They let me go to school. But then they folded out these beds and told me to go to sleep. It was the middle of the day. I told the teacher I was too old for that, I’d come to school to play. She told me I wasn’t in school, I was in the nursery and I had to go to sleep. I got in under the blanket but I felt cheated. As soon as she left the room, I got up and went out the glass doors into the nursery playground and climbed over the fence into the main playground. The black iron doors were wide open and a van was coming in. No one was watching so I went to the side gate – it was open – and let it clang shut behind me. I ran home thinking I was going to complain to my mum, but on the way I decided I wasn’t going to make a fuss because I liked being out and able to run.

I knocked on the front door and my mum looked out the window and shook her head at me, ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’ve come home to watch with you,’ I said.

The door knocked and Mrs Bridewell was standing there. Her and my mum had a chat. I heard them say it was a bit early and to leave things as they stand. I pushed my head out past my mum’s skirt and looked at them.

‘Hello, young man,’ she said.

‘I don’t want to go to sleep, I want to play,’ I told her.

She laughed, but I tried again.

‘When can I go to school?’

She looked at my mum then looked back at me. ‘Look at the trees,’ she said, but there weren’t any trees on our street so I thought that was a bit strange. ‘When they start to go brown and lose their leaves you can come to school.’