I didn’t move at first because I wasn’t sure what Emily’s mum was saying, she was telling me go outside, but then people were whispering and I wanted to know what they were saying. I didn’t know how to tell my foot to move back, I had my face wedged in the door and people were looking at me. I felt stupid and said, ‘I’m Emily’s friend.’

Her mum said again, ‘I’m coming,’ and a man took off his cap and shook his head, but he smiled like he wasn’t sure and that gave me the feeling I could step back and not let the door bang on my face, my ears were stinging and hot already.

‘So you’re the fella with Emily to carry numbers in your head and wants to teach her, is it?’ Her mum was sitting down on the steps of the pub with me one side and Emily on the other, handing us crisps from a packet. I nodded and she said, ‘Do you love her more than me?’

That stopped me chewing.

‘Learning’s a fine thing,’ she said, ‘if you’ve love in your heart.’

I couldn’t follow the different ghosts that swooped down and went different ways through me. Emily’s mum had straggly silver hair, I didn’t know what my granddad looked like but my dad’s hair was black, Emily’s was white, so her dad’s must have been like hers and that’s where it was leading – I couldn’t love her like her dad did. Any more than my dad could go back and change anything now his dad was dead. The ways were cut off and the ghosts were guarding them.

‘What was Emily’s dad like?’ I said.

Her mum looked at Emily, and then back to me. ‘I see,’ she said.

Emily’s eyes were darting around the cars as though she could see an accident coming, or she could see her dad and I couldn’t. Her eyes were always moving, going somewhere I couldn’t follow or coming in close so there wasn’t any room between us.

‘I’ll tell you he was a dreamer. Are you that?’

I looked back at her mum, leaning down towards me with her silver hair, her face full of lines and hairs round the bottom of her chin. I could smell the drink on her breath. She blinked and I looked at her eyes, grey flecked with yellow and dark eyelashes.

‘Are you?’

I nodded a little bit because I was still getting woken up by King Kong.

‘Who are your people?’ she said.

I didn’t have an answer, but I didn’t want to be rude, so I looked around – there were people passing in the street, going up the Cut for the market with their shopping trolleys now Lambeth Walk was closed. ‘The people here,’ I said.

‘Which ones?’