‘Come and have breakfast,’ my mum said, and we went through the steps of bashing the egg on its head and cutting its throat so we could bloody the bread soldiers in the yolk.

My dad was getting his shirt ready to put on over his vest and saying he’d be back in a fortnight.

‘What’s a fortnight?’ I said.

He shrugged the shirt on to his shoulders and said, ‘Not long.’

‘Two weeks,’ my mum said, snapping the eggshells with her thumb and putting them in the bin. She picked me up off the chair and held me up to my dad for him to have a look at me. ‘Did you go by the school?’ she said.

‘No,’ I said, ‘I just went for a run.’

‘He’ll be starting school soon.’

He nodded, taking hold of my hand, and said, ‘Soon.’ I felt him open my fingers up with his thumb and feel the oily smear on my palm, ‘What’s that?’

I looked at them, but they let me go and didn’t say anything.

There were no more questions so I waited until the teachers came out of school.

‘Who’s that one?’ I asked Connor. He was kicking a tin can down the street with his mates.

‘That’s the deputy head, Mrs Bridewell,’ Danny said, because Connor was ignoring me.

I followed her down Auckland Street towards the main road and the train station. It didn’t work because she was going too fast and I couldn’t catch up. She had black hair and yellow skin with dark blotches on her legs under her stockings. She was holding a brown bag close under her arm and walked in a tight way like someone was after her, so I backed off.

The next day I was waiting for her. She walked in the same way but I crossed in front of her so she could see me.

‘Hello, Mrs Bridewell.’

She looked at me and frowned but kept on walking, then looked back over her shoulder, ‘Are you at the school?’

I leapt up to her and walked along, looking up and trying to keep in step. ‘No, but can I go soon? I’m big enough.’

‘Yes, you are a big boy. We’ll be looking forward to having you in the school.’

I was breathless. She said yes! I peeled off and let her go, turned back and ran home.

‘Mrs Bridewell says I can go to school!’

My mum looked at me. ‘She said that?’

I suddenly wasn’t sure, but I nodded my head because it was what I wanted, and said, ‘I’m big enough.’