‘You’re in trouble,’ Manus said, ‘Daddy’s looking for you. Don’t say you’ve seen me.’ And off he went, round the bend, wherever he was going.
I was crouched down by the bonnet of a car up the top of the street, watching people coming and going, trying to get my nerve back to go home. Everyone had been sent out to look for me, and at first I thought it was because our dad was home from Liverpool and I was late coming back.
Busola found me in the playground and said, ‘I haven’t seen you. Dad wants you home.’ I didn’t believe her, because what was she still doing out? But she came up to me again on the swings, ‘You better go.’
‘I’m waiting for you,’ I said. ‘Why ain’t you going?’
‘He ain’t looking for me,’ she said, and laughed and ran off.
I did a few more kicks to get my swing up so it joggled on the chain, so I could look down at the ground, and up at the sky. She was on the roundabout. She looked round and round, and tilted her head. She looked puzzled.
‘You’re adopted, you are!’ she shouted when she saw me looking. She always said that.
‘No,’ I said, and gripped the chain tight to fling it back, ‘you are!’
I wasn’t going home because of her. Why should I listen to her? What did she know? Why was she so horrible to me? I kept my arms back behind me on the chain and swooped down. I kicked my legs up and swung in the air. It was getting late. As I came down she was showing me getting my throat cut with the side of her hand. And then she ignored me, going round and round, with her blank face on.
So I left her there.
On the way I saw Connor playing out with his mates. Everyone was out late. They were kicking a football up at the chain-link fence over the sloping roofs of the sheds by the flats.
‘What’ve you done? Everyone’s looking for ya!’ He wasn’t looking at me and went on keeping the ball up off the ground every time it fell back off the roof which was the game he was good at so it was always his turn.
‘Nothing!’ I said, trying to choke back all the feelings with my fists clenched, but I could feel myself crying.
‘Then keep your mouth shut,’ he said, and went on counting, ‘fifty-six ...fifty-seven ...fifty-eight ...’
I got as far as the lamp post and saw some people in suits coming out the house. They turned down the street towards the main road and the door slammed shut after them. I lost my nerve and ran back and ducked down behind the bonnet of the car to get it back.
I couldn’t think what I’d done wrong. That’s when Manus looked over the top of the bonnet at me.
‘You’re ridiculous, and you’re dirty,’ he said. ‘Look at you!’
I had some of the grease and the dirt off the tyre on my hands where I’d been leaning to peer over. I didn’t know what to do so I wiped my hands on my shirt, and used the back of my hand to wipe the tears off my face, and I wiped that on my shirt too.
Manus sighed, like he was gonna have to be clearing up after me again and he didn’t want to. So he told me to stand up, wipe off the snot and go home because I was in trouble, and off he went.
I could see what he was thinking. When I started school I had to put my hand up to go to the toilet. The teacher said I could go but I didn’t know where it was and I couldn’t get out the gate to go home because it was locked, so I went round behind the outside stairs to the sheds where there was a puddle of rain and tried to wash the poo off as it was coming down the backs of my legs into my socks. The bell rang and the juniors came out to the playground and saw me crouching in the puddle. I told them to go away but they got Manus because they knew he was my brother. He looked at me and didn’t say anything, he just yanked me up out the water by the arm and told the playground lady he was taking me home to clean up. I followed him all the way with my socks squelching and my pants sticky.
‘Don’t you ever learn?’ he said, and I knew it was my fault he was missing school.
This time I didn’t know what I’d done. Why would my dad be angry with me just because I wasn’t in when he got back from Liverpool? I leaned my back against the car and dug in the cracks between the paving stones with a pebble. Some ants came out and scurried off. I knew my dad wouldn’t just get angry at me for something I hadn’t done. It wasn’t like that, there was always a reason. It was just making it worse not going home, and everyone out looking for me, and wanting to blame me for playing out late.
I got up and felt calm. I could hear the brakes of lorries slowing on the main road before they turned the corner. There was the rattle of shutters closing down on the shops. It was all right, I hadn’t done anything. The light was going. I got to the front door and knocked.
My mum opened it. She frowned and shook her head at me. ‘You’re more trouble than you’re worth!’ she said.
‘No I’m not.’ I only muttered under my breath, but I wasn’t gonna be nice to her, because whatever it was she should have been looking after me.
‘Go on, go up!’
I gave her a look. I was angry, but mostly I was going to cry.
She bit her lip. ‘Ah, no,’ she said, ‘Don’t. Go on, your daddy’s waiting.’
‘Where have you been?’ He was lying propped up on his arm on one of the empty beds in the front room. He put his glasses on and I had the feeling he could see where I’d been hiding. All the beds had been made, but no one else was home.
‘Playing out,’ I said.
‘At what time do you call this?’ He looked at his watch and looked back at me. My mum came in and stood by the window. It was her fault, she was the one who should have been watching me. I looked across at her and burst into tears, the ones that flood you and can’t stop, and you struggle to get your breath back.
My mum threw her hands up and shook her head.
‘Come and sit down,’ my dad said, more softly than I could make sense of.
I sat on the edge of the bed, trying to stop sobbing. I was crying because I was confused. Because my dad was after the truth and I didn’t know what it was, my mum wasn’t telling me. And I was crying because I wasn’t in the wrong, and because I was stubborn. And because it was late.
‘This is serious,’ he said. And, after a pause, ‘What happened this morning?’ I looked at him, and up at my mum. ‘What did you tell those people?’
I told them there were eighteen of us living in the house.
They knocked and wanted to come in, but my mum leaned out and said she was busy. I was sitting behind her at the bottom of the stairs as she talked on the doorstep with one leg crossed behind the other, keeping the door with her shoulder.
‘How many people are living in the house?’ asked the woman who looked and spoke like a teacher. The man was wearing a suit and was asking for people’s names for the register.
I counted up the people on my fingers – us in the front room and my mum and dad in the bedroom on that middle floor, six. The three Carthys at the top, and Mr Babalola and Florence up there in the back room, that’s nine ... eleven. Nana who was staying with us in the front room, twelve, and Mr and Mrs Singh and Marie in the front room on the ground floor, fifteen ... then the two Nigerian students sharing the room towards the backyard with Mr Ajani.
‘Eighteen!’ I shouted, and put my hand up.
‘I was going to say we’d some guests staying from Nigeria,’ my mum was saying, ‘short-term, like, and family had come over from Ireland until they found a place, but he didn’t let me get a word out. I said, Ah, he’s only a child, but you should have seen them scribbling. I didn’t know where to put my face.’
My dad was shaking his head as she spoke. And then she laughed and they both looked at me.
‘He’ll be the death of me!’ she said. ‘So I told them to come back when you were in.’
They were looking at me, and I still didn’t know the answer. I counted up again in my head because sometimes I had the feeling there was one of us missing – it still came out wrong. Eighteen? But I knew that was the wrong answer, so I kept my mouth shut.
‘Do you know how serious this is?’ my dad said. I could feel it was but I couldn’t work it out, so I frowned. ‘Overcrowding? I could go to prison.’
I felt I was falling. Those people could put my dad in prison and I’d been showing off that I could count.
They moved out to the kitchen to let me get ready for bed. I heard them talking about the Carthys moving out as I put on my pyjamas, and stop when I went in to wash and brush my teeth in the sink. My mum came to fold me in to the sheets and give me a kiss on the cheek, and tell me not to worry.
But I wasn’t sleeping. I was lying there on my own, listening. I could hear doors opening and closing, the sound of footsteps on the stairs as people came and went, the rattling of pots in the downstairs kitchen, running water, voices. There was the traffic on the main road, cars going past in the street, my dad being angry at the council and my mum whispering. Outside, someone went whistling by on the pavement, clicking their heels. He could have gone to prison. I turned over in the warm sheets, trying to stay awake to hear what happened when the others came in, and wondering where Nana was because she was staying to be close to everyone. Instead, what I heard as I fell asleep was my dad saying those people were from the council, Big Ben was just there and they wanted the land, they wanted to clear us out, they wanted to knock the house down and get rid of us.