‘Come away out of the fire,’ my mum said. I skirted round to get up on her lap with her arms folding me. The song had finished and everyone was looking into the flames. My mum felt warm. I looked across at Manus, leaning back safe on my dad’s lap. The flames were going down, and my shirt smelt ironed. I was glad to be folded on my mum’s lap because what I got from the fire was still shaking me. Busola was leaning in on Sean’s arm, Carmel was watching her. There was just the afterglow and the feeling that everyone was together. I looked at my dad’s face, glistening in the light, the blue hat threaded with silver, and up at the night sky, dark blue with stars in it. I wasn’t worried the house was going to fall down. My dad was holding on to Manus and keeping the house safe. I could look up and breathe. A satellite moved out the stars into the blue.

‘Will I tell this fella what’s gone on?’ Uncle Eamon said, and he leaned forward. They all called my dad Fela, because that was his name and they could say it like fella. No one spoke, so he leaned back towards my dad, ‘Eviction’s a dirty word.’

My dad nodded, he was listening to my mum shift with me on the stool. He smiled and said, ‘They are calling this one compulsory purchase.’

‘They’d put the blinkers on you. If it wasn’t Irish fellas in the council we’d never got hold of this house.’

‘Ah, that’s enough of that now,’ Tess said, ‘there’s children about.’

‘The house wasn’t haunted,’ Nana said, ‘that was the story when they wanted us out.’

‘Ah, Nana, no, it was,’ Tess said.

‘Did you see a ghost?’ Nana said.

‘Carmel has school in the morning,’ said Tess, and she started to get up. ‘Eamon, they’ll only be five in the back, run them home?’

‘Now the banshee,’ Nana said, ‘I heard that. And so did your sister.’

I was sitting on my mum’s lap in the back, the others were squashed up. My dad and Uncle Eamon were talking in the front as we drove into our road. The streetlamps were out and it was dark through to the lights by the school. The missing row of houses at the top was an empty gap that had stars pouring into it through a dark funnel of the rooftops narrowing towards each other along the street. I’d never seen so many stars.