It started to roar. My face was hot. It changed shape rushing out into the air, bright hot yellow and black, with hands, fingers, tongues, wings folding and flying off into smoke, then orange flames and ash as the logs collapsed back into black and red-hot rubble, and white flakes peeled off and flew up into the night. I shifted round to Busola on the carpet to get out the way of the smoke, but I had to wait to breathe so she shifted away from me and held on to Sean. Nana was singing and my mum was holding her hand. Manus was up on my dad’s lap. It was old-fashioned, there wasn’t a tune, but she made the droning sound of something you feel when you’ve lost your way and have to sit down on the ground. Everyone was listening. I looked back at the fire. The flames were alive, licking their tongues to speak to me. Somebody had to, they were going to knock the house down and no one was saying. They leapt up and flickered together, like they’d been telling me all the time this is it, this. Is it. I heard my mum and dad talking. Charlie said it, and Lottie. Susan with her cats – her name wasn’t Susan. That was someone else. Was there a Susan? I looked at Busola leaning on the arm of Sean’s yellow jacket with her thumb in her mouth. Perhaps she wasn’t saying because Susan was someone who had nowhere to be, who only came if you talked about her. Manus said we were being slum cleared – they were coming to knock us down. And I didn’t see it. My eyes were wide open, but it took for the houses up the top of the road to get knocked down. They didn’t want us, and we didn’t have anywhere to go. It was too bright, my face was burning and my back was cold. My eyes felt dry and hot from the smoke, like they were going to melt in the cold breeze that came across, and I could feel I was going to shiver.