I touched them again and thought about it. It was a story, but it kept changing. He was laughing. What was I getting wrong? They weren’t scars, they were tribal marks. But I could feel them, they were scars, they were real. What about the children?

‘Did it hurt?’ I said.

He shook his head, ‘When you’re a baby, either it doesn’t hurt or you don’t remember.’

‘Of course they’ve all got scars. They’re like zebras,’ Busola snorted, hanging upside down off the edge of the bunk bed. ‘You’re stupid!’

She had me in her sights, swinging from her legs. I let it go until she had the bucket between her knees in the downstairs kitchen. I reached over and dropped my peelings in, ‘I’m not stupid!’

She gave me a sneer, the way our dad did when we were being thick, turning up her nose with her nostrils flared. It was our turn to be peeling yams for the party. Visitors were already barging in through the door with their loud voices on, banging about in the kitchen with big pots to take over the serious cooking and making themselves at home, but still leaving it to us to do the peeling.

A big man we didn’t know turned round and caught her mouthing ‘Stupid’ back at me with her lips and let his mouth drop open. ‘And you? What are you? Are you stupid?’ he asked.

Busola didn’t answer, she wiped her eyes with the back of her knife hand and opened one eye at me behind it to let me know she was having to put up with this because of me. ‘Just rude!’ he said, and gave up and turned away.

‘Very stupid,’ she said under her breath.

Our eyes had started crying from the onions going on to the cooker, and there was the acrid, burning smell of hot peppers that reached into the back of your throat and made you cough. We carried on and tried not to look up in case people noticed us – either they’d flick drops of water off the wooden spoons into your eyes or pick you up and throw you into the air. They took you over and kept you up and wouldn’t let you go until your mum said it was time for bed.

Sometimes you didn’t mind, when it was the nice ones who took you up somewhere you wanted to go and held you tight for you to get a good look. But the ones who caught your eye and gave you daggers of withering looks, or flicked you with water so you’d have to keep your eyes shut to stop it going in, those ones had it in for you and didn’t mind you could see it coming.