Ma don’t come back right through the rest of spring and into the long hot summer. I don’t mind coz I’m still mad at her, but Gramps and Mags is sad.

Gramps is sad coz Rosie used to be his little girl before Mags and me. Mags is sad coz she thinks it’s her fault Ma ain’t coming home. I know it’s my fault but I keep telling myself I don’t care. Summer is so busy with picking and packing and trucks all coming and going that none of us really has time to do much worrying.

Foreman stomps about bossin’ and orderin’ and we’re all working from sun-up to sun-down just to get the trucks loaded and off on time. We crash asleep each night and stumble back to the packing shed the next morning, wiping the sleep from our eyes still.

Gramps wakes us and feeds us eggs as well as oatcakes each morning to keep us strong, and Foreman feeds us cans of fish and potato fries at lunch, and gives us sweet drinks to be going on with so we’re eating like kings and working like dogs.

Mornings, me and Mags put the packing crates together from stacks of pre-cut bits of wood. Just two ends stamped with a green pear and two orange apricots and some words, and a pile of longer bits that we tack between the ends: two each side, three across the bottom. We have small hammers and real sharp long staples. We sit on the floor and work on them between our knees, spitting the staples from our lips as we need them and tacking them together in a tappety-tap dance.

Sometimes the older packing women sing. They sing songs of lost loves and cities far far away. I don’t really understand them, but Mags sometimes belts out the middle bits that repeat all the time, her voice slow and achey like a long hot summer. I tap along with my little hammer. Then we pass the crates to Blossompink, who’s only five, to carry to the stack next to the packing tables. She wipes the sweat from her forehead and carries them two at a time with her tongue all sticking out sideways. She’s real pleased she’s got an important job. Afternoons, we run about restocking cardboard trays and tissue paper for the packers and making sure the packed trays all get outside ready for the trucks. The trucks rock up with big canvas walls stamped with a giant picture same as the crate ends. The green pear and the apricots.

Late afternoon, our feet are dragging so much we’re snagging our toenails. Still, it’s a super-cherry summer with all of us working alongside each other and chatting in the packing house like a big family, and all the trucks are loaded and drivers go off happy.

The bees are in the trees in the morning and the packing house in the afternoon. Which is good coz I get to see AJ, but bad coz Pomz is always sticking out her foot to trip me whenever I pass her.

I soon figure out she’s not watching her packing box when she’s watching for my foot, so what I do is, I reach over and drag her pile of tissue paper for wrapping the fruit right to the edge of the packing table. I wait until Foreman is nearby and purposely walk past her and make a big show of tripping over her foot.

She laughs as she spins back to the packing table and that’s when all the pretty purple sheets of tissue paper catch her elbow and fly across the packing room. Floating and wafting on the air from the fans in a glorious show, like giant blossom petals in the wind. Pomz’s silly snigger turns to an open mouth and she turns to face Foreman.

‘Pick those up!’ he says to her, his eyes thin cracks, saying she’s too careless.

‘Yes, Boz,’ she says.

Foreman strides off.

‘Yes, Boz,’ I whisper at her and smile.

The work lets up as the summer goes on, and Foreman puts a pig on a roasting spit to celebrate. I dunno what’s higher than a king, but holding a hunk of fine oat bun with a pile of white baked meat, soft and falling apart in my mouth, juice running down my chin, I’m eating like that. Higher than a king.

Gradually we drift off from watching the coals of the roasting pit back towards our sheds, nice and early for a change. Mags is already gone home and I’m walking with AJ who is carrying a bone and gnawing the meat off like a dog.

‘Good puppy!’ I say to him to make him grin his excellent grin.

There is a car in the driveway, a flash silver car, with red dirt up its sides from our dusty road. It’s revving and a guy leans out looking for someone. We laugh at him hanging out of his car like a big old ape, and he lets the car go skidding forwards a bit, kicking up dust and stones that ping off the shed behind us.

We run away and laugh again at how stupid he is.

There’s a bang in our hut ahead of me, and Ma yells, ‘Stay down there, you gimp!’ I bust in past the sacking door and Mags is on the floor with a fat lip, wiping the blood off it. Ma is standing there holding Gramps’s tin box of money.