I wasn’t sure, we didn’t look anything like our dad, but Manus didn’t say anything and neither did I. But when she’d gone back indoors and left the lights on for us to come back he did say, ‘That’s the end of that.’

‘What?’ Connor said.

‘Him taking us back to show off,’ he said.

‘The sun’s so hot it burns you as you get off the plane,’ Busola said, and spat out.

‘What makes you say that?’ I said, but she ignored me. I felt wobbly at the thought of getting on a plane.

‘I don’t want to go to his hot country and get burned,’ Manus said. ‘I want to stay here.’

Connor pulled the string of the bathroom light off and ran into the rain in the backyard leaving us in the dark. We all made a rush to the door not to be the last left out and I hadn’t finished brushing my teeth. I kept hold of Manus and didn’t let him get me off in case a ghost got me. The door banged my shoulder and Busola trod on my foot but that just made me go faster. Our dad was by the stairs coming out to the toilet and watched us piling in through the back door and pulling each other back. He could see everything and Connor looked like he’d been caught.

‘Don’t be frightened,’ he said. ‘Go to bed.’

He moved back and we filed past with our heads down. I glanced up at him from the bottom of the stairs as he stepped out in the rain and pulled the back door shut.

‘At least we’re alive,’ Busola said.

The next day I told Emily my granddad was dead.

‘How did he die?’ she said, and I didn’t know and I’d forgotten what his name was. We were hiding on the back steps at playtime where no one could see us.

‘He’s from Nigeria,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how they die.’

‘My dad’s dead.’

I didn’t know that. I couldn’t imagine what her dad was like, if he had white hair like her. Her cold made her nose raw and her top lip red. I couldn’t let her go shivering like that, but I felt I couldn’t leave my dad in case he died as well. I wasn’t going to be able to love her enough.

‘What about your mum?’ I said.

She looked at me with her hands squashed up against her cheeks and her elbows on her knees, ‘She drinks.’