‘My mum says she’ll miss this lot,’ and he looked at me, ‘watching ’em get up to no good.’

I suddenly felt everyone had been watching me. I didn’t know what I’d done but they’d seen me do it and my mum and dad were gonna find out. I felt like something was coming to get me.

‘She don’t want you kept out – she don’t want ’em closing the door on you cos yer coloured.’

Busola looked up at my dad, I couldn’t see what he was thinking, she leaned forward again to Mrs Ralf’s son with her plastic sandals dangling off her feet on the edge of the sofa.

‘How is your mother?’ my mum asked from the door.

He smiled for the first time and put the piece of cloth he had in his hand on his head and straightened it out – it was his cap. ‘Sorry she couldn’t get out more. But she’s kept that window open, says your lot are smashing. Sorry they’ve had to see all this trouble, been a great street to live in,’ and he stood up, bigger than I remembered.

My dad stood up to see him off and shook his hand. ‘Thank you, you have been a good neighbour to us,’ my dad said, and my mum stepped out the way of the door.

‘Oh, and she sent this over,’ he said, stopping to drop a gold chain out his pocket into Busola’s hand where she was sitting. ‘For you.’

She had her head bent over it. My mum and dad looked up and said thank you to him, but he just shrugged.

‘It’s been good,’ he said. ‘They wouldn’t understand, chucking rats at us. Wouldn’t want ’em to.’

My dad shrugged, ‘Don’t mind them. We are not stupid, they are corrupt. And they won’t see we can see them coming.’

They went downstairs and I looked at Busola’s chain with my mum to see what Ralf’s mum sent her, but there was a hand hanging off it with an eye in the middle of the palm.

‘What’s that?’ I said.

‘It’s to ward off the evil eye,’ my mum said.

‘What’s that?’ Busola said, looking like she couldn’t work out whether she liked it.

‘It’s for you to go on and have children,’ she said, ‘that’s what it is.’

Busola shook it off her hand on to the floor like she was having kittens.

My mum gave her a look and said, ‘Who’d be your guardian angel watching over you?’

And Busola gave her a scowl.

My dad came back upstairs and asked my mum to come to the kitchen with him.

‘Are you going to help me put away the shopping?’ and he laughed like she was dreaming. She looked at him and nodded, ‘A garden would be nice.’

In the Ruins