‘Can dead people cross water over to this country?’ Busola asked, which was what I was worried about.

Manus said there were dead people everywhere and we shouldn’t think we wouldn’t meet one, so we better be ready.

‘Can they come over from there?’ I said.

And my mum said yes – that a man had followed her over and called up at the window. She’d looked out and told him no, to go away, she wasn’t coming back. So though she never saw him again she was haunted by him, not knowing was he alive or dead, and only the dark tinker’s eyes to remember him and the sadness on his face that it wasn’t going to be possible.

‘Who was he?’ Connor asked, and she said he was a tinker because there were lots of those people in Ireland and though they didn’t live long they had beautiful eyes and they could steal your heart.

I was going to ask more but Connor put on the telly and while it was warming up my mum said we could stay up as a special treat until my dad got home. She put a blanket on over our laps and the crackle of the television turned into a roaring noise. It was King Kong banging on the doors of the jungle. I didn’t want to be in the same room, ‘Turn it off,’ I said. ‘Turn off the telly!’

They couldn’t hear me because Busola was snuggling up with my mum who was looking at her not me, Connor’s lips were looking at the telly saying ‘Shh’ ... and Manus was hiding part of his face under the blanket.

‘I don’t want it!’ I said, and jumped up to the door.

Manus looked up at me from far away and said if I didn’t like it I should leave the room.

‘Go to bed,’ said Busola.

I couldn’t sleep, so I sat up on the stairs. I tried to keep pressing in the button for the light to stay on but it wouldn’t. It was dark upstairs with the buckets for the rain and downstairs to the front door. I didn’t want to be on my own, so I sat outside on the landing with the front-room door between me and King Kong where I could be close to the others. I couldn’t think about running away, my heart was pounding and the telly was screaming. It went quiet, there was a sound of water. But then they switched the light off in the front room and I froze, watching the blue flicker of the telly under the door. I could feel the draught coming up the stairs and started to shiver and sweat at the same time.