She didn’t answer, she just tilted her head sideways and waited. ‘See?’ she said. ‘You don’t wanna know.’

I didn’t want him to punch her so I moved in the way. He saw me but he was listening to my mum and dad calling goodnight on the street and the cars going.

‘They don’t come for us,’ she said. ‘Let ’em go to the pub and get drunk.’

His eyes came back from the window, ‘What about Nana?’

‘She can come on her own.’

Manus came in and put a finger to his lips, ‘No one say anything.’ The front door clunked shut downstairs. ‘Look like you’re tidying so we can go to bed.’

I could hear my mum and dad moving about. They were clearing, going up and down to the kitchen, and taking empty bottles out the back to the bins. From the bottom bunk I could hear Manus and Connor breathing but I couldn’t hear Kat, so I poked my foot up against the springs, ‘You awake?’

‘No,’ she said, leaning over the top.

‘Sh.’ It was Connor.

‘Shut up,’ Manus said, ‘listen.’

I locked my ears into the sounds from the front room. They’d stopped what they were doing. She was crying, he was asking questions. I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Manus got up and stuck his shoulder into the corner by the door so he could hang his head down and listen like my mum when she was worried. I got up and put my ear down to the gap under the door where light was coming in from the landing. Kat scrambled down the ladder and put her arms round Manus’s middle. Her ear moved to the keyhole. Connor sat up on the edge of his bed and told me to stop breathing. We all listened.

‘They’ll close their doors.’ It was my mum. I thought of the car doors slamming again.

‘They are your people?’ His voice was on her side, telling her what to do. ‘You have to keep them.’

‘How can I?’

There was a pause as the front door banged opened downstairs, and voices of a man and a woman came into the hall. It was Mr Ajani but I didn’t know who the woman was. They went talking into the back room, then the front-room door swung open and I saw my dad’s shoes on the landing. We all made a big noise stampeding back into bed. He didn’t come in, he just called out, ‘Go to sleep.’ The front-room door closed shut behind him and it went quiet until the music went on and then got turned down low. It was their song, the one they played and danced to themselves, Don’t forget who’s taking you home, and in whose arms you’re gonna be ...

‘They make me sick,’ Connor said.

‘Who asked you?’ said Manus.