I’d better tell you why we are writing this story. Kai’s dad, Gordon, who writes things in the newspapers, writes books with his name on the covers and is quite famous, told us to write down everything that happened, and then tell it like a story. So here goes my bit.

I’ll start by explaining who we are.

First there’s Kai. He’s the cleverest of us Freezies. Kai’s got a whole collection of rap on his phone and computer – people like Stormzy and Westrnmusic. He writes rap too, and he’s good at school. He came first in science, and he even has a chemistry set. He says he’s learning Spanish from a teach-yourself book because his folks are planning to buy a house in Spain for vacations.

His dad is Jamaican, and his mum, Alexandra, is Polish. She doesn’t like his rap poems. She’s an actress in real plays at the Wilde Theatre in Salton. Kai acts too. They were both in Androcles and the Lion. Kai didn’t want to be in it, but she dragged him along.

Kai played Androcles, who helped a lion who had a thorn stuck in its foot, but it was a comedy, so the lion kept making jokes about it. And there were two Androcles. The other one was a grown-up and was kinda making a joke out of being gay, always clucking his tongue and saying “ooooo” and fluttering his eyes. Miss Honey, our drama teacher at school, came to see the play and said it was a stereotype and not funny at all, but then Kai said the audience laughed every time.

But I shouldn’t just be going on and on. I need to stick to the story.

Then there’s Sully, who is – I am sorry but there are no other words – skinny as a broomstick, and she never tidies her thick black hair. Suleikha says her dad won’t let her cut it. He’s Indian, and his religion says girls have to grow their hair and can only chop it off when their husband dies. And she’s quite rude. She mutters sarcastic things under her breath when people are speaking. Her dad taught her to play Indian drums, but she prefers to play the mouth organ, and then her mum got some random fellow to teach her the flute, so that’s what she does.

Her dad, Mr Sirish Rao, works in the post office, and they live in a cottage just beyond our house. It’s a sort of modern cottage. Her dad’s dad, Sul says, fought in the Second World War and then came here to Britain after. Her dad’s crazy about cricket and football, and their front room is full of signed pictures of Indian cricketers. Her mum is always working on the computer. I think she reports for a newspaper or something in India, even though she works in the supermarket.

And finally there’s me, Leo. Now I can tell you about this morning, the day after Kai told me and Sully about the bus on the Mead. My mum is what my dad calls a high-flying barrister. Every morning she’s off to London by the train from Bimbury to do cases at the courts. So she gets up at six – even though it makes her as bad-tempered as a batted bee – and after bumbling about and waking up Dad and trashing him for never doing any housework, she goes jogging around the Mead. Mum thinks if she jogs every morning, the fat will fall off in blobs and she’ll miraculously be thin.

So today, after Mum got back from her jog, panting and puffing, followed by our dog, Jumper, she said to no one in particular but expecting me and Dad and Gabriella, my sister, who was coming downstairs rubbing her eyes, to hear, “There’s a battered old truck thing with a filthy trailer on the Mead.”

“Have some coffee,” my dad said, putting Jumper’s food in his dish. “You’re beginning to see things. There are no roads on the Mead.”

He was struggling to brush the knots in Gabriella’s hair, which really hurts her. Mum won’t allow anyone to call her Gabby, though that’s what everyone outside the house and in her preschool calls her. But Dad, he’s like indifferent to children’s pain. Mum says to get her hair cut and be done with it. But Dad and Gabby like her hair long.

That morning, Gabriella’s nanny, Katrina, pulled up on her bike. She takes Gabriella to and from school and takes care of her after school till Dad gets home. I sometimes walk to school with them, as I did that morning.

When we set off, Katrina, who speaks with an accent, said, “Leonard, there iss lotto poliss on the Meat and they have harest some man.” She can’t say mead, but I get it all. I love the way she speaks.

As we walked past, with Katrina pushing her bike, we spotted two police cars parked on the road off the Mead. “Kai told us about that guy,” I said.

Katrina said she didn’t want to know because she’s not nosey. Though actually she is and knows all sorts of things about people in the village, which she reports to Mum.

I went over to the trailer and peered in the window. It was neat inside with a bed and kitchen and a door to what must have been the toilet. And yes, there was a sort of small piano and a violin along with some other musical instruments on top of the piano. They took up a lot of the space.

I didn’t say anything to my parents, but the next morning when my mum came back from her jog with Jumper, she said that some people from the other side of the Mead were taking pictures of the man in the trailer because they didn’t like him being there. She said he was standing in his trailer door staring at them.

“What did you do?” Dad asked.

“I waved to him. He doesn’t look like a traveller, and he’s all alone.”

“I think they should leave him alone,” said Dad.

As Mum left to change out of her tracksuit and get a towel, the doorbell rang. At the door stood a man holding a plastic bucket.

Jumper started barking.

“Quiet, Jumper!” Dad called out.

“I am Christaki, from the trailer,” the man said to my dad.

He had white streaks in his long hair that fell over his forehead and over his eyes. He kept brushing it back.

“I apologise for following your daughter back from her morning run, but I am in desperate need of some water. If I could take some from your garden tap I’d be …”

“Oh sure,” Dad said. He was grinning, and I knew it was because he thought it was funny that the man called Mum his daughter. “Let me show you.”

“Don’t make her late for school,” Mum shouted from the bathroom. She had the bath running, so she hadn’t heard anyone coming in. She rushed into the kitchen, wearing only her tracksuit top and undies. She saw the man, blushed and rushed back to the bathroom.

Excerpted with permission from The Freezies, Farrukh Dhondy, illustrated by Sheena Deviah, Duckbill.