My dad didn’t say anything, he watched Busola and glanced at me as he paid the barber whose hand was shaking as he lit up a cigarette. Manus and Connor weren’t looking at anyone as we got out the shop. On the street, my dad gave Manus the keys to go home and said, ‘Go on, I’m coming.’

We walked back on our own.

‘It’s your own fault,’ Manus said as we turned the corner.

‘My head feels cold,’ said Connor.

‘Your ear’s bleeding,’ I told Busola.

The barber had cut her and she hadn’t said anything. She put her hand up and saw a bit of blood on it. ‘I don’t care,’ she said, ‘I don’t feel it.’ She’d made her choice and she was gonna stick to it. She was just like my mum.

‘You look like a boy,’ Connor said.

She stopped in the street as we walked on, and burst into tears.

My dad came home with fish and chips, full of salt and vinegar, and we wolfed them down with the paper soggy on the plates. Busola’s eyes were like swollen wood, dark and wet. She looked around at everyone as though we couldn’t see her, watching our mouths move as though there were words coming out. All we were doing was eating. My dad coughed and she looked at him as though he’d just said something. He picked up a bit of fish and ate it, careful not to see her staring as he put some on my plate. She was wearing a wig she got out my mum’s wardrobe drawer. It was attached by a comb to the top of her head where it bunched up and wasn’t the same as her hair, it was shiny black and came down the back of her neck in long twists.

‘Your mother is coming to pick up her things,’ my dad said.

Manus’s mouth was full and he stopped chewing. Connor’s jaw did a slow sideways move like he’d got something stuck in his teeth. I looked at Busola’s wig and tried to remember my mum, but it wasn’t really her and made my stomach feel empty even though it was full. Busola turned on me, ‘What you looking at?’

My dad stood up from the table and left.

‘You,’ Connor said.

‘Why don’t you fuck off back to Liverpool?’ That was what Connor said to her as we were cleaning the stairs with dustpans and brushes. The dust was swirling up and getting into my eyes and nose and up the back of my throat. ‘Don’t breathe it in,’ Manus said when I showed him the black snot on my tissue. But I didn’t know how not to breathe, it was hard kneeling on the stairs getting the dirt out.