My mum was gone and my dad was looking after us. He gave us fried bread and you had to eat it, oily out the frying pan, and cold corned beef mashed into lumpy boiled yams that dried your mouth out and you still had a long way to go. He couldn’t cook. He boiled milk and forgot about it until it bubbled over and burnt at the sides – then let it cool down with skin forming on the top and you couldn’t leave it. He sat there and told you it was good for you so drink it. Busola looked at the skin and started being sick, burping up air from her tummy and trying to vomit up her tonsils. You had to get it from the cup into your stomach without it touching your tongue or the roof of your mouth, or letting it get stuck in your throat. It was boiled, slimy and stale. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said. We looked at each other. ‘It’s not too fresh,’ Manus said, trying to get rid of his tongue. It rumbled inside my stomach, then gurgled, and rushed out my mouth on to the oily bread. I looked up at him, and wanted my mum back.

He got a cloth and wiped it up. I had tears down my cheeks and snot running out my nose. I wiped it all off on my sleeve and used the back of my hand to wipe the milk off my chin. He used the dirty cloth to wipe my mouth, and sat down and stared out the window.

No one said anything. It was too much food and it was bad. He didn’t know what to do. We knew he didn’t. He needed my mum back. ‘OK, you can go,’ he said.

She’d walked out, but she’d left us too, so we had to look after ourselves. We weren’t blaming him, but he was trying to clamp down on us because he wasn’t in control.

‘What we gonna do?’ Manus said.

‘Make him drink it first,’ said Connor.

‘Get Mummy back,’ I said.

Busola wasn’t saying anything, it was all her fault anyway. She was the one who wasn’t going to give in.

It started when she came home one day and told everyone she was Kate. Katherine, Kathleen, Kitty, we’d all heard, but Kate was new. And anyway, her name was Busola. But everyone stopped a minute and thought about it.

‘You’re not English,’ was all Connor said, and walked off.