We knew she worked in the laundry which did the sheets for the hospital, and that we could find it by the brick chimney with the steam coming out the same colour as the sky. It looked like a cloud factory but we knew it was a laundry for getting blood out the sheets and stitches, and it felt a long way off because we hadn’t tried to cross over those roads from the river on our own before. The traffic was busy with all the headlights on. It was because of that we held hands.

Our mum came out to the big doors in the yard. Her arms were red, and she was flushed and sweating as she took a wet bit of hair off her forehead and wiped her hands on a cloth.

‘What’s happened?’ she said.

We said we’d come for her to take us back home over the busy roads. That we’d had to fight to get out and Thaddeus’s mum was too busy to look after us.

She went back in to get her coat and we set off with us holding on to her arms as she buttoned up. We told her we’d run away because there were too many children and it was too rough. That what Thaddeus’s mum gave us to eat was mouldy bread and margarine. She’d made us share a big can of baked beans with one spoon to go round everyone, and one of the children had spat on it to stop us having ours. She’d grabbed us with her bony fingers to stop us getting out the door. We didn’t want to go back, her house was dirty and they had nits –

‘Stop it!’ she said, and shook us off. We’d gone too far. We walked the rest of the way home in silence.

‘Wait now till your father gets home.’

There was a knock on the door. It was Thaddeus’s mum, with Thaddeus and Sandra there. She stood at the door and told my mum what happened, that she’d sent her two out to look for us but they’d come back because we’d gone. And then she apologised to us.

‘I’m sorry it hasn’t worked out. I didn’t know what I could do.’

Sandra was pulling on her mum’s coat to make her come away and Thaddeus kept looking off down the street. Their mum was worried because she was biting her nails, some of her teeth were missing and her fingers were shaking.

My mum said she’d got a shock when she saw us, but now she understood and it wasn’t anything to worry about, we were safe.