children did.

Enjoying how different my hair is from Nita’s.

Even with the extra water tokens that we have as part of our pay, us workers, it’s impossible to wash our hair properly.

We let the dust thicken in it and make joke hairstyles. Mad, crazy hairstyles that we can tell each other by. With the eyeguards and the work clothes and blankets of dust we otherwise all look the same.

‘When we’re done with the polishers, we’ll shave our heads,’ we say. A thing that makes the little one wriggle happily with horror.

‘We’ll have some party,’ we say. ‘We’ll swim in the stillicide channels.’ In the meantime, let’s look like pirates.

All the ways the world has changed and pirates still are pirates!

Nita joins us at the window. I did not hear her rise and that makes me feel that for a moment I’ve been absent.

I’ve been thinking about swimming. My whole body in deep water.

I should take them to the beach . . .

Hillie points to the street and sways slightly as she’s kissed. I think of my own children, home, the scent of their crowns. Before I travelled here for work. The dream that they would join me. How fast the years have passed.

But.

Nita puts her arm around me; pigeons clatter from the street. One seems more a dove amongst them. Seems to carry a coppery metallic sheen, like a beetle’s wing.

A scruffy dog trots up and puts its nose in the water. A boy, just as scruffy, trots behind.

‘Would you like tea?’ I ask Nita. Feel her nod. As if she gives permission for the day to begin.