My mum leaned a finger in her cheek with her elbow on the table. There wasn’t any food being cooked and she was gonna have to tell him. ‘Hope is a fine thing,’ she said. ‘Keep it alive.’

I looked up and he was slowly turning his eyes to me, he didn’t understand the pools.

‘We’re all gonna get our own room,’ I said.

‘And your father won’t have to go down the tunnels to work, he’ll have lots of time to spend with you all.’

‘What tunnels?’ I said.

He smiled, and put his lamp down and came into the kitchen in his work clothes. ‘Under the ground,’ he said. ‘There are tunnels going everywhere under your feet for the trains.’ He put his jacket off on the chair behind him and sat down. ‘You can feel them rumbling.’

I couldn’t, I stood still trying to feel it.

‘Listen to your teacher,’ he said, ‘and you won’t have to follow me down there.’

I looked at his lamp by the door. ‘Is it dark?’ I said.

‘There’s a whole world underneath this one,’ my mum said, ‘but I want you to stay up here in the light. And your daddy’s going to make sure of it.’

I climbed on my mum’s lap to get my feet off the ground, even though she smelt funny and her skin was clammy. I had my sandals off but my feet were still dirty with mud. My dad saw them but he didn’t tell me off.

‘When your mother wins the pools, we are going to cry for one whole week, and then we are going on the longest journey we have ever been, all of us together.’

‘Amen,’ my mum said.

I thought about it, because the ground still felt shaky and my dad was looking at me like we still might not be able to afford it.

‘Will I get a bicycle?’

It hadn’t stopped raining when I opened the door to Manus and Connor. They were drenched and didn’t have the box with them. I’d been waiting all afternoon and ran down as soon as I heard them knock to see what they’d got. The rain had washed the mud off Manus’s legs, their shirts were soaked to the skin and their shorts were wringing.

‘D’you get the reward?’

They didn’t answer and pushed me out the way, Manus with his face set and his hands empty, Connor looking at me out the corner of his eye to see if I’d told, rain dripping off his ears and dribbling down his face.

‘I haven’t,’ I said. ‘I just told ’em you’d gone up Bedlam Park.’