She was too old for me, I couldn’t follow. It wasn’t my fault she was squashed up, I was squashed up. It only hurt if you got pushed out. But I couldn’t make her like me if she didn’t want to. The Three Musketeers and the Kennedys and the all the grownups arguing crowded into my head, all the squashed flies lying on the ground and the ones buzzing around them, and it was my fault. The window opened from the bedroom on the first floor and we both looked up as Tunde leaned out. His hat fell off and bounced on the ledge of the ground-floor window. Then his leg came over with his white trousers pulled up as it scraped the ledge and he was hanging from one arm off the bottom of the window frame looking down at the ground.

‘Tunde! Tunde!’ My dad’s voice came down the stairs and out the back door, and from upstairs through the open window. Tunde let go and the white shirt he was wearing ruffled up as he fell.

‘Oh.’