I ate mine at the table. I enjoyed it because it was a white meal. Yam is white unless it’s yellow. Yellow yam is much more expensive so we never buy it. I like yam, even though it doesn’t taste of anything. It has a creamy, grainy texture. Texture is the best part of food. Fish is white unless it’s red. We only buy white fish. The fish is nice and flaky in my mouth.

The Pastor’s wife smuggles yam from Nigeria in her suitcase and sells it on the Black Market. I used to think the Black Market was a market for black people, because white people eat potatoes and black people eat yam. Last time the Pastor’s wife visited, the handle came off her suitcase walking up the stairs because yam is much heavier than potato. It looks like tree bark. I cut off the skin, which is tough work, and washed it in salt water to get rid of the starch. Then I boiled it and added it to the pepper soup at the last minute to soak up the flavour. I always take my yam out of the pepper soup and put coconut oil on it and mash it up. You’re supposed to add palm oil but that’s red or orange and messes up the rainforest. I take the fish out, too. Mashed yam and white fish is my favourite breakfast.

Afterwards, I cleared the table and collected Grandma’s tray, washed the dishes and sat under the table. I’ve got my tablet and my mobile phone if I want to watch something or look something up. It’s not very comfortable under the table but my hair is spongey, so it stops me banging my head on the wood. Today it’s in bunches like ears on each side of my head. If I spend the whole morning here, when I come out to make lunch I’ll feel happy.

Someone’s knocking on the front door.

We live on the first floor so we never answer the door. We’d rather have a ground-floor flat because Grandma struggles with the stairs but Mrs Leggett’s lived downstairs for 30 years and refuses to die so no one else can rent her flat. There used to be a doorbell but it broke and the landlord won’t fix it, so you have to knock. Some people knock so loud I think the door’s going to cave in.

I’m sitting under the table, looking at the menu and the list of names for the trip. I’m going to be banned from the trip. I’m going to be excluded for running out of a lesson and leaping out of school and sprinting away from Mrs C Eckler, but that doesn’t stop me looking at the list of names. I like lists. Lists are like poems. Lists help me stay calm.