There was the click of the rosary, the whisper of blessed art thou among sinners and Busola let out a stream of pee, running down her leg by the curtain and pooling on the carpet before it soaked in. Manus picked a towel off the drying frame and started mopping it up, moving the curtain around her feet as she stood there looking out the window. Connor shrugged and went back to turn on the television but stopped as my dad came straight back into the room.

‘Keep Busola,’ he said, ‘the boys can come with me.’

My mum wasn’t looking at him. He followed to where she was staring down at Busola by the window with Manus stooped over drying her feet.

Off to See the Wizard ...

The first thing I saw were glittering red shoes filling the whole screen because my dad made us arrive late and there wasn’t hardly anywhere left to sit. Manus and Connor found their own seats so I had to climb up the back in the dark with my dad saying ‘Excuse me’ to everyone because he couldn’t see he was the only grown-up there. The red shoes were on the end of a witch a house had fallen on top of, so only her feet were showing.

My dad sat down beside me and wiped his glasses. He let out a gasp when he saw there was a wicked green witch with a sharp nose and pointed hat trying to get her fingers on the shoes. He looked round like we weren’t supposed to be there and I got ready to go but he saw by the electric sparks coming out the witch’s hands that the cinema was packed with children.

‘What’s going on?’ he said.

‘Sh.’ people behind him were craning their necks to see past his head. He looked up at the screen, reflecting in his glasses, and shrank in his seat.

My mum wasn’t speaking to me. She took Busola to church and brought her back, making a fuss over the frilly gloves she was going to wear for first communion. Busola clammed up and didn’t say anything, until Nana turned up out the blue. I was leaning out the window, wondering where Connor was after Manus went off with my dad, and I saw the shape of her coat coming up the street. She had a load of bags and I ran out the house to jump up and take them. In no time there was bacon boiling in the pot and bags of broken chocolates from the factory where she worked.

‘What’s your favourite?’ I asked Busola, who had chocolate smears all over her mouth.

‘Yum! Yum! Pig’s trotters!’ she said, making a nose like a pig and cramming a whole fistful in from the bag Nana gave her. She looked at me, munching her way through, and said, ‘You’re a pig.’