My dad was looking at me from the door. He didn’t say anything, he came over and looked in the bucket. He picked up one of the chunks, took my knife and cut it again in two. The pieces fell down – slap! thud! – into the bucket with the other yams.

‘That size,’ he said, and walked off.

‘You’re adopted,’ Busola said, and I couldn’t say anything.

‘Why so miserable?’ Mr Adebisi asked.

I was hanging about on the stairs. I wanted my dad, but I didn’t want him to see me. So I just shrugged.

Mr Adebisi picked me up and gave me a big kiss on the cheek. His bristles scratched into my skin which was the only thing I didn’t like about him. I turned in his arms and looked at him. Under his beard he had tribal marks going everywhere.

‘Why have you got that beard?’ I said.

‘For professional reasons.’

‘To hide your scars?’

He laughed, and swung me. ‘You’re sharp! You can be a lawyer.’ Then he dared me, ‘Go on, touch them.’

I put my finger in under the beard and traced a scar with it.

‘How does it feel?’ he asked.

I just nodded.

‘Do you want some for yourself?’

I tried to shake my head but it wouldn’t move. My neck was stiff. So I said, ‘You have to be a baby.’ And then, because he didn’t say anything, ‘Is that when they did it to you?’

He was looking at me. That’s what Mr Adebisi was like. When he used his eyes you knew he could see anything you were feeling. ‘So now you’re grown-up. And you’re upset you haven’t got?’ he said.

I didn’t know why I nodded, I didn’t want to. But I didn’t know why I didn’t belong.

‘Look around,’ he said, moving me into the front room. ‘Lots of people – that man over there, he doesn’t have marks, and he’s the king.’

I twisted in his arms to look. The man in my dad’s chair was leaning forward, looking at everyone. He hadn’t been to the kitchen so we didn’t draw him. He came later with lots of people shouting and calling after the party had already started. My dad had gone down on the ground in front of him, which startled me because I hadn’t seen that happen before. Now it was like Mr Adebisi was turning me in his arms to see the world upside down and blood was rushing to my head.

‘He’s everybody’s teacher,’ Mr Adebisi whispered.