Busola was trying to lift the wet bits of her dress off her legs, and just nodded when I said, ‘Let’s go.’ We picked up the television and turned down Tyers Street trying not to bump into people.

‘Hold it.’

‘You hold it!’

‘There.’

‘Don’t drop it!’

‘Stop.’

‘Put it down!’

It felt like they’d given us something we couldn’t carry and we weren’t supposed to get there. Busola walked backwards and then I did, but we could feel it slipping and had to put it down again. We got up as far as the Marmite factory on the main road and stopped in a covered doorway, and sat on top of the telly watching the cars go past.

‘What we gonna do?’

‘Run away,’ she said.

I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t run off and leave me, I wasn’t being nice to her. It was her fault we got wet, I was angry and upset she wouldn’t hold it properly and my arms were aching. But the strength was gone out my fingers so if she got up to run I couldn’t grab hold of her. I could see me waiting on my own in the doorway with the telly for Connor to come and look for it, all the cars going past and the light going, so I changed what I was feeling and said, ‘You carry that side and I carry this side and we both walk forward.’

‘It stinks!’ she said, wrinkling her nose up. The smell of Marmite from the factory was stale beer but inside the doorway there were pee marks up against the wall and dribbled in the dirt. It smelt like a toilet, and drink.

It was her fault we were there, so I said it wasn’t me smelt like a tramp. She looked like she was gonna do something horrible to me so I stood up. ‘You’re the tramp,’ she said. ‘You’ve got snot in your nose and your face is dirty, and you never clean your knees, they’re black. Not even with a scrubbing brush.’

I looked down and it was a bit dark under my knees, but I didn’t have to get my own back because her face was dirty too, she had white bits stuck in her hair from the fire and she didn’t know. ‘Look at you,’ I said. Her dress was drying, but there were dirty black marks across her front where we were lifting the television.

She looked down at her stomach and her face wobbled. ‘I don’t care,’ she said, ‘what anyone thinks.’ We stopped talking and picked up the telly with the screen in front and walked forward sideways up on to Harleyford Road.