He opened the front door and took my mum over from Manus, letting her go in first and holding her arm, but she said she was all right and just let her go slowly. I hung back behind Connor and Busola, looking out at the stars in the dark. No one was saying anything, but I didn’t know if Uncle Eamon thought I was ugly. And Busola didn’t look like a swan. She looked like a girl in a white dress, and she was yawning. The light was off in the hall again and my mum said, ‘Everyone to bed.’ Manus was holding the door open, but I didn’t want to follow in because I liked the feel of the dark, the way the sound of the street had changed and the stars were coming down. I could feel the chewing-gum in my pocket, the stars were so close I could almost reach up and stick it there. Manus frowned and started closing the door. I stuck my foot in to stop him, and flicked the gum up like an asteroid at the stars as far as it could go.

Part Two

Cowboys and Indians

There was a crowd following us, we were trying not to run. Busola held my hand all the way past the shops, along the crowded summer pavements, up past an ice-cream van, a red pillar box, parked cars, people.

‘Just ignore them,’ she said.

They were following us, stomping and shouting, as we would if we’d found something loud like that to do in the long, empty afternoons of the summer holidays that end with you turning to stare sunblind down on the ground at the length of your own shadow.

‘Just keep walking.’

There’s a gang of you spot something ludicrous, shameful, and you want everyone to know you’re keeping watch – Hark, hark, the dogs do bark! That’s what it sounded like, barking. Woof! Woof! Woof!

‘Don’t run.’

So we walked, hand in hand, past the old ladies in flowery dresses, old men with their sleeves rolled up, prams and babies, shop windows and awnings drawn down against the sun.

‘Nigger! Nigger!’ That’s what they were chanting. They were wrong – we were on a church holiday to give poor children fresh air in their lungs – we were beggars. Two whole weeks away with each other, in the middle of nowhere, wondering why no one had asked us. ‘Do you want to go on holiday?’ We never went anywhere on holiday so we thought Butlins! holiday camp. No one told us it was to get on a train and go into the Forest and get left on our own. That was sprung on us. We were beggars and orphans, and we felt like it. So we clung together.