Ivy meets me back in the kitchen with an even bigger bundle of clothes and we stuff them all into the front of one of the big white machines. Ma is already stretched out on the tiny bed snoring softly.

‘Hope we’re not keeping you up,’ Ivy calls to her, but Ma don’t stir. Ivy puts smelly blue liquid into the machine and shuts it and flicks a few buttons on the front. She looks at me watching her. ‘It’s a washing machine. It washes clothes. Don’t you know nuthin’, girl?’

‘I can practically run a whole fruit farm,’ I say.

‘Fat lotta good that’ll do you here,’ Ivy points out, then she brushes her teeth, and sits on the loo. ‘Get ready for bed, girl!’ she tells me as she wipes her bits and flushes, then she flicks out the light in the kitchen and goes through the door at the back of the room. She has a bed in there and a chest of drawers. The door shuts with a click and I’m alone. Now I can go back to the farm.

I open the back door and slide out into the cool night garden and go around to the side gate, but it’s locked up tight. The number buttons glow, promising me they’ll let me out if I can guess the right ones. I poke four of them in the shape I think I remember Ma doing this morning but nothing happens. I try again and try again, each number beeping out into the dark, trying to wake up all the Pasquales and Ma and Ivy and get me caught.

I kick off my stupid shoes and peel off my blood-toe-sticking socks and climb the brick wall instead. Digging my sore toes into the cracks between the bricks, and hanging onto a tiny tree until I’m on my stomach on top of the wall, trying to haul the rest of me up.

‘Where are you going?’ Esmeralda whispers.

‘Home,’ I whisper back, and sit up on the wall. She has a window open and she’s leaning out, and her eyes are round, reflecting the lights from the street.

‘You can’t go out there alone!’ she whispers.

‘Cha,’ I say. ‘I ain’t afraid of the dark.’

‘Nor am I. It’s the bad people in the dark that will grab you and hurt you and do terrible things to you,’ she whispers.

‘What people?’ I ask. ‘The raggy people? They’re just hungry.’

‘There’s worse than that out there,’ she warns. ‘And children can’t go anywhere alone, don’t you know anything?’

‘I go places alone on the farm all the time,’ I say. ‘Anyway, it’s so dark and I’m quiet, they won’t see me at all.’

‘You could run all through the night and when the sun comes up, you’ll still be in the city and then the bad people will grab you.’

I swing my legs about to jump off the wall anyway. Far away in the night there’s a bang and some shouting.

‘That’s the guards chasing off the burglars,’ Esmeralda whispers and she pulls the window in towards her like she’s worried burglars will be coming in through it any minute. ‘They come every night, almost. Come to take stuff to sell. They’ll take you too if they can. Or if you just stand too close to the window, they might shoot you dead.’

‘Cha!’ I say, and lean forwards to check the jump to the street.

Esmeralda gasps, and then sobs behind me. ‘Please! Don’t!’ she says, like it’s her that’s gonna face the burglars and bad people.

I turn back and study the side of her face lit from the streetlight. ‘What do you care? You’s just all shouty and rude at me.’

‘I’m not!’ she says.

‘You’s all this,’ I put my hands on my hips and dip my head from side to side and whisper, ‘wa, wa, wa. And this!’ I show her my rude finger.

‘What’s that even mean?’ she asks.

I snort. Then I laugh. I laugh till tears run down my cheeks and I wipe them away.

Esmeralda laughs too.

‘It’s rude,’ I say. ‘It’s the rudest thing you can ever do!’

‘Really?’ she says. ‘The rudest?’

I laugh again. ‘Is that why you told your ma I was nice? Coz you didn’t know how rude I was?’

Esmeralda shrugs. ‘I was bored. I thought you might be fun for a while,’ she says like she thinks maybe people are toys.

‘You’s weird. I gotta get back to the farm. Gramps and Mags miss me, and if any bees get hurt Foreman’s gonna call me to replace them for sure.’

‘You were a bee?’ she asks. ‘We studied the bees at school and we took a bus trip out to see the bees working.’ ‘I’m almost a bee. I’m gonna bee soon. Real soon,’ I say. ‘That’s why I gotta get back. They need me. I’m gonna be a bee soon, and one day I’ll be a Foreman.’

Esmeralda nods like she finally understands. ‘You can’t get back by just climbing over a wall and running through the city,’ she says. ‘You have to know the way. I’ll let you back into the house.’

Last place I wanna go is back in the house. But I think maybe Esmeralda has a plan and maybe she knows a reason why I can’t get home just by running.

She closes the window and a little while later a light spills out from the kitchen window. I jump down off the wall and go around to the back door. The grass is soft and cool on my feet.