I didn’t want to die. I wanted to wake up with Nana and Busola and everyone back together. I felt God was someone who came in the night through the smoke on rushing wings and took you away. But instead of flying I felt heavy, as though I was falling asleep on the way to the devil. I was struggling to wake up and fight him off, but it was my dad lifting me up and taking me off downstairs in his arms. I gave in because I didn’t feel it mattered if he was God or the devil, or both, he was carrying me and I had to go.

In the Dead of Night

I’d come down to the kitchen to get a drink of water, and drank it straight out the tap but it splashed my pyjamas and I switched the light on to see. She was sitting on her own in the corner watching me. It was the middle of the night and there was no one about. ‘What’s a matter, Mum?’

‘Turn off the light.’

It was bright for me too, I switched it off. My eyes got used to the light from the window again, and I saw her sitting there, holding out her hand to me from the corner.

‘I’m thinking,’ she said.

I tried to see from her face what she was thinking, but it was a shadow with the bright frown from a moment before.

‘I can go back to bed,’ I said.

‘No, that’s fine, come and hold me.’

I bumped into chairs on my way over until I felt her lap and climbed up on it, ‘You scared me.’

‘Sh,’ she said, ‘do you know what I’m thinking?’

I shook my head.

‘That I haven’t been a good mother, away in that hospital. Look at you all wet.’ She unbuttoned my top and wiped my chest with the dry part, then hugged me up close. I could feel her heart and a big sadness pouring into mine that I kept getting it wrong. She felt it was her fault I was wet, and I couldn’t have a better mum.

‘I couldn’t see the cup,’ I said.

‘Sh, it’s fine.’

I put my ear up against her shoulder and listened to the quiet in the house. It was the safest place in the whole world. I wasn’t afraid of the shapes in the dark, the way the night was coming in through the window.

‘I’m just saying, it hasn’t turned out the way I wanted. I hoped this could be a better life for you.’

‘This is the best,’ I said.

She took my chin up to look at me, and looked silver like a ghost with soft eyes moving in the dark.

‘It’s going to be fine,’ and she folded her arms round me tighter. ‘God will tell us how we go from here.’