‘Get back!’ the policeman shouted as he came up the pavement towards us. The old lady shook her head and walked away. Behind her a tramp was leaning back on the corrugated iron fence, smoking a cigarette and talking to himself. I watched him put the fag in his mouth like he was trying to whistle, raise his eyebrows, and pull on it till it glowed like that was the fire going on in his face and he was talking to it. It burnt his fingers and he let go, shaking his hand as he walked off and shrugging like it wasn’t him who dropped it, and he knew he’d get the blame. A woman went past holding a bloke’s arm, shivering and looking worried. She saw us and her face went blank. People were moving back because the fire was spreading and they thought something might explode after the top windows burst open and smoke started to come out from there. We were already out the way up the top of the street by the corner when we put the telly down, so we stayed where we were. Busola said it was too heavy to carry and she wanted to see what was going on. I couldn’t lift it without her so we were sitting on the television watching the fire when the policeman came up. Busola ignored him. There was a look in his eye that he wasn’t sure what we were doing, maybe we’d nicked the television out one of the houses, but the street was all empty except us and the students squatting the first house next to the factory on that side of the road. He couldn’t work it out so he looked away and shouted at the boys hanging round the ambulance and let us get on with it. But then he came back and said, ‘You watching it on television?’ We didn’t answer, another fire engine came round the corner by the main road so he shrugged and went off to help clear the way.

‘Look at them,’ Busola said. She was nodding her head at some of the men knocking everything down who’d come out the Lord Clyde where they drank. They were pointing up at the clouds of smoke coming out the top windows now the first floor was damping down. ‘Bet they did it.’

I didn’t have time to see what they were doing because then she said, ‘Don’t look, there’s Daddy!’

He was coming out the house with the big wheelbarrow he got for the move because he didn’t have a car no more. The barrow was loaded up with a blanket over the top to keep it in. My mum followed him out, putting down lots of bags of clothes and buttoning up her coat. They didn’t see us, she was looking up at the fire and my dad was locking up.