The door burst open and her mum came out. A man was behind her shouting and dragging her back. She was fighting him off, and screaming. A boy with a round face who we didn’t know was behind them. All the grown-ups started looking out their windows, opening doors and running out. Some of them were pulling children away. We hadn’t seen anyone dead before.

‘She jumped,’ Mandy said as her mum picked her up.

Soap suds spilled on to the pavement and ran along the gutter on our way to school. On the way back, the sky was brownish purple as the storm broke. The brick fronts and the windows of the houses shone in the rain. A car went past, lifting a skirt of brown water on to the pavement, rippling all the way along the street. I saw a lady get completely splashed under her umbrella and stop, speechless, as if she’d been crying and there was no way any more to get dry.

‘Clean clothes, everyone! School clothes off.’ My mum looked serious as she dried my hair in the towel, so I knew what was coming.

‘Michael? How was your teacher?’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘She was sad, she said a man was killed today. She wrote his name out and told us to remember. What happened, Mum?’

‘Sh.’

Our dad called us all into the living room. He was back from Liverpool. ‘Who saw that girl fall?’

No one spoke.

‘Who was there yesterday?’

‘I wasn’t,’ I said.

‘...Anyone else?’

Everyone looked at me. Manus rolled his tongue up under his teeth. Busola pulled at her bottom lip. Connor pressed his lips together into a crooked line. They were all telling me the same thing, ‘Your big mouth.’

It was too late to go back.

‘I didn’t see her fall,’ I said.

A bang of thunder rumbled on the windowpanes. The sky looked bruised and dark over the rooftops. Rain came down again, like an open tap that couldn’t stop flooding.

‘I don’t want to see any of you leaning out of the window,’ he said.

After supper, we all rushed to look out at the storm, pressing our faces to the glass and leaving mist patches. The street was empty – a brown wash, the colour of clothes in the bathtub, the colour of mud. The terrace of houses opposite became a wall of water and brick. All the windows and curtains were closed.

‘Daddy’s going to sleep. Let’s be quiet,’ my mum said.