He fiddled with a bit of purple plastic from a broken pen top instead of answering.

‘Haven’t they told you?’ I asked.

He swerved the question and said he wanted to know more about Ash House and Mr Clemm and the animals. I gave it to him, and felt better and better.

‘And the big bird. Lysander. What happened to that?’

I gave him a sad smile. ‘Nobody knows.’

‘Probably flew out the window,’ Lenny said. ‘Glass breaks in a fire. He’s probably free.’

Hadn’t thought of that. Perhaps he was with Godrell. Perhaps they’d made friends. ‘Hope he’s all right, then. He only eats fruit, I think.’

‘Plenty of berries about. Apples.’

I thought of the trees in Mr Clemm’s garden. I thought of Lysander flying free, making a noise like a steam train. ‘He’s really old.’

‘If he was in Nigeria, he’d be able to eat more. It’s so hot there, you can grow any type of fruit, and when it rains, it’s big, big drops, man, it’s like standing in a waterfall. And they have lizards running up the walls all the time. Brilliant colours, like a rainbow. You should see them.’

Lenny’s grandad is Nigerian. He talked easily now, mostly about Nigeria, where he plans to go when he’s older. He’s in here for thieving. Says his older brothers got him into it. He still collects things he finds lying about, but now he’s stuck in here, he thinks it’ll be mostly rubbers and rulers and Sharpie pens.

‘So this bloke – Mr Clemm? He wasn’t a weirdo after all.’

‘No. I think he’s just quiet. He didn’t bother with anyone much, so people made things up about him. And he’s very tall, so, you know – he looked really different.’

‘People make up stuff about me and my brothers all the time. I know how he feels.’

‘Me too.’

10.00 p.m.

It’s bedtime and we’ve been rounded up. Someone’s kicking the wall outside my room, Miss Hughes is shouting, and the biggest, tallest care worker – Mr Danowski – is pulling someone down from a door frame.

This place is full of people. And full of anger and fear and frustration, and Whizzy’s not even doing it.

And it’s full of spit, too. They do it all the time, mostly without the staff even noticing. You can see it along the corridors and on the carpet in the games room: little globs of disgusting, bubbly spit.

I’ve written a letter to Sam telling him that things are OK, so that he won’t feel too bad. Because I can kind of see how he must have felt now. About Whizzy. And the other stuff, but I’m not writing that down again.

37

Scraping Through

31st August, 6.30 p.m.

Just had another twenty million questions. I don’t want to write about it.