Josphat Mwangi counts the iron sheets at a quarter to seven.

He counts them two at a time, resting his index finger on the edge of each one. Twenty-eight. Then the door, which is only one and lies flat on top, making a roof for the pile.

The sheets are not his. They belong to six families. They were the walls and the roofs of their houses, standing where the beaten earth is now.

He runs the chain through. It is an eight-gauge chain, taken from the yard at Ngara, three and a half metres long. He turns it twice around the pile, under and over, and pulls it tight.

He fits the shackle of the padlock through the two links. The padlock is a fifty-millimetre one, its lettering worn away.

He presses.

The click carries as far as the road. There is nothing left in the place that makes any noise.

Josphat tests the chain by pulling it towards himself. The chain holds. He tests the door on top, pushing it with his palm. The door slides two fingers' width and stops.

Then he puts the key round his neck, inside his shirt, and goes to sit on the block of concrete that a week ago was the front step of somebody's house.

The place is called Kwa Njoroge. More than a thousand people lived here. The houses came down all together, and the ones who were inside them say the notice did not arrive in time.

At eight they open the desk. The desk is a folding table with two chairs, set where the beaten earth ends and the tarmac begins.

The queue forms by itself. First the women with children, then the others.

The procedure is this. You say your name. The assistant looks for the name on the list. The court officer counts the notes, three thousand shillings, three notes of a thousand, and puts them in the open palm. The assistant makes a mark. Next.

Three thousand shillings is a week's shopping for a family of four. The houses were twenty years old.

The sheets in the stack all have a mark. Wachira's have two holes close together at the top, for the aerial wire. Mama Wanjiru's are painted green on one side only, the side that faced out. There is one with the white trace of the house number, forty-one, still legible.

A sound sheet makes a wall again. Seven sheets make a room: four standing, two on top, one to close it. By weight, those same seven sheets are fifty kilos.

At half past ten the scrap truck arrives.

The dealer gets down. He does not speak straight away. First he measures the pile with his stride, one stride along the short side, three strides along the long side. Then he touches the iron with the back of his hand, in three places, where it is hot and where it is rotten.

Then he makes his first offer.

Josphat says no and goes on sitting.

The dealer goes back to the truck, opens the door, takes the biro from the dashboard, comes back. He makes his second offer.

Josphat says no and laughs, and while he laughs he looks at the queue, because from the queue to the stack it is ninety metres and from ninety metres you see everything.

At eleven the first drops begin to fall, the big ones, the ones you hear one by one on the iron.

The dealer lifts his eyes to the sky and looks at Josphat, and says nothing, and the saying nothing is the thing that makes a head work faster.

Josphat has three children. The youngest is two years old and has been eating twice a day since April.

The dealer raises a third time. He says the figure and writes it on his palm with the biro, and turns the palm towards Josphat.

Josphat looks at the palm. Then he looks at the stack.

He puts his hand on the padlock. The steel is hot. He holds it.

He holds it for as long as it takes to count the sheets a second time, which is the time the dealer takes to go back to the door of the truck and come back again.

He does not open it.

Then he pulls the cord out from under his collar. The cord is green nylon, the fishing kind, and the key is threaded on it. Josphat passes it over his head. He holds it in his hand a moment, with the key turning on itself.

Ten paces away is Mama Wanjiru, sitting on her bundle, in the shade of the door propped against the stack. She has been there since seven. She has been in that place since before there was a road, and that is her own telling of it.

Josphat takes four steps. He crouches down. He puts the cord with the key into her open hand and closes her fingers over it, one by one.

He says one sentence to her: now it is not me who has it.

Mama Wanjiru closes her fist.

The dealer stays in the middle of the road with the figure written on his palm.

The truck waits a quarter of an hour. The engine stays running.

At ten past twelve the dealer climbs in, shuts the door, turns in three moves on the beaten earth and takes the road towards the Thika.

At twenty past twelve the first ones come back from the queue. They come back with a closed palm and their name on the list. They pass in front of the stack.

They pass in front of the stack and some stop and some do not.

Wachira stops. He counts his sheets, there are five, he runs his hand over them and leaves them where they are. Wachira's brother does not stop. He goes straight towards the road, with the envelope in his hand, and does not look.

Of the six families, three have come past.

At two the sun beats on the iron and the iron burns.

Mama Wanjiru has not opened her fist.

When Josphat passes close to her on his way to fetch the water, she calls him. She asks him one thing only, and she asks it sitting down, without lifting her head.

She asks him: and when they all come back, who opens.