‘What was it like?’ said Busola, and I would have told her because it was so kind and grown-up the way she asked it.

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he said.

Their mum came out with the other children reaching round her for cakes and called us over to the wooden table, while Mr and Mrs Brown came out with their baby and the dad came out carrying a big glass jug of brown lemonade with leaves in it for the grown-ups. They were talking and laughing, with the other children hollering over the jug of clear lemonade the mum was pouring. Charles wiped his tears with his finger and thumb and buried them softly in the grass. He looked older and darker in his eyes, as though his childhood was over. His sister looked at us as he stood up and walked away, she plucked a blade of grass and sighed.

‘He doesn’t want to go to grammar school,’ she said. ‘They won’t let him just play.’ And she looked across at her mum and dad setting up the jellies and the cakes and the glasses of lemonade on the table, ‘I’m going to be left on my own.’

‘What shall we tell them when we get back?’ We were lying in bed with our bags already packed on the floor.

‘That you broke the lamp,’ she said.

The pieces had been cleared up for us when we got back to the room. There was only one lamp left on my side of the bed, so I got my own back by switching it off and making her lie there in the dark until our eyes got used to the light from the window.

‘Perhaps I should tell them you stopped speaking,’ she said.

I didn’t say anything, thinking she would laugh. But after a while I began to worry what would happen if she did tell them. I was rude to the people who looked after us. I wasn’t, I just let her do the talking. What happened was I got on with their daughter who didn’t speak. We played and just looked at each other. I went back to being a baby. But I was counting the days in my head, so I wasn’t a baby. I was just trying to hold my breath. Was I trying to kill myself? Why wasn’t I speaking?

‘What about that voice you been using?’ I said.

‘I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about,’ she said. ‘Could you explain?’

She put on that voice to keep people away, for it to be there instead of her. It was scary.

‘You know what I mean,’ I said.

‘Goodnight. Don’t forget to turn off the light,’ and she turned away under the covers.

‘Weren’t you frightened?’

She didn’t move.

‘They could have beaten us up.’