He looked at me and pulled me close so he could say it loud in my ear, ‘Nine twelves, a hundred and eight!’ He ran dragging me by the sleeve to catch up the others, ‘You have to learn it ... if you don’t want the house to fall on you.’

I couldn’t wake up. Everyone was telling me wake up. My dad was telling me and the man with blue eyes was looking at me from the bomb site. Manus was shaking me and everyone was saying he’s asleep. I could see everything really clearly, the clouds in the sky through the empty windows, my mum’s face in the window at Sainsbury’s, the girl looking down at me through the net curtains, the black eyes of the man at the door of the off-licence, but it wasn’t what people wanted me to see, and I didn’t know the answer. ‘Open your eyes,’ Manus was saying, and I thought if I could close them, I could get them open. I blinked and we were getting off the train into the open air. ‘Time to go,’ my mum said, and my dad lifted me off the seat and carried me on to the platform to find my feet. I was feeling everyone was talking at me and I didn’t understand, but they were speaking about which way to go for the way out.

‘That’s the way we were here, weren’t we, the last time?’ my mum said.

‘Follow me,’ said Connor, and he led us off along the platform with my dad smiling to my mum at him taking over.

I grabbed hold of Manus not to get left behind and get the strength back in my legs, but he shook me off. Then I got a surge back in my legs because I felt the edge of the platform pulling me towards it and I had to keep to the wall to stop myself going over. I hurried up past him and Busola who was holding my mum’s hand and took hold of my dad’s. I could see he was wondering what I was doing as I looked up.

‘Hundred and eight,’ I said.

It took him a moment and then he burst out in surprise through his nose and his eyes, letting his mouth open wide. He reached down round my waist and swung me up under his arm and carried me down off the platform.

‘Jump!’

She wouldn’t, she was sulking because it was superstitious and she didn’t want to.

‘Jump, now, it’s good for you,’ my uncle said.

‘Arrah, that’s old hat,’ my mum said, and crossed herself with a worried look on her face.