The whole class turned round to look because it was quiet time and you were supposed to be getting on with work. Yakubu was looking, and Patrick, and Shelley, Sky, Bobby, Sonia, everyone. My face started to burn, I put my pencil down on the table and the click sounded too loud because everyone was listening.

‘Sums, miss.’

The teacher told everyone to get on with their work and came over to me and moved my chair to another table. She spoke quietly to me and said, ‘Leave Emily alone. Go on with your work.’

I looked at everyone on the new table after the teacher was gone. No one was looking at me. My ears were hot and I had to cool them down with my hands and pretend I was leaning my elbows on the table to read. Nothing was going in because Yakubu reached over and turned my book round the right way. He had his head down and wasn’t looking at me, no one was.

‘Can I come home with you?’

‘No,’ she said.

‘But if I help you with your sums?’

She shook her head and wiped her nose with her sleeve because she had a cold. ‘Don’t.’

I went up the halfway house on my own. There was a dark courtyard inside with pipes going up the walls and washing hanging down out the windows. Water was dripping down the pipes and making puddles. It smelt of the drains and there were some boys and a girl playing out with their dogs. They saw me come in and stopped, and the dogs started growling. A dog with a stiff tail and scabs on its back started barking at me. I couldn’t move, so I stood there looking up at the windows, thinking I didn’t know which one was Emily’s.

‘What do you want?’ one of the boys said to me. He had dark hair and was older so I didn’t know who he was.

‘Does Emily live here?’

‘What do yous want with her?’ one of the younger ones said. He had ginger hair and I’d seen him in school, but I didn’t know him.

‘She’s in my class,’ I said.

That gave me the right to stand there against the dogs who’d stopped growling and started moving up and down in front of me like they were excited and waiting for someone to say bite. Emily came out one of the stairwells. She must have seen me from the window. She leaned out by the brick wall covering the bins and shook her head.

‘Go away,’ she said. ‘Go home!’