The window was open and the curtain was hanging out, like she’d held on to it. I could feel her slipping. I grabbed hold of Manus’s sleeve, but he shook me off. I had to stand on my own. There was the feeling of when the ice-cream van came and I couldn’t walk away, when I’d stood there listening to the hum of the engine take over from the blare of the loudspeaker, and she’d thrown me down a sixpence – out of the blue, a flash of money, an arc of silver rolling in the gutter, just missing the drain. I looked up and caught a glimpse of her through the net curtain, closing in sunlight.

I liked it she’d seen me. She was like me, trying to be invisible and pretending not to look because I didn’t have the money to buy ice cream.

Now she was at my feet. She’d fallen through the air, and the sticky blood had footprints in it running madly around in the street.

‘Get an ambulance.’

‘Call the police.’

‘Get these children away.’

‘She made a grab.’

‘She changed her mind.’

We’d been playing in the street, building the wicket for tin-can-tacky and organising ourselves into runners and finders. Some of the girls were playing feet off London and sitting on Sky’s wall while we sorted it out. I ran inside to get more tin cans out the bins to build up and knock down for the start. Manus and Connor were squabbling over who should get the stone to fling at it and Danny over the road knocked it down with his own stone but everyone shouted they weren’t ready. I was building it up again with Yakubu and Thaddeus, with Paul Mersey standing over it, when someone said, ‘She’s fallen.’

I looked up and couldn’t see what they were talking about. Busola was biting her thumb, all the girls along the wall were looking up the street. No one had fallen – Theresa was it and still trying to get up. I couldn’t see why everyone had stopped, but there was a rush up to that end of the street and I had to stop people kicking over the wicket as they ran.

We were the first ones there, but everyone made a big circle to keep away. I pushed in past Paul Waller and Marcia’s little brother to get next to Manus but had to step back because the pool of blood was still spreading. The edge of it was curved and thick and shiny. It was moving out from her head and underneath her in a splash from her feet towards the kerb. We all watched it happening.