She was there under the black iron gate of the entrance, pushing a pram backwards and forwards with a baby in who was looking up at people with its toe in its mouth. Her face was crumpled and she had lipstick on which made her look even more pale and washed out. The other mums didn’t want to push past her, so they drew their prams up and pulled their toddlers in close.

‘I’ve got too many children to look after,’ she said.

A big crowd was gathering and keeping quiet, and no one was going in. After a while, some of the mums went up and spoke to her, and nodded, and came away. She pulled her pram back and they all started going past into school with the baby looking up at them.

I hung back, and slipped in on the other side of a pram with my head down.

She was on her own after that. People stopped sending their children to be with her after school, and her clothes were dirty and her face started to look craggy and thin.

‘She’s drinking,’ my mum said. ‘And who’d want to risk it after what happened to ... you know.’

She came round one evening and asked to borrow some money to tide her over. My dad came straight down to the door and gave it to her.

‘I’ve got no one helping me,’ she said.

After she’d gone, my mum was crying. ‘It’s more than money she’s looking for,’ she said.

My dad shrugged, ‘Life’s let her down.’

Her house was a few doors down on the same side as us, she lived in the rooms on the ground floor. She’d looked after us sometimes – usually just me and Busola who got on with Sandra.

‘Your mum works hard for you,’ she said when I kicked her front door wanting to go out. ‘You have to wait until she gets back.’

I don’t know what happened, usually we played out in the backyard with the others and got on with it, but I was bored and upset and I wanted to go and run outside. Busola joined in and there was a fight with the two of us screaming and shouting that she couldn’t keep us locked up. She had a front door that closed on the top latch and we couldn’t reach it, so we started kicking and thumping against the door. Someone upstairs shouted about the noise so she came out into the hall and tried to talk to us.

‘Where you going? Your mum’s not back from work yet.’