I didn’t like the way he kept following my mum around. We had to share our food but he kept picking bits off the side of our plates with his hands and he didn’t know how to use a knife and fork. Once, when we were all using our hands to have eba and okra with tripe and cow’s foot from shared plates, he picked his nose and put it on his side of the eba to stop us taking it, he sucked up the pepper off the tripe and put it back, and that meant we couldn’t eat any more, but he denied it when my dad came in and made us finish the leftovers. He made it so you couldn’t like him. And his dad kept not turning up, so even his dad didn’t like him. Connor kicked him playing football when he kept getting in the way to stop the game, but that left a bruise and my dad whacked Connor on the bottom for it. So we started spitting in his milk, but he didn’t care, he still drank it. ‘For God’s sake, are ye animals?!’ my mum said. She found out what was going on when me and Busola pushed him off the bunk bed and he went head first into the potty she put there for him to use. He came up crying with the pee dripping down and the potty covering his head, so when my mum heard the bang and came in she found us laughing from the top bunk at the way the sound was muffled. She lifted it off and some blood started to drip down his forehead. ‘He’s someone’s child!’ She slapped me hard and that frightened me. Busola said it was his fault for pinching us and my mum picked him up and hugged him and kissed his head to get him quiet and searched his hair for the cut. He clung on to her with his arms and legs and I stopped and held my breath at the thought he wanted her, she kept him alive, and it was my fault he nearly died, and that I was afraid of him and hated him at the same time.