Kay peeped out of the top of the container. Nobody in sight. He heaved himself up onto the top, and leapt over to another and then another, moving expertly among these cubes which had been his home since he was two. When he had climbed high enough, he sat down and lit a cigarette. He felt good. He looked out over the lagoon, at the houses on stilts. That was where he had been born, although there was no official record of his existence. Back there, not so long ago, he used to pretend that a bottle and a broom handle were a guitar and a microphone. The night was full of sounds, people talking, women shouting, the hum of engines, sometimes gunfire – all the usual background noise.

He lay down, stretching out, with the sense of having accomplished his mission. He still looked like a child, he was only nineteen. He gazed up, wondering if the crane might crash down on top of him. It always seemed to be leaning dangerously. He remembered that there had been more stars when he was little; it wasn’t that they had disappeared, it was just that Lagos had grown so much bigger – the business district had been extended onto an artificial island and now lit up the sky.

He would move to a new container the next day. It would be safer.