She’s Not There
She’s Not There
Tamsin Grey
'A wonderful, artfully addictive novel' IAN MCEWANWhen Jonah and Raff wake up on Monday, their mother Lucy isn’t there.Although he’s only nine, Jonah knows enough about the world to keep her absence a secret. If anyone found out she’d left them alone, who knows what could happen to him and his little brother?As the days go on, he puzzles over the clues left behind: who sent Lucy flowers? Why is her phone in a plant pot? Why are all her shoes still there? And who in their neighbourhood might know more about Lucy than he does?
Copyright (#ulink_1c8afd00-074a-5093-8caa-45f241ccb755)
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, whilst at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.
The Borough Press
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Tamsin Grey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © Tamsin Grey 2018
Excerpt from James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
reprinted by permission of Penguin Books. © Roald Dahl 1961
Excerpts from The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò by Edward Lear
Cover design by Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Cover photographs © Elisabeth Ansley / Trevillion Images (http://www.trevillion.com/) (boys), Shutterstock.com (https://www.shutterstock.com/) (city)
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Source ISBN: 9780008245634
Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008245627
Version: 2018-11-02
Praise for She’s Not There (#ulink_20c1d3a1-ccd0-5df3-93f3-354bb8172a7a)
‘Tamsin Grey is wise about the street, and wise about the heart, especially the hearts of children. Her multi-racial London pulses with Dickensian energy and delight. She has that rare gift of combining in her prose the lyrical with the precise. She’s Not There is a wonderful, artfully addictive novel’
IAN MCEWAN
‘Brilliant and heartbreaking (and funny)’
KIT de WAAL
‘[An] amazing debut, packed with South London atmosphere . . . it has To Kill a Mockingbird written all over it . . . brilliant’
DAILY MAIL
‘Mesmerisingly good’
LISA JEWELL
‘Tamsin Grey’s young narrator inhabits a south London that is diverse, inclusive and very real. She’s Not There is a beautiful, sad, strong story, enticingly told – and an extremely assured debut’
STELLA DUFFY
‘There’s an almost unbearable tenderness to Tamsin Grey’s sad, sweet debut’
PSYCHOLOGIES
‘A gripping read, the voices of the children are pitch perfect and will stay with you long after the last page’
ROSIE BOYCOTT
Dedication (#ulink_ed8b1516-d053-513d-9c7e-0f120e4b659b)
In memory of the artist
Michael Kidner RA
1917 – 2009
Contents
Cover (#u38ec41b6-78a0-5980-b247-259ab0adc572)
Title Page (#u7146416a-3e65-51d2-aef7-7221a6d35c9f)
Copyright (#u2784f57e-fa6f-589f-9634-df941cfbe275)
Praise for She’s Not There (#u1dead61c-f04f-54fd-b20f-d4014e6f23c0)
Dedication (#u7418904a-16fc-5e23-951d-2d66b18bf13f)
July 2018 (#u5875f319-9ab7-5fa2-9851-f51a7298a0f4)
Chapter 1 (#ue5afecb3-8224-5e0d-9ec0-97b37ba900b3)
Chapter 2 (#uad878bde-26e1-5b39-9586-92bfa2ac3a11)
Chapter 3 (#u9c522cf9-2215-5aef-953d-576a289b0388)
July 2013: Monday (#uf6e5bd05-d5a8-5ef1-ac7d-cfdad6fbf102)
Chapter 4 (#ub79e340b-904a-567b-8b5b-38bf55645575)
Chapter 5 (#u2006b260-700d-5b19-93ca-8d3afe88d685)
Chapter 6 (#ubfc9e24b-d236-5954-9b81-d870cb4db643)
Chapter 7 (#ua1e98c80-d4cb-51d9-a86a-c3d4c3d92be0)
Chapter 8 (#u7b45c9c6-de38-52c1-abe7-5ac8ad901746)
Chapter 9 (#u42062e37-2060-5473-8f57-af84ef5edf18)
Chapter 10 (#u26cc8eb8-0a5a-5bf6-a59f-471b77d3b40a)
Chapter 11 (#u492351f9-795f-5285-ab62-3bc3fc39b7eb)
Chapter 12 (#uf1c9984c-77d0-515f-8d71-868dda871b29)
Chapter 13 (#u71fbe720-b106-5771-a131-2df9693db649)
Chapter 14 (#udc247c99-8867-50ed-8d36-221142d05211)
Chapter 15 (#u0084fb16-c65d-5800-96a4-44e1965fcc82)
Chapter 16 (#uebee3906-299e-582e-82c9-623c3566bc1c)
Chapter 17 (#u0f9bcc94-8c30-5edf-8b6e-f0c05ebbb20e)
Chapter 18 (#u9609906d-d955-5d93-a5e6-e6be23d9f970)
Chapter 19 (#u51fbb1c0-00b1-5f3d-8d4a-b0c1c8d9dec9)
Chapter 20 (#udd9cb3fc-061f-54bf-a681-016b6dcf5a0a)
Tuesday (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Wednesday (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 47 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 48 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 49 (#litres_trial_promo)
Thursday (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 50 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 51 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 52 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 53 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 54 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 55 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 56 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 57 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 58 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 59 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 60 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 61 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 62 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 63 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 64 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 65 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 66 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 67 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 68 (#litres_trial_promo)
Friday (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 69 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 70 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 71 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 72 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 73 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 74 (#litres_trial_promo)
Saturday (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 75 (#litres_trial_promo)
July 2018 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 76 (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
(#ulink_a91e75d7-6241-5724-840a-b37955f7e1b4)
1 (#ulink_c2fb723a-57a2-5be3-8b40-094712e11755)
The invitation from Dora Martin caused that shift in Jonah’s belly, like a creature waking up in its dark pit. ‘Do we have to go?’ he murmured, knowing that they did. The trek into London to see the Martins had become a July tradition. He pushed away his cereal bowl, last year’s event flooding his head: the welcoming hugs and exclamations; the long, tense argument about politics; and then the vigil in the back garden, with the scarecrow and the wind chimes and the rabbits.
When the day arrived – a baking hot Friday – it turned out everyone was going to Frank’s for a swim after school. Jonah waited until after band practice to tell his friend he couldn’t make it.
‘That’s mad.’ Frowning, Frank nosed his guitar into its sleeve. It was cool and mellow in the practice room, the blinds drawn down against the sun. Because of his bad hand, Jonah used a harness to help him hold his trumpet. Frank watched him take it off. ‘Lola’s coming!’
His friend’s sly smile made Jonah blush. He turned away and watched Mr Melvin cross the room, open the door and step into the rectangle of blazing light.
‘Who even are the Martins?’ asked Frank.
‘We knew them when we lived in London. Dora and my mum were, like, best friends.’ The blinds flapped in a sudden gust, and Jonah got a flash of the sheets on the Martins’ washing line billowing, the crescendo of wind chimes, and Dora, sprawled in her deckchair, her feet in a bucket of water.
‘Come on, guys.’ The other band members had disappeared and Mr Melvin was waiting to lock the door. Jonah settled his trumpet into its case.
‘Get out of it. Say you’re ill.’ Frank zipped up his guitar, frowning again.
‘I just can’t, really.’ Jonah made a wry face, but now his friend wouldn’t look at him. ‘It’s – a kind of anniversary. They cook roast chicken.’
‘Roast chicken? That’s mad. It’s like 30 degrees centigrade.’ Frank spun away, towards the door.
‘It was our favourite. Well, more my brother’s,’ he explained, but to himself, because Frank was ducking under Mr Melvin’s arm. ‘Roast chicken and roast potatoes.’ He got a sudden flash of Raff, aged six, wolfing down a leg.
2 (#ulink_27057ff0-d56d-53f4-8738-412ac54bd55d)
It had been agreed that Jonah could go to the Martins straight from school, rather than traipsing all the way home to go with the others in the car. The thought of the journey cheered him up. He hadn’t travelled into London alone before. On the train, he put his backpack and his trumpet case in the luggage rack, shrugged off his blazer and sprawled across two seats, luxuriating in his independence. They’d been playing the ‘Summertime’/ ‘Motherless Child’ medley in band practice, and the interweaving tunes played on in his head as he gazed through the fast-moving glass at the slow-drifting clouds. Cumulus humilis. He had been obsessed with clouds that summer, had learnt all their names. He saw the white sheets rising again, Dora’s huge sunglasses, her yellow dress, the straggly hair in her armpits.
Dora Martin. Quite a famous artist these days. She had written the invitation, in her elegant, spiky slant, on a postcard featuring one of her paintings: ‘It’s that time again, and I’m so hoping you’ll join us.’ He noticed that the creature – a kind of trapped emotional density – was awake again, and he shifted himself sideways, resting his head on his bent arm. It would be nice to see Emerald, who’d been in his class and would have updates on Harold and all the other Haredale kids. Sometimes I feel like I’m almost gone. He closed his eyes, letting the sleepy, mournful tune weave with the rhythm of the train.
He dreamed he was high above London, among the cool, silent clouds, looking down at the glittering sprawl. You were our home. He felt a leap of hope and dropped closer, looking for a sign of welcome, but the cranes rose and tilted, like slingsmen, the river shone like a ribbon of foil and, to the west, an acrid plume of grief rose from a blackened finger. He dove down like Superman, circling his old familiars: the Cheese Grater, the Shard, the Knuckleduster. Down further, between the chimney pots, into the grime of the centuries, and then southwards, along arteries and veins. The high street now, their high street: Chicken Cottage, Hollywood Nails, We Buy Gold. Left up Wanless Road, low under the bridge, the car repair yard, that smell from the warehouse. Dropping to the ground, he was his nine-year-old self now: bare feet on the warm pavement, fingers dragging along the fence. Opposite, the four shops, asleep, their metal shutters pulled down. And on the corner, there it was, their house, so familiar, but long forgotten. There was someone looking out of the sitting-room window, someone waiting for him. Mayo?
The train entered an urban canyon, sound waves bouncing off concrete and glass. He sat up straight, wiping the drool from his chin, and leant his forehead against the window. The tall buildings had fallen away, and the clouds were towering. Cumulonimbus. He suddenly remembered the clouds poster, Blu-tacked to his and Raff’s bedroom wall, and the dream flooded him: the cool vapour, the eerie silence, the dizzying drop down; and their old house, right there, the scruffiness of it, every tiny detail. He hadn’t seen it since they’d left; they had never gone that way in the car: but now, he realised, he could go and have a look at it, on his way from the bus stop to the Martins’ house. A very short detour, to travel back five years. The shift again; the creature, wordless and sightless, like a blind baby seal, as his brother Raff’s voice came to him, clear as a bell, down the years. ‘We need a time machine.’ The two of them, in that messy kitchen, trying to work out what to do. Hands on his belly, he noticed his own face in the glass, his two eyes merged together. Then the train slid onto the bridge, and the breath caught in his throat. The million-year-old river, brown and glittering, full of boats, and the towers like giant androids, gazing glassily towards the future.
3 (#ulink_bb43bd8c-5ce6-56fa-b4f2-c535cf1ec247)
The car repair yard was silent, its gates padlocked, but there was that same oniony whiff from the warehouse. Same weather, of course, and the creature was moving again. Funny how, when it was asleep – and it was mostly asleep these days – he could forget it was there; that it had ever existed. He stopped at the bend in Wanless Road, setting his trumpet case down and wiping his palms on his trousers. Their house was still hidden from view, but he could see, across the road, the four shops. The Green Shop, the Betting Shop, the Knocking Shop, and London Kebabs. London Kebabs and the Betting Shop had their blinds down, and the Green Shop was all boarded up, but the Knocking Shop, on the face of it a hairdresser’s, looked open.
‘Why is it called the Knocking Shop, Mayo?’
‘Because of all Leonie’s visitors.’
‘But they don’t knock, they ring the buzzer, Mayo, so it should be the Buzzing Shop, shouldn’t it?’
She had laughed and kissed him, and he had beamed with pride. He had loved making her laugh. Standing there, looking at Leonie’s shop, he realised that the memory had brought the same grin to his fourteen-year-old face. He used to talk to her in his head when he wasn’t with her, he remembered; tell her jokes and see her laughing face. He picked up the case and walked on.
After five years, it was a huge amount to take in at once. First, there was a new building where the Broken House had been. Scaffolding still, and no windows, just the empty squares for them to go in. Running in front of it, a new fence, higher and more solid than the old one, with proper ‘Keep Out’ signs. A gap, and then the corner house, half on Wanless Road, half on Southway Street, the end of the Southway Street terrace; a strange, wedge-shaped house, which had once been a shop, and had been through many conversions. Their house.
Apart from it wasn’t their house. He stared, his eyes blurring. The same shape, and same size, but it had been all tidied and prettied, with pale blue walls and window boxes full of lavender.
Stupid idiot … He wiped his eyes on his sleeve. The house had sold very quickly, while he was still in hospital. It had been someone else’s house for five years. He walked round into Southway Street and looked at the shiny new front door, wanting to kneel and peer through the letter box. He turned away instead and looked up Wanless Road, towards the flats where his friend Harold had lived, and where he and Raff had had the run-in with the bigger boys. Then he looked back the way he had come. The passionflowers had survived, their gaudy, sulky faces tumbling over the new fence.
‘They look like Bad Granny.’ Raff’s six-year-old voice. He stepped forward and examined one in detail. Passiflora, a South American vine, named after the passion of Jesus Christ. He touched the crown of thorns, very lightly.
‘Jonah?’ A real voice, strident, familiar and – straightaway in his head, Raff again: ‘Let’s run!’ He gathered himself and turned. Her head was sticking out of the doorway. He gave a little wave, and she trailed out onto the pavement like a dilapidated peacock.
‘Hello, Leonie!’
‘Jonah! I knew it was you! Pat, look who’s here!’ She leant back into her shop, then turned, beckoning. He crossed the road and stopped with a bit of distance between them, but she stepped forward and took hold of his elbows, her bulgy eyes staring at him with a child’s frankness. Resisting the old urge to lift his good hand to cover the scarring, he tried to return her raking gaze. ‘Hench’. Raff’s word for her, because of her scary, weightlifter’s body, towering above them. Now, she only came up to his chin. Same brawniness, though; and same breasts, jostling to escape from their blue satin casing. He quickly looked back at her face. ‘Hello, Leonie,’ he repeated, aware of the awkwardness of his smile.
‘Mended good.’ The tang of her breath. Same hairstyle, with the beads on the braids, but fewer braids now and silvery threads in them. Same plastic, sequinned fingernails; she brushed one along the scarring. ‘Adds character. And you grown nice and tall. How long is it? Must be four, five years.’
‘It’s five.’
Leonie nodded. ‘Near enough to the day.’ She looked past him, at their old house. ‘What you doing here? This the first time you been back?’
‘Yes. I mean, I’ve been a few times, to visit friends, but not here …’ They’d never come this way, in the car; they’d always stayed on the main road and taken the turning by the park.
‘Pat!’ She called into the shop again, her ornate hand on the door. ‘She don’t hear me. You by yourself? Where’s your folks?’
‘I’m meeting them at our friends’ house. I came on the train, and they’re coming in the car.’
‘Pat! Where that dumb-arse woman got to.’ She shouldered the door wide open. ‘You better come in.’
He looked at his watch, hearing Raff’s voice echoing through time: ‘No way! She is HENCH and her sweets are RANK!’
‘Just five minutes. Have a cold drink. If she don’t get to see you, my life won’t be worth living.’ She ushered him over the threshold, and there was that same long, thin room with the mirrors, and the whir of the electric fans. Like his own ghost, he drifted behind her, past the three hairdressing chairs, and the one ancient hood-dryer; the desk, with the phone, and the box of tissues. The beaded doorway, the white, squishy sofa, the sweets in a bowl, and – an embarrassing stirring, Raff’s elbow in his ribs – the magazines.
‘Help yourself to a sweet.’
‘RANK!’
‘I’m OK, thanks.’
Leonie slammed the bowl back down, and kicked off her shoes. ‘Pat!’ She padded over to the beaded curtain, her big flat feet leaving damp marks on the polished tiles. ‘Losing her hearing. I keep telling her, but she won’t have it. You better take a seat.’
The fans whirred and whirred. The footprints evaporated, and the beaded strands shimmied to stillness. Above the doorway, the tiny monitor showed the litter-strewn backyard, where Leonie’s visitors waited to be let in. He got a sudden flash of her getting undressed, her blue satin dress dropping in a pile around her feet, and he cringed and tried to clear the thought from his head. He sat down on the sofa, which was as squishy as ever, but he was tall enough now to keep his feet on the ground. The magazines.Oh no. Remembering Raff’s shocked delight, he leant forward. The top one looked respectable enough – one of those TV guides – but the one underneath it … He stared for a moment, then put the TV guide back on top. Suddenly deeply uncomfortable, he looked towards the door. Too rude, though, to just leg it. He leant back, closing his eyes against the electric breeze.
‘The younger one was the looker. This one was always a bit drawn.’ Pat, trim little Pat, tufty-haired, fox-faced, with a jug and some plastic beakers. ‘World on his shoulders.’ She put the cordial and the beakers down, and perched next to him on the sofa. ‘Looks like life treating him better now.’ She grasped the lapel of his blazer and peered at the coat of arms on the breast pocket. ‘See, proper stitching – none of that stick-on.’
‘Private school.’ Leonie sank into the chair by the desk, and clasped her hands over her belly. ‘Folks doing OK, then.’
Jonah opened his mouth, then closed it again. Explaining about the scholarship would sound like boasting.
‘Cordial?’ Pat reached for the jug.
‘I’m OK, thanks.’
Pat looked at Leonie. ‘Must be thirsty, on a day like this?’
Leonie shrugged. ‘Maybe he don’t like cordial. Maybe too sweet for him.’
‘What about his hand?’
Leonie shrugged again. ‘Why you asking me?’
Jonah drew his bad hand out of his pocket, and presented it.
‘Your right one, is it?’ Pat took hold of it, and Leonie tipped forwards to look. ‘You right-handed?’
‘Yes, but it’s fine. I can do most things.’ He waggled his remaining finger and thumb.
‘Hope you don’t get teased for it.’ Pat set his hand down on his lap. ‘Do your school friends know how brave you were, trying to save your little brother?’
‘He don’t want to talk about that,’ snapped Leonie, and Pat clapped her hand over her mouth, chastened.
‘It’s OK,’ said Jonah. ‘Anyway,’ he nodded at the case, ‘I play the trumpet.’
‘The trumpet!’ Pat reached for the case and pulled it onto her lap. She opened it, and the trumpet nestled, gleaming, in the dark blue fur. ‘Play for us!’
Jonah hesitated. ‘I’m not sure if …’
‘Just one quick tune! Or you need a drink first? Will I get him plain water?’ Pat looked at Leonie again.
‘It’s just that the Martins are expecting me.’
‘The Martins. I remember them,’ Leonie was nodding. ‘With the little girl. Same age as you. Yellow tails, each side. So they still live round here? They never come this way. Or if they do, I never seen them.’
‘Her mother was sick,’ said Pat. ‘Must have passed by now.’
‘No, she’s better,’ said Jonah.
‘Better? I heard it was curtains.’ Leonie looked dubious.
‘Dora’s fine. She’s … we’re having roast chicken.’
‘Bit hot for roast chicken,’ said Pat. ‘Better with a salad, on a day like this.’
‘But nice you stayed friends with them,’ said Leonie.
‘What about the dad? Remember, Leonie – with the veg boxes. He still in that business?’
Jonah shook his head. ‘He lives in the country now. In an eco-village.’
‘Eco-village?’ asked Pat.
‘Living off the land,’ explained Leonie. ‘No electricity or nothing. Do their business in the woods.’
Pat shook her head. ‘So he left his sick wife.’
‘No, she was already better,’ said Jonah. ‘And anyway they’re still married. Dora and Em go and stay with him quite a lot.’
‘In the eco-village.’ Leonie nodded thoughtfully, as if she was planning a trip there herself. ‘And does he come back to London? Will he be there now? To see you?’
‘I expect so.’ He tried to remember if Dora’s email had said. Then he stood up, which was an effort, given how far he’d sunk into the sofa, and put his backpack on.
‘You got to go,’ Leonie sighed, and heaved herself up too.
‘Or roast chicken might get cold.’ Pat held out the trumpet case.
‘Yes.’ He suddenly felt how male he was, next to these middle-aged women: how tall, and strong and young. He took the case, and turned towards the door, trying to formulate a suitable goodbye, but was suddenly enveloped by Leonie. Her metal smell, her breasts, her damp armpits … He had to plant his feet firmly in order not to stagger back. She seemed to be crying. Still gripping the handle of his trumpet case, he put his free arm around her waist.
‘Leonie, she still feels so bad.’ Pat’s pointy face had gone soft and slack.
‘Bad? Why?’
‘Here all day, looking out the window, and never saw nothing was wrong.’ She patted Leonie’s shaking shoulder. ‘Enough now, Miss. Young man needs to go and eat roast chicken. And your 6.30 will be here. Need to bubble down.’
‘That 6.30 always late.’ But Leonie released him, and reached for a tissue from the box on the desk. She wiped her eyes, looking old, and Jonah felt a terrible tenderness for her.
‘Don’t feel bad. You were very good to us. Very kind.’ She was so alien, so not of his tribe – and yet so familiar. He patted her other shoulder.
‘Just glad …’ Her voice was shaky, still full of tears. ‘Just glad you doing so well.’
‘Better get going.’ Pat gave him a little push, but Jonah hesitated.
‘You know …’ He looked out into the sunny street and then down at his watch. The two women gazed at him. ‘Maybe I have got time to play something quick. If – if that’s what you’d like.’
‘Yes!’ Embarrassed by her own delight, Pat clapped her hand over her mouth again.
(#ulink_28fb3fc0-2759-5f02-97c3-fa48e26db136)
4 (#ulink_0667d4d4-cbb6-55d9-af61-6cf860a9f904)
On Monday morning Jonah woke up trying to say something. He was making tiny croaking noises, trying to get the words out, and his sheet was all tangled up in his legs. The room was full of sunlight, because of the fallen-down curtain, and outside the birds were screeching like crazy.
He sat up, kicking the sheet away, and looked over at the clock: 04.37. The sun must have just that minute risen, or rather Earth had just tipped far enough towards it. He was naked. It had been so hot in the night he’d pulled off his vest and wriggled out of his pyjama bottoms. His dream was like a word on the tip of his tongue. The birds had calmed down, but a dog was barking, and now there was a man talking, down in the street, right under the wide open window.
Jonah lay back down and tried to remember what it was he wanted to say, but the strange, hissing voice outside kept telling someone to shut their mouth. No one else was saying anything, so the man was either talking to himself, or talking into his phone. His tongue found his loose tooth, and waggled it. ‘This tooth is movious,’ Lucy, his mother, had said at bedtime, in her Zambian doctor voice, her finger pushing it gently. ‘It will be coming out on Wednesday.’
He rolled onto his side and looked down at the book she’d read from at bedtime, lying open on the floor, surrounded by clothes. It was a poetry book by a man called Edward Lear. She’d read them ‘The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò’, a very sad story about a tiny little man with an enormous head. It was her favourite. He and Raff preferred ‘The Duck and the Kangaroo’. As he gazed at the picture of the Lady Jingly Jones, surrounded by her hens, telling the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò to go away, he remembered his feeling, as she read, that his mother was a stranger, lost in an unknown world. Such a weird feeling; difficult to explain.
He tugged at his tooth. He’d made a bet with her – £1 it would come out before Wednesday – which he was sure he would win. His eyes travelled up to his cloud poster. The clouds were grouped into families and species. His favourite was Stratocumulus castellanus. Next to the cloud poster were Raff’s three athlete posters: Usain Bolt, Mo Farah and Oscar Pistorius. Raff was a really good runner. Which reminded him … Which reminds me, Mayo. No, not Mayo, he’d started calling her Lucy, to be more grown-up. Which reminds me, Lucy. What was it that he needed to tell her? He noticed that the top left corner of the Oscar Pistorius poster was curled over, detached from its lump of Blu-tack. Oh yes, Sports Day. That was it. Sports Day had been cancelled the week before, because of all the rain, but everyone had been so disappointed that Mr Mann had decided they could squeeze in a shortened version this Thursday. There had been a letter about it. Probably still in his school bag.
He sat up again, to see the clock. 04.40, a mirror number. He climbed down the ladder past Raff’s sleeping head, pulled on his boxers and crept out of the room. It was only three and a half steps across the landing and into Lucy’s bedroom. Her curtains were drawn tight, so it was dark and the warm air smelt of her grown-up body. There were clothes all over the floor. Jonah stood on a coat hanger and said ‘Ouch’, but quietly. He reached her bed and climbed onto it, fumbling for the sheet and pulling it over him. The smell of her was stronger, more secret, and he rolled across to snuggle up. But she wasn’t there.
Jonah rolled to the far side of the bed and looked at the crowd of things on Lucy’s bedside table. Her Tibetan bells alarm clock, a wine glass with a smudge of lipstick on it, the mugs he’d brought her tea in, the days she’d stayed in bed. The card with the X on it was leaning against one of the mugs, and he reached for it. People usually did a few Xs, little ones, under their signature. This single X filled the whole card. One long kiss, then. He pictured his father Roland’s face, with hopeful lips. The card had come with the flowers, was it Thursday or Friday? They were a mixture of roses and lilies, the roses red and fat like cabbages, and the lilies all creamy and freckled with gold. He’d brought them up to her, and she’d taken the card and told him to put the flowers in a vase. Which he had done, but without any water, so they had died. Jonah put the card back down and wobbled his tooth, seeing Roland’s face again – his anxious frown, his sticky-out ears. They hadn’t been to visit him for ages. Maybe he would ask if he could phone him up. He would tell him about the tooth bet first. Then he’d check about the flowers.
He rolled over again, back to the near side of the bed, sat up and swung his feet down to the floor. By the skirting board was her big tub of coconut oil, without the lid. The oil was thick and white, like wax, and there were three indents where her fingers had dug into it. It would come out in white lumps, but then, as she rubbed it into her skin, it would melt into transparent liquid. He crouched down and put three of his own fingers in the holes. They were wet and oozy: the wax was melting because it was so warm. He wiped his fingers on the sheet and went to see if she was in the bathroom.
His pupils, large from the darkness, had to quickly shrink again, because light was flooding in through the open window, bouncing between the mirrors and the taps and the water in the bath. The bathwater was green and shimmery, with a few black squiggly hairs floating on the surface. Jonah put his hand in and the light on the ceiling broke into ripples. The water was lukewarm and very oily, and when he pulled out his hand one of the hairs was coiled around his fingers. He got some toilet paper and wiped it off, and then he put the paper down the toilet. There was wee in the toilet, very dark, smelly wee, and Jonah flushed it, before leaving the bathroom and going to stand at the top of the stairs. He looked down and his heart beat faster, because the front door was open.
Jonah padded downstairs and out into the street. Under his feet the pavement was still cool, but the light was blinding. Their house was on a corner. The front door was on Southway Street, but the sitting-room window and the boys’ bedroom window were on the other side of the house. Jonah looked that way first, towards Wanless Road, which was still in shadow. On the far side of the road, the metal blinds were still down over the four shops, one of them spray-painted with the word ‘Pussy’. A wheelie bin, its lid thrown open, balanced precariously on the kerb. Then he turned his head and shaded his eyes with his hand to look down sun-drenched Southway Street. The pretty houses looked like they still had their eyes closed. Only the light moved, glinting on the parked cars and the netted metal cages around the spindly white trees.
Jonah turned and walked around the corner into Wanless Road. It was wider than Southway Street, with no trees, and wheelie bins were parked at intervals along the pavements, like Daleks. The Broken House was next to theirs, but there was a gap in between. It was older than all the terraced houses, and had been much bigger and grander, all on its own in its garden. They could see right into it from Lucy’s bedroom window, but from here it was hidden by high, joined-together boards, covered in places by a tumbling passionflower, and dotted with ‘Keep Out’ signs. In fact, it was easy to get in. One of the boards had come loose and you could push it open like a door and slip inside.
Jonah walked through the stillness like he was the only thing left alive, dragging his fingers along the splintery boards. The loose board had been left ajar, and he peered through. The nettles had grown as high as his chest. The Broken House looked back at him, like a sad old horse. It was a long time since he’d been in there. As he turned away, with a start, he noticed Violet.
The fox was standing, still as a statue, on the bonnet of a filthy white van. Their eyes met, and although he knew her well, he felt shy of her, almost scared. He said, ‘Hello, Violet’, trying to sound normal, but his voice croaked, and all of a sudden she leapt onto the pavement and flitted into the Broken House’s tangled garden. Animals can sense your fear, he remembered his mother saying, they can smell it, and it makes them frightened. He looked after the fox for a moment, and then at the white marks her scrabbling paws had left in the van’s thick grey dirt. There was a V-shape, and two long scribbles, like a signature. He turned to walk back to their house – which was when he saw the Raggedy Man.
The Raggedy Man was standing against the wall of the squatters’ house; like Violet, so still that Jonah hadn’t noticed him. His feet were turned in and his arms hung down like coat sleeves. ‘Remember, he was a boy like you once,’ Jonah heard Lucy say, but he quickened his step, crossing his arms over his naked chest. The Raggedy Man was tall and black and gnarled like a tree, growing out of his filthy, raggedy pink tracksuit. He never said anything, ever, not a single word. Jonah found himself saying, A boy like you once, over and over in his head, as his feet padded quickly along the pavement. He turned into Southway Street and, from the corner of his eye, he saw the Raggedy Man put his hand in the pocket of his tracksuit bottoms and pull something out. Then his arm snapped out straight, the hand splayed open … offering something? Jonah hesitated on his doorstep. There was an object glinting in the Raggedy Man’s palm. A coin? He darted a look up at the grizzly face. The huge, angry eyes stared back at him. He looked away quickly, scurried inside and closed the door.
5 (#ulink_d8014a29-d94c-5848-a35a-bde5e502765c)
He had only been out for a few seconds, but it felt like he’d come back from another world. Standing in the familiar jumble of the hallway, he could smell their wet swimming things, still in the bag. They’d gone to the Lido the day before, Sunday, on their bikes, early, to avoid the queue. Lucy loved to swim, but had sat on the edge, her wild hair crammed under a big straw hat, gold locket at her throat, her body wrapped in her enormous red sarong. As he’d glided like a manta ray above the slime-smeared floor of the pool, he had looked up and seen her strong brown feet dangling in the water. Why won’t you come in? he had asked her silently. Her toes had rings on them – gold, like the locket – and her toenails matched the sarong.
Her red umbrella was leaning against the wall. He and Raff had taken it to school the day it rained. Next to the umbrella was the stepladder, which she must have pulled out from the cupboard under the stairs, as a reminder to get the curtain in their room back on its rail. Under the ladder was the can of petrol that, weeks and weeks ago, they’d walked all the way to the service station on the main road to get. They’d taken it on the bus, all the way across south London, to where they’d had to abandon the car the evening before. They’d been too late, though – the car had been towed away, so they’d brought the petrol back home. Getting the car back cost lots of money, which they didn’t have. They didn’t really need a car anyway. Next to the petrol was a pile of shoes, among which, Jonah was relieved to see, were her clogs. She must be here after all. He turned and pushed open the sitting-room door.
She wasn’t there. Jonah looked down at her yoga mat, lying like a green lake amidst a jumble of Lego, nunchucks and cheese on toast remains. Part of Raff’s Ben 10 jigsaw encroached upon the mat, like a jetty. He looked up. Through the sitting-room window, he saw the open-lidded wheelie bin balancing on the kerb.
She’d been burning incense in the kitchen, but the smell of the bin was stronger than ever. They hadn’t emptied it for days – maybe weeks. Lucy had been ill for quite a while, off and on. Washing-up was stacked high on every surface, and the dirty clothes they’d collected up to put in the machine lay in piles all over the floor. He kicked through the clothes and went through into the tiny conservatory (if you could call it that), just big enough for the table, the three ordinary chairs and Raff’s old Tripp Trapp ladder chair. The dead flowers had shed some more petals, onto the drawings they’d done of them when they’d got back from the Lido. Lucy had said she didn’t mind they were dead. ‘I prefer them when they get like this. Much more interesting.’ Maybe she had just wanted to make him feel better about them, but she had carried on, her voice low and dreamy. ‘The intricate husks of them, like skeletons, on their way to dust.’ Jonah traced the line she had drawn, a fragile curl of dried-out lily petal. Her book was on the table, too, the book she’d been reading for weeks, even though it was very thin. There was a picture of a mask on the cover, an African-looking mask, with feathers and round empty eyeholes. Ants were crawling over the book and the drawings, and up and down the glass jug she’d made the orange squash in. There was a layer of black on the remaining inch of orange liquid: a floating blanket of drowned ants. The dead ants made him think of their holiday in the house with the swimming pool, and Lucy rescuing insects from the pool all day, using a net on a long pole. It was in France, the house. The Martins had taken them, as a treat, after Angry Saturday, and Roland getting sent to prison.
There were two new things on the table: a green wine bottle, empty; and a yellow mango, fat and ripe. The bottle was green, and the label was white, very white, with a grey drawing of jagged hilltops poking out of a sea of cloud like shark fins. The cloud was stratus, which wasn’t all that interesting to look at from below, but from above it was all misty and rolling. Jonah picked up the mango. Its skin squished under his fingers. ‘A Chaunsa,’ he whispered. The King of Mangoes. The Green Shop Man had introduced them to Chaunsas, which grow in Pakistan, but only in July. Last year, the Green Shop Man had given her three of them, as a present.
Near the edge of the table were three little heaps. When he looked closer, he saw that they were made of the shavings from the coloured drawing pencils, mixed with crumbs and his and Raff’s fingernails. She’d cut their nails after they’d done the drawings, and it had been about time; they’d been long and ragged and dirty, like witches’ fingernails. The heaps were like tiny pyramids. He touched one of them gently, imagining her sitting at the table after she’d put them to bed, all alone, with her too-thick lipstick on, slowly pushing the fingernails and the pencil shavings and the crumbs together with her fingers. Then maybe her phone had rung, and it had been Dora Martin. And then maybe Dora had come round with the bottle of wine.
It would be good if Dora had come. She hadn’t come for ages, and they hadn’t been to the Martins’ house for a while either. They’re still our friends, though. Aren’t they? He noticed how much he talked to her in his head, instead of just having his own thoughts. Did other children do that, to their mothers, or maybe their fathers?
There were no glasses on the table. He looked over at the pile of things on the draining board, and then remembered the wine glass by Lucy’s bed, with the smudge of lipstick. If there was only that one wine glass, then maybe she had decided to pop to the Green Shop and buy a whole bottle of wine to drink on her own. Taken the last glass of it up to bed with her. He looked at the label again. Such a beautiful, soft drawing, and the words Cloudy Bay, in such fine, thin letters, with lots of space in between. It didn’t look like the kind of wine you could get in the Green Shop. Then he saw that a steady stream of ants was heading down into the jug, despite the blanket of corpses. He thought about trying to divert them from their death, but the only thing he could think of would be to empty the jug and wash it, and the sink was too full of plates and pots.
Jonah looked up at the calendar. Yoga Poses 2013. The pose for July was Ustrasana, or Camel, and there was a picture of a woman, on her knees, arching backwards. The pages of previous calendars had always got filled with Lucy’s scrawls, but this one had stayed very bare and clean. He stepped closer, gazing up at the four and a half rows of squares, thinking how each square was a complete turn of the planet on its axis. The first two weeks were all empty. Then, in the middle of the third row, Wednesday the 17th, she’d written two letters, S and D. An acronym. For the rained-off Sports Day. There was a squiggly word beginning with C on the 18th, and then, on the fourth row, she had circled the 26th, and written three letters, P, E and D, in blobby brown felt-tip. PED. Trying to think what they might stand for, he reached up to take the calendar off its nail, and laid it on the table. Using the dark blue drawing pencil, he crossed out the cancelled SD, and wrote a new one in Thursday, the 25th. He thought for a moment. She hadn’t put ‘Haredale’s Got Talent’ on the calendar, even though Raff had been talking about nothing else for weeks. He wrote in HGT, right under SD. A busy day. He paused, and then went over the letters again, because the blue pencil didn’t come out that well on the shiny calendar paper.
Jonah put the pencil down, yawned and looked at the kitchen clock. 5.25. Where had she gone, so early? He turned and tried the back door. It wasn’t locked. Roland used to tell her off about not locking the back door. The backyard had a concrete floor, with brick walls on all three sides, the Broken House rising up behind the far wall. In the middle of the concrete floor was the brown corduroy cushion she’d been sitting on the day before. Yellow-flowering weeds were sprouting from the cracks in the concrete and from between the bricks. Lucy’s plant pots were sprouting weeds too, as well as the things she’d planted. Her dirt-covered trowel was resting against the wall. Her bicycle, which was a heavy, olden-days one, but painted gold, was gleaming against the back wall. Both the tyres were flat and weeds were growing through the spokes of the wheels. It was all looking very beautiful. He saw the watering can, and wondered if Lucy had watered the pots before she went.
A movement made him jump and look up. The fox had appeared on top of the back wall. Again their eyes met, and again he felt scared of her.
His heart banging, he cleared his throat. ‘Violet, are you following me this morning?’
He had tried to sound calm and amused, but his voice sounded thin and silly against the silence. ‘Fear is like a magnet,’ he heard Lucy say. ‘It can actually make bad things happen.’ He wondered if the Raggedy Man was still standing outside, waiting to give him the coin. He turned away from the fox, trying to stop his heart from thudding, and stared at the dip Lucy’s bottom had left in the corduroy cushion. He remembered the loops and the lines and the spatters, blue-black ink on the sunlit white page.
Brighter today.
That’s what she’d written, sitting on the corduroy cushion. He’d squeezed onto her lap, feeling her bosoms squishing against his back, and looked down at the shape of the words. Then a breeze had lifted the pages, and they had fluttered and batted against each other, all covered in her squiggly writing. And she’d reached forward with her dry, brown hand and flipped the book closed.
He checked the pots. They hadn’t been watered but under the surface the soil was still quite moist from all the rain the week before. In the biggest pot, which had honeysuckle growing out of it, and also delphiniums, there was something red and shiny sunk into the soil. A particular red. Definitely an object he’d seen before. A toy? One of his and Raff’s old cars? His fingers closed around it. Not a car. Not a toy, even. He pulled it out, and something caught in his throat, because it was a mobile phone, just like Lucy’s, a snap-shut Nokia. It probably was Lucy’s. But why would Lucy bury her phone in a flowerpot? His heart banging again, he wiped it on his boxers, but it left a dirty mark, so he shook it to get the rest of the dirt off it, and it came apart. The back of it and the battery plopped back into the soil. He retrieved them and carried the three parts of the phone back into the house. He laid them out on the table, and fetched a tea towel to wipe them properly clean, before clicking them back together.
It was her phone. It had to be. No one else had those Nokias any more. He pressed the ‘On’ button. There was a bleep, and the screen lit up. It was showing a very low battery, but it seemed to be working fine. After a few seconds there was another bleep, and a missed call popped upon the screen. DORA. So she had phoned, and maybe she had come round with the wine. The last time they’d been to the Martins’ must be the afternoon they’d taken Dylan round to mate with Elsie. Weeks ago. The phone bleeped again, and died. He weighed it in his hand, wondering where the charger might be, and remembering that chilly afternoon in the Martins’ garden, watching the rabbits.
The charger wasn’t in any of the wall sockets in the kitchen, and it wasn’t in the socket in the hall. In the hall he looked at Lucy’s clogs again. They were wooden clogs, very old, kind of chewed looking, but so comfortable, Lucy said. They were the only shoes she’d worn for weeks. He put his own feet into them, remembering seeing her red toenails through the water. His feet would be as big as hers soon. DORA. The word danced in his head. Maybe they would go round to the Martins’ after school. It would be nice to see the rabbits. And Saviour. He saw Saviour’s warm brown eyes, and heard his friendly, cockney voice. Fancy giving me a hand with the cooking?
He stepped out of the clogs and went upstairs. The charger wasn’t in the socket on the landing. Back in Lucy’s room, it was still quite dark and, instead of continuing his search, he found himself getting back into her bed, half expecting her to be there after all. She wasn’t. Where have you gone, silly Mayo? No, silly Lucy. He closed his eyes, and saw Dora, lying by the pool at the French holiday house, while Lucy, in just her bikini bottoms, walked up and down with her net. ‘Nice to get away from it all!’ Dora’s cheerful voice, her sunglasses, her long, thin body covered against the sun. ‘Nice to get away from it all!’ She’d kept saying it, all the way through the holiday, as if … As if what? He rolled onto his side, seeing Lucy’s net full of wet insects, her bosoms and her concentrating face as she tipped them out onto the paving stones; and got that weird feeling again, the one he got when she was reading the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò poem. That she was separate from him, different, a stranger; and it wasn’t just her grown-upness, or her femaleness, or her Africanness, which came and went with her mood. He pictured the three tiny pyramids on the kitchen table; and then the single, glinting disc on the Raggedy Man’s palm; the stepladder, the red umbrella, the scribble Violet’s paws made in the filth on the white van: and then he must have fallen asleep, because the next thing that happened was the ringing of the Tibetan bells.
6 (#ulink_ea0aa85e-ea26-5647-890b-f0b9a4bb8472)
The bells were a lovely sound. Jonah listened with his eyes closed, imagining the monks in their monastery in the misty mountains. Then Raff came running in, like a tornado.
‘There’s some guy swearing his head off in the street! You got to hear him, fam!’
Jonah opened his eyes and watched his little brother scamper around the bed, holding up his pyjama bottoms, which had lost their elastic. He realised he was still clutching the red phone, and put it down next to the lipsticky wine glass.
‘What’s that? Where’s Mayo? Why have you got her phone?’ One of Raff’s cornrows had started to come out. ‘Anyway, come on, you got to hurry. You seriously got to hear this!’
Jonah switched off the bells and followed his brother into their bedroom, where he was already leaning too far out of the window. ‘Be careful, Raff!’ He squashed in beside him, putting an arm around his waist. His skin felt very warm and dry.
‘Oh my days! It’s the bloomin’ Raggedy Man!’ Raff leaned even further, and Jonah tightened his hold. ‘But he never talks!’ said Raff. ‘Why is he saying those things?’
Jonah looked down, and saw that the Raggedy Man had moved from outside the squatters’ house and was on the pavement directly below. ‘I don’t know.’
‘He got issues, man! Who is he talking to? Oi! You talking to us?’ Jonah tried to clap his hand over Raff’s mouth, but Raff wriggled out of his hold. He pranced, making signs with his fingers. ‘Don’t call me snake tongue, you fuckin’ rat, you crazy fuckin’ vampire bat!’ he hissed, his cute face all mean.
‘Don’t say fuck, Raff.’
‘Why? He said it!’ Raff yanked up his pyjama bottoms. ‘And you just said it, you fuckin’ giraffe neck!’
‘Anyway. It’s time to get dressed.’ Their school uniforms would be downstairs, among the dirty washing on the kitchen floor. Out in the street, the Green Shop door opened, and the Raggedy Man fell silent. The Green Shop Man came out, holding the stick with the hook on the end that he used to push up his metal blinds. Raff aimed an imaginary catapult at him, pulling back the stone in the sling, then letting go, his fingers exploding into a star, his lips blowing a kind of raspberry. ‘Phwoof! Right in the head!’ His pyjama bottoms fell to his ankles. He reached down to pull them back up. ‘Is it Haredale’s Got Talent this week?’
‘Yes. Thursday.’
‘Yesss!’ Raff went spinning off, doing his dance again. ‘Is Mayo writing her diary in the garden, like yesterday?’
‘No.’
‘Oh my days! It’s Sports Day on Thursday too!’
‘Yes.’ It would be a bit of a scramble, Mr Mann had said, but he didn’t want to deprive the athletes of their moments of glory; and parents who were already planning to come to the talent show could come early and kill two birds with one stone.
‘Is she still better, or is she back to being ill?’ Raff had stopped dancing.
‘Better.’ Brighter. The squiggly words on the fluttering page.
‘Where is she, anyway?’ Raff was suddenly very still, his tortoiseshell eyes fixed on Jonah.
‘I’m not sure. Probably gone to the park.’
The Green Shop Man pushed at his stick. The huge noise of the metal blinds going up filled the air.
7 (#ulink_9c044231-8337-5bba-aa8c-c176bc152ec7)
The pint of milk on the doorstep had already gone warm. It had a note under it from the milkman – a bill probably. Jonah carried the milk and the note into the kitchen. The mango and the bottle of wine were still there, and the ants were still crawling up and down the jug to their deaths. Raff sat down, and Jonah got the Weetabix out of the cupboard. The only clean bowls he could find were a wooden salad bowl and a white mixing bowl. Raff looked at the bowls and snorted.
‘Or we could do some washing up,’ Jonah said.
Raff raised one eyebrow. ‘No way is I doing washing up, Little Peck!’
‘Raff, you are not allowed to call me that.’
‘Who you tellin’, Dirty Little Peck?’ Raff jumped up from the chair and shoved his face close to Jonah’s.
Jonah moved away, ignoring him, which is what Lucy told him was always the best policy, and got on with putting three Weetabix into each bowl.
‘Come on then, Peck!’ Raff was snarling, his lips rolling back, showing his tiny white teeth. He lifted his arms, aiming his catapult at him. ‘Peck versus the Slingsman! Phwooff!’
‘Shut up, Raff!’ He put his hands over his ears, but he could still hear Raff saying it, and making his stupid raspberry sounds.
‘Little Peck. Fuckin’ Peck.’
‘Don’t swear!’ In a rush of rage, Jonah pushed Raff to the floor.
Raff jumped straight up and threw himself at Jonah, and they staggered through the kitchen and out into the hall, where Jonah managed to shove his brother off him. Raff fell back against the stairs, grabbing the stepladder as he went, and it fell on top of him, and he started crying, really loudly.
Panicked, Jonah shoved the stepladder away and knelt beside him. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Are you OK, Raff? Where does it hurt?’
Raff just screamed louder, like when he was a toddler. ‘Mayo!’ he was screaming, over and over, and Jonah put his hands over his ears again.
‘STOP!’
Raff stopped. They looked at each other for a moment, and then Raff slid himself off the stairs and opened up his arms, and Jonah knelt down and hugged him. They rolled over and lay side by side, amongst the shoes.
‘What’s she doing in the park?’ asked Raff.
‘Yoga.’
‘But her yoga mat’s in the sitting room.’
‘Yes, but your Ben 10 puzzle’s on it. She probably didn’t want to break it.’ Out of the side of his eye Jonah could see the yellow word on the rusty red of the can they’d filled up at the service station. GASOLINE. The American word for petrol. Closer in, by his temple, the chewed-up heel of one of her clogs. Why haven’t you got your shoes on? he asked her silently.
‘Jonah,’ Raff whispered.
‘What?’
‘Is Bad Granny going to come?’
Jonah got a flash of Bad Granny’s looming, brightly coloured face, and felt a shiver run through his body. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said. Raff had sounded like a really young child, which he was, of course. Jonah wriggled his arm under his shoulders.
‘Alright, me old Peck,’ said Raff, but in a little cockney chirrup, not that horrible gangster voice. Jonah giggled.
‘How nice to meet you, Lord Pecker!’ he said in his Your Majesty voice, and Raff rolled around, snorting. Jonah chuckled. It was usually Raff who made him laugh. Through their laughing came a sound, which Jonah hardly heard, but Raff suddenly sat up straight, looking wide-eyed at the door. ‘Mayo?’ he whispered.
Jonah sat up too. Raff was holding his body very stiff. There was a moment’s silence.
‘What was it?’ Jonah whispered.
‘Someone. Looking through the letter box.’ Raff got to his feet, but Jonah grabbed his ankle.
‘Don’t open it!’ he hissed.
‘Why?’
‘It might be the Raggedy Man.’
‘The Raggedy Man?’ Raff crouched back down. Jonah reached for his hand. They both stared at the letter box, listening hard. A car came up Wanless Road and turned the corner.
‘Why do you think it was the Raggedy Man?’ Raff whispered.
‘I don’t know. Just because he was outside our house.’
‘And he wants to come in?’
‘I don’t know. Are you sure you saw someone?’
Raff nodded. He lifted his arms and aimed his sling at the letter box. ‘Phwoof.’ He made the sound very quietly. Then he stood up and stretched, and pulled up his pyjama bottoms. ‘Bags the wood bowl,’ he said, in a normal voice.
8 (#ulink_ab33bf26-1dac-5a7e-b362-b110ae142245)
Having breakfast in the enormous bowls made them laugh again, the way they had to reach down to get their spoons to the Weetabix. Then Raff said, ‘Who sent them?’
Jonah looked at the skeletal flowers. On their way to dust. ‘Roland,’ he said.
‘What, from prison?’
‘You can still send people things. He sent you those posters of the runners.’
‘Did Daddy give me those?’
‘Yes!’
‘I thought it was Saviour.’
‘It was Roland. Last year, when the Olympics were on. You should remember that, Raff! Imagine if Roland knew you’d got him mixed up with Saviour!’
‘Fuck off, Jonah, because I didn’t mix him up with Saviour. I just thought Saviour gave me the posters.’
‘Anyway. He sent Lucy flowers before.’
‘When?’
‘On her birthday.’
‘So why did he send some now?’
‘Maybe because she was ill? How should I know, Raff?’ Sometimes Raff’s questions went on and on.
‘But how did he know she was ill?’
‘Maybe he phoned her.’ Jonah suddenly remembered finding her red phone in the flowerpot, and tried to think what he’d done with it.
‘Why didn’t he speak to us, then?’
‘I don’t know, Raff! I don’t know anything about it! I don’t even know if it was him who sent the flowers!’
‘No need to fuckin’ shout, fam.’
‘Don’t swear! You always swear!’ Jonah picked up the mixing bowl and tried to put it in the sink, but the sink was too full.
‘You got anger management, bro.’ Raff shook his head for a bit, squashing ants with the back of his spoon. ‘Maybe he sent them because he’s coming out on patrol.’
‘Parole.’ There was no room on the draining board either.
‘Maybe he’ll get out in time for Sports Day.’ Raff examined the ants on the back of the spoon. ‘Do you remember when he came to Sports Day with Bad Granny?’
‘Yes.’ Jonah put the bowl back on the table. He was surprised Raff could remember. He’d been tiny, not much more than a toddler.
‘But it was before she tried to steal us.’
‘Stop killing the ants, Raff.’
‘Will he bring her this time?’
‘Raff, he won’t come to Sports Day. He’s not getting out that soon. Lucy would have told us.’
‘She might of forgotten.’ Raff squashed some ants with the back of his spoon. ‘Anyway, why do you call her Lucy now? What’s wrong with Mayo?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Is it because it’s Zambian?’
‘No. I just like calling her Lucy.’ She liked it too. She liked it that he was getting so grown up.
Raff squashed some more ants. ‘What about Haredale’s Got Talent? I bet he’ll get out for that!’
‘Raffy, that’s the same day, remember! And stop killing the ants!’
‘Dey ants, Peck.’
‘Ants are amazing!’ Jonah grabbed the spoon off him and sat back down. ‘Did you know they have two stomachs?’ He watched the ants reorganise themselves. ‘One for themselves, and one to store food to take back to their queen.’
‘Queen gonna be hungry, den.’ Raff snatched the spoon back and rolled it over a whole cluster of them.
‘Raff! That is such bad karma!’
‘Saviour says that karma shit is rubbish. He says everything’s just random.’ But Raff laid the spoon down. ‘You know Bad Granny?’
‘Yes.’ Jonah looked at the empty eyeholes of the mask on the cover of the book.
‘Will we know her again? When Roland comes out on patrol? Will he take us to see her?’
Shattered glass, Sadie’s crazy face, and the peacock, screaming. ‘I don’t know.’ After she’d tried to take them from school, Dora and Lucy had talked about going to court to get – what was it called? – a thing to stop her from coming anywhere near them. He wasn’t sure if they’d actually done it, though. He opened the book. It was Dora’s, she’d written her name on the inside cover, Dora Martin, in black ink, the letters very pointed, and all leaning forwards. Underneath it, she’d done lots of scribbling in pencil, words and some doodles, but no, actually it was Lucy who’d done the stuff in pencil, he could tell by the handwriting, and the doodles.
‘Raff.’ He closed the book.
‘What.’
‘What does Peck actually mean?’
‘Peck means Peck!’
‘Doh! Did you get it off Saviour?’
‘I didn’t get it off no one. It’s from my head.’ Raff put down the spoon and stood up, very straight, with his arms by his sides. ‘This is what it is!’ He made a bobbing movement with his head. It looked like a move from a street dance, but also exactly like a pecking pigeon. It made Jonah laugh again, and try it himself. They both walked around the table pecking for a while.
Raff stopped first. ‘Maybe it was the Angry Saturday man who sent her the flowers.’
‘It wouldn’t be him.’ Jonah noticed the clock. ‘Raff, we need to hurry! We’re going to be late for school!’
9 (#ulink_a71bf423-02e0-5d97-9254-5379904cfc56)
Jonah hesitated before opening the front door, and looked from side to side before stepping onto the pavement. The Raggedy Man was nowhere to be seen. There were clouds now, great billowing ones: cumulus, not cumulonimbus, so it wouldn’t rain.
‘Mind, Peck!’ Raff shoved past him. He had a toothpaste beard, his shirt was filthy and he was wearing trainers, which wasn’t allowed. Jonah passed him his school bag, and hoisted his own onto his shoulder. They scurried along Southway Street, but stopped dead on the corner, because there was a fox lying just off the kerb.
‘Violet!’ Raff cried, clapping his hand over his mouth, but Jonah shook his head.
‘It’s not her. It might be one of her cubs though.’ The back of the fox’s body had been squashed into a bloody mess by the wheels of a car, but its head and its front legs were untouched. Jonah wondered if it had died straightaway, or whether it had lain there for a while, trying and trying to make its back half work. He wriggled his shoulders to shake off the thought, and took Raff’s hand. ‘Come on,’ he said.
The bell started ringing as they went through the gate. Jonah went with Raff into the Infants, and watched him run off into his classroom, before walking through into the Juniors’ playground. It had nearly emptied out. Among the stragglers were Emerald and Saviour, and Jonah ran over to say hello. Saviour was squatting down so that Emerald could hug him goodbye, which he didn’t need to do any more, because he was quite short, and Emerald had got really tall. Something about the way they were hugging, and the expression on Saviour’s face, made Jonah stop a foot or two away and wait to be noticed. They didn’t look like father and daughter: Saviour browner than ever, so brown you might not realise he was a white person, whereas Emerald’s skin had gone just slightly golden. And Emerald was all fresh and neat in her school dress, with her long yellow hair in bunches, whereas Saviour was scruffy, in his torn T-shirt, and his paint-spattered Crocs, with bits of leaves and twigs in his curly hair. Jonah noticed that it was more grey than black now, his hair, and that you could see his scalp through it, hard and brown as a nut. His eyebrows were dark still; dark and bushy, which could make him seem cross, or at least lost in his thoughts – until he looked at you, like he did now, over Emerald’s shoulder, with his kind, interested eyes.
‘Jonah, mate. Where’s the whale?’ If you didn’t know him, you might expect a deep, growly voice, maybe with a foreign accent, and be surprised by the warm, cockney lightness. He winked, and Jonah grinned and winked back, and Saviour reached up and high-fived him, because Jonah had been trying to wink for weeks.
‘Fourteen runs!’ Jonah said.
Saviour frowned.
‘England won by fourteen runs! Didn’t you watch it?’ He and Raff had been glued to it the whole of Sunday afternoon.
‘Course they did.’ Saviour was wobbling a bit, because Emerald’s hug was getting tighter.
‘I didn’t like that Hawk-Eye business. I didn’t think it was really fair,’ said Jonah.
Saviour nodded and stood up, and Jonah noticed he was getting fat again. He’d lost quite a lot of weight from giving up alcohol, but he was putting it back on. Emerald slid down onto her knees, wrapping her arms around his legs, and Saviour staggered, and put his hands on her shoulders. He didn’t seem interested in talking about the cricket, so Jonah said: ‘Lucy hasn’t been very well.’
Saviour nodded again, looking down at Emerald. Her parting was dead straight and the bunches were like long silky ears which flopped around as she burrowed her head into his stomach.
‘She stayed in bed for three days. I made her cups of tea.’
‘Good on you, mate,’ murmured Saviour.
‘But yesterday she got up. We went swimming. Apart from she didn’t actually swim.’ Saviour had taken hold of one of Emerald’s bunches and was twirling the yellow hair around his dark fingers. ‘And she didn’t watch the cricket with us. She went for a lie-down instead. But she doesn’t really like cricket.’
Saviour let go of Emerald’s hair and looked at his watch.
Jonah suddenly remembered the wine bottle. ‘Did Dora come over to our house last night?’
‘Dora,’ said Saviour, as if he hardly knew her, but Emerald stood up and turned around, her bunches flying.
‘No, my mum didn’t come over. Because she’s really ill. She’s so ill she might even die!’
Saviour put his hand onto her pale head, and Jonah saw that his fingers were dark purple, almost black, from picking blackcurrants, probably.
‘Really, Emerald!’ Jonah said it with a smile, and a little look at Saviour, because Emerald was such a drama queen.
‘Jonah, it’s actually true – isn’t it, Dad?’ Saviour stared down at her with a strange, stiff smile on his face, and Jonah felt himself blush.
‘Mum is ill, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to die, Emmy,’ said Saviour. ‘Not for a good long while anyway.’
Emerald put on her grown-up face. She said, ‘You need to face the facts, Dad!’ And Saviour’s smile got wider and stranger, as if he might be trying not to cry. ‘She’s going to hospital this morning.’ Emerald stroked her bunches, her grey eyes flicking between Jonah’s face and Saviour’s. ‘To get her results. And tonight we’re going to have roast chicken and roast potatoes for dinner.’
‘Oh,’ said Jonah. He couldn’t think of anything to say, so he said, ‘Anyway. I’d better go.’
He moved off, but Emerald let go of her bunches, picked up her bag and grabbed his arm. ‘OK, wait for me, then. Bye, Dad!’
They left Saviour standing there in the middle of the empty playground, like a kind of scarecrow clown, with his orange Crocs and his purple hands and his leafy hair sticking straight up in the air.
10 (#ulink_aa2dd2f1-040b-5a96-84fe-39cbec3f2a9a)
Miss Swann had already started the Year 4 register. She looked up over her reading glasses. ‘Emmy, Jonah, you made it! Awesome!’ She was smiling, and the classroom smelt of her rosewater.
As he slid into his seat, Harold grinned at him with his loony grin. ‘Yo, fam,’ he whispered. They fist-bumped, and then Jonah looked back at Miss Swann. She was wearing a stripy summer dress with shoulder straps, and when she leant forward you could see her strangely long thin bosoms hanging down. Not bosoms. That’s what Lucy called them, but no one else did. Most people said ‘boobs’, but it didn’t feel right, calling Miss Swann’s that. Maybe ‘mammary glands’. Her long, thin mammary glands. Lucy would think that was funny. He smiled, picturing her laughing. Hers were nicer: fat and round, with puffy brown nipples.
In Assembly they rehearsed ‘Star Man’, which they’d be singing at the end of the Talent Show on Thursday evening. After the singing Mr Mann did certificates, and Jonah got one for his Broken House project, which he’d been working on all term as part of the Local History theme. All the Local History projects were on display in the hall, and at the end of Assembly Jonah hung back to gaze up at his.
The house next door to us was built in 1862, by a rich Timber Merchent called Mr Samuels. It was a detatched Villa, in a Full-blooded Gothic Style, enlivened by vigorus Foliated Carvings.
He’d copied that last bit out from the London Survey website. He and Lucy had crept into the house to take the photos, showing the ruin it was now. One of the photos was amazing, looking up from the inside of the house, through the broken roof, to the sky. He imagined showing the certificate to Lucy when he got home from school, and telling her he would share it with her, because of the brilliant photo she’d taken – and Lucy sticking the certificate on the fridge.
‘OK, Jonah, that’s enough drooling over your own genius!’ Mr Mann’s hand came down onto his back, and propelled him out into the sunshine.
The playground was a swirl of children, flying about and screeching. The clouds had all gone, leaving a mysterious blue emptiness. All the colours are there, he remembered. It’s just that blue light waves are shorter and smaller, so they scatter more when they hit the molecules. The endlessness of the emptiness made his stomach drop, as if he was falling. Then he saw Harold, over by the fence, looking through into the Infants’ playground.
‘Is your mum better?’ asked Harold as Jonah drew up beside him.
‘Yes.’ In the Infants, Raff and Tameron and their three chorus girls were rehearsing the Camber Sands rap for the Talent Show.
‘Can I come to tea, then?’
‘Maybe.’ Jonah remembered the first time Harold had come to tea, when they were in Reception. Harold hadn’t been himself, to begin with. He hadn’t wanted to play anything, or eat or drink anything, but had just stood with his hands in his pockets, mute. Jonah had been at his wits’ end, but then Lucy had asked Harold what his favourite animal was. ‘A peregrine falcon.’ He’d whispered it so quietly they had only just heard.
‘A peregrine falcon!’ Lucy had gasped. ‘How fast can it fly?’
‘Two hundred and forty-two miles per hour,’ Harold had told her. ‘Which is the same as three hundred and eighty-nine kilometres.’ After tea, on the way back to his flat, Harold had held Lucy’s hand all the way.
‘Your brother’s a boss dancer.’
Jonah leaned his forehead against the wire fence and watched. A crowd had gathered around Raff and Tameron and were joining in at the chorus. ‘Ooh, Smelly Shelly! Uh, Smelly Shelly!’
‘Who is Smelly Shelly anyway?’ asked Harold.
‘It’s a shell. They found it on the beach, when they went on the school trip.’
‘A shell!’
‘Yep.’
‘Did they make up all those words themselves? I bet your mum helped them.’
‘A bit.’ Her face came into his head, and he wondered if she was back in the house yet. ‘Saviour helped more. He thought of lots of the rhymes.’
‘Emerald’s dad?’
‘Yep.’ Jonah leaned more heavily onto the fence, feeling the wire digging into his forehead.
‘I think they’ll win. Do you?’
‘I dunno.’ Jonah pictured Raff’s face, glowing with triumph; Lucy’s face, in the audience, crying probably. Crying and clapping. He smiled.
‘Why are you smiling? Do you want them to win?’
Jonah slid his eyes towards Harold, who was inspecting him, his eyes tiny because of his thick glasses, his cheek resting on the wire. ‘Is there even going to be a winner?’ he asked. ‘I thought it was more – just a show.’
‘Well, if there is a winner, it should be them.’ Harold looked back at Raff, who had started breakdancing. He shook his head. ‘You might be Gifted and Talented, fam, but your brother’s boss at everything. He’ll win all the Sports Day races.’
Jonah shrugged. He rocked back onto his feet, and felt the grooves the wire had left with his fingertips. ‘You know the universe?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you think it really goes on forever?’
Harold shook his head. ‘No, there’s other universes. Millions of them.’
‘And then what?’
‘I dunno. Can I come round to tea tomorrow?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘If your mum’s better, why can’t I?’
‘I’ll ask, OK.’
11 (#ulink_f3fa31b4-b372-58e8-bb7c-5b38744caabd)
In the afternoon it was RE. The classroom had got really hot. Miss Swann’s boobs swung in her dress as she set out the painting stuff. Her hair, which was grey, even though she was quite young, had gone all frizzy.
‘So we’re all going to do a painting of something we’ve learned about Hinduism.’ There were drops of sweat glistening on her top lip. ‘Put on your overalls, please. Isiah. What are you going to paint?’
‘The burning bodies!’ said Isiah, with relish, and everyone started talking. They’d been doing Hinduism all term: the Diwali festival, some of the gods, the idea of karma and reincarnation, the Om symbol. It was Pearl who had told them about the dead bodies, burning beside the River Ganges. She’d seen them on a trip to India with her family.
‘The burning bodies. Cool. Anyone else? What about the Diwali festival?’ Miss Swann was setting out the paints and the water pots. She sounded tired.
‘Their melting faces!’ shouted Isiah. ‘And their skulls, cracking open!’ All the laughing and shrieking made it feel even hotter.
‘You can’t even see their faces,’ said Pearl. ‘They’re all wrapped up in cloth.’
‘Like mummies!’ shouted Will Rooney, and Jonah thought of Lucy. Are you back yet?
‘How do they burn them?’ Tyreese was asking. ‘With petrol?’ Tyreese was Raff’s friend Tameron’s elder brother. Jonah looked at his overall. He didn’t want to put it on. It was too hot.
‘No, with wood,’ said Pearl. ‘But some families can’t afford enough wood to burn the whole of the body, and they throw the leftovers into the river. So they put all these snapping turtles in the river, to eat up the leftovers.’
The class erupted. Jonah stayed silent, deciding what to paint. Maybe a picture showing the karma idea: lots of boomerangs, turning round and coming back, whacking into the throwers. But no, it was more complicated than that. Beside him, Harold was already painting, but Will and Isiah were still screaming about the man-eating turtles. Trying to work out how to do the karma boomerangs, he watched Miss Swann wipe her top lip with the back of her hand. It was actually too complicated. He would paint Ganesha, the god with the elephant’s head, instead. He slipped on his overall and picked up his paintbrush. Ganesha had an elephant’s head because when his father came home from a long trip he didn’t recognise him and cut his real head off thinking he was his wife’s new boyfriend. He thought of Roland and smiled, because of course Roland would recognise him. He remembered the scene at the end of The Railway Children, the clearing of the steam on the station platform, Bobbie crying, ‘Daddy!’ Such a happy ending. He closed his eyes, imagining Roland’s silhouette in the steam: tall, with high, square shoulders, and a little head with sticky-out ears.
When they had finished, Miss Swann pegged the pictures up to dry on the washing line that ran along the wall behind her desk. Jonah’s Ganesha had turned out quite good. He had one little wise smiley eye. Roxy, the girl who had only started at the school a few weeks ago, had done Ganesha too, but hers was just a pink blob with a trunk. There were lots of burning bodies, black shapes amid orange flames.
‘I love the way you’ve done the fire, Daniella,’ said Miss Swann. Daniella had done lots of curly waves, in red, orange and yellow. ‘And, you know, the body, to a soul, is like a set of worn-out clothes. Burning the body is setting the soul free.’
Emerald had done an Om sign, and Jonah gazed at it, trying to remember what Om meant. Something interesting. Lucy would know, because they chanted it in yoga lessons. He looked at the clock. Ten minutes until home time. Will you come and meet us? She didn’t usually, but maybe she would today.
‘This is awesome!’ Miss Swann was holding up Shahana’s painting. Shahana was the only Hindu in the class. She’d done a burning body, but hovering in the air above it was a baby, or maybe an angel. ‘Shahana, is this showing reincarnation?’
Shahana shrugged.
‘Who can remember what reincarnation means?’ Miss Swann pegged Shahana’s picture up.
‘It’s when you get reborn,’ said Pearl. ‘Your soul escapes through your skull, and it stays in the sky for a while, and then goes into another body.’
‘And if you’re bad, you come back as an animal,’ said Tyreese.
‘That’s it!’ Isiah shrieked. ‘I gonna be bad! Then come back as a leopard, and munch up my enemies!’
Everyone laughed and shot their hands up, wanting to say which animals they’d like to be reborn as. Emerald wanted to be a rabbit, and Tyreese wanted to be a python. Pearl wanted to be a unicorn. ‘Peregrine falcon,’ Harold whispered to Jonah. Jonah smiled. He was still trying to remember what Om meant, and put his hand up to ask.
‘Do Hindus believe in ghosts?’ asked Daniella.
‘Ghosts. Yes, I think they do!’ Miss Swann glanced at Shahana. ‘You’re a ghost before you get reborn. Just for a few days. Isn’t that right, Shahana? And the cremation of the body, and all the other rituals, help the ghost to leave, and get on with its next life.’
‘So is a ghost the same as a soul?’ asked Clem. Jonah’s shoulder was starting to ache, so he switched arms. Everyone was just shouting out, when it should be his turn.
‘I don’t think it’s the same, no,’ said Miss Swann. ‘I think a ghost is a trapped soul. But anyway, guys …’
‘I saw my auntie’s ghost once,’ said Shahana.
‘Oh.’ Miss Swann wiped her top lip again, and tucked her hair behind her ears.
‘Do you know what she’s come back as?’ asked Pearl.
‘She’s still a ghost. She’s trapped.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she was murdered.’
There were a few gasps. Miss Swann glanced at her watch, then at the clock.
‘Did the ghost have a knife sticking in it, then?’
Shahana turned around in her seat. ‘Daniella, he didn’t even kill her with a knife, actually.’
‘Could you see through her, or did she look normal?’ asked Clem.
‘She looked normal. She was in the kitchen, and when I came in she got up and walked out.’
‘Did she touch you?’ asked Clem. ‘Was she freezing cold?’
‘Shahana’s got allergies!’ shrieked Daniella. ‘She got touched by a dead ghost!’
Everyone went mad. Miss Swann’s top lip was glistening again, and her hair was free of her ears. ‘Quiet! Time for one more question. Jonah?’
‘Oh.’ Jonah had had his hand up for so long it took a moment to remember. ‘Miss Swann, what does Om mean?’
‘That is random!’ shouted Isiah. Everyone laughed, and Daniella leant across to poke him. Then the bell rang.
12 (#ulink_01aba5c7-f9e2-536c-adfc-c59947c42bae)
‘Is she here, have you seen her?’ Raff had come running out of his class.
‘Shut up, shut up!’ Jonah grabbed Raff’s arm and pulled him across the Infants’ playground.
‘Shut up yourself, dumbhead!’ Raff said, trying to kick his ankles.
‘You don’t have to talk so loud. Mrs Blakeston could have heard.’
‘So what?’
They were out of school, standing by the crossing. Saviour and Emerald had already crossed and were walking up the hill, hand in hand.
‘Let’s go with them,’ said Raff, tugging him. ‘I want to see Dylan.’
‘No, come on, let’s go home and see if she’s there.’
The dead fox was looking much deader now. Jonah wondered if its soul was already reborn, or whether it was a ghost, still, looking down at its smashed body. On Southway Street they passed Mabel and Greta, and their mother Alison, as they were going through their front gate.
‘Hello boys,’ said Alison. ‘Everything OK?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ said Jonah. Alison didn’t like Lucy, and she didn’t think the boys should walk to and from school by themselves. Taking Raff’s arm again, Jonah slowed them both right down, to make sure Alison and the girls were inside their own house before they got to their front door.
The door had been painted maroon, but a long time ago, and the maroon was all peeling off, showing the white paint beneath it. Jonah banged the knocker. Then he banged it again. Raff couldn’t quite reach the knocker, but he shouted, ‘Mayo!’ a few times through the letter box, while Jonah kept knocking. Then they stopped. The sun beat down and Jonah felt sweat trickle from his armpits. The white patches in the maroon reminded him of the marks Violet’s paws had made in the dirt on the van, and he stared at them for a moment, imagining they were some kind of code which, if he could crack it, would tell him what to do. He turned and looked over at the squatters’ house. Their front door was open, and he could see all the way along the dark hallway, with its red and gold wallpaper, to the rectangle of light at the end.
‘What shall we do?’ said Raff.
Jonah gazed at the rectangle, which was the squatters’ open back door. Were the two open doors, that blaze of light, another sign, a kind of call? He imagined walking down the hallway and out into the garden. The squatters would be sitting, or lying down, probably smoking, one of those big, fat sharing smokes, which had made Lucy ill. He felt Raff nudging him, and cleared his throat. ‘Maybe we should ask Ilaria if we can wait with her,’ he said.
‘Nah, fam.’ Raff shook his head and crossed his arms, his nose wrinkled. ‘Remember those sausages.’
Jonah nodded. It was the only time they’d been in the squatters’ house – a long time ago, just after Angry Saturday. The three of them, Lucy clutching a bottle, had walked through the open door and down the hallway, with its crazy velvet wallpaper, and its smell of incense and mould. Ilaria had been in the kitchen, making the big, ghostly sausages she called nori wraps, which were vegan, she’d told them. She had given him and Raff one each, and they were slimy and floppy, with bits sticking out each end. Neither of them could bear to take a bite, and had carried them around, not knowing how to get rid of them. In the back garden there had been a bonfire, the squatters and their friends all squatting around it, holding their hands out to it, their faces lit orange in the growing darkness. Everyone was white, and drab and raggedy compared to Lucy, who was wearing her red jumpsuit and her red lipstick. The red jumpsuit had a gold zip up the front, and the zip had worked itself down, so that you could see where her bosoms touched each other. He’d reached up to try and push it back up again.
Then a man had offered Lucy a big smoke, and she’d taken a few puffs on it. The man had a single, very long dreadlock coming out of his chin, and Jonah and Raff hadn’t liked him, but Lucy had started chatting to him, all giggly and bright. The dreadlock man had stayed quiet, and after a while Lucy had stopped talking and gone inside. He and Raff had found her in the sitting room, lying on the floor with her eyes closed, moaning. They had both been really worried about her, and had taken it in turns to stroke her forehead. Ilaria had come in with a glass of water, and Lucy had managed to sit up and sip some. After a while she’d been well enough to stand up, and Jonah and Raff had taken her home.
‘Let’s go back to school,’ said Raff. ‘She might have gone in through the other gate, and still be waiting for us.’
‘OK.’ Jonah followed him back the way they’d come.
The school gate was already closed, so you couldn’t get in without pressing the buzzer, but they could see that both playgrounds were empty by looking through the railings.
‘OK, let’s go to the park, then,’ said Jonah. He could see Christine, who was the school manager, and much stricter than any of the teachers, peering at them through the office window. ‘Come on.’ He tugged Raff’s arm. ‘We could practise, for Sports Day.’
‘I want to go to the Martins’,’ said Raff.
‘We can’t. They’re having a special dinner.’
‘So? They won’t mind us coming.’
‘They might want to be on their own.’
Raff dropped his school bag on the ground and kicked it.
‘And when Lucy gets back, she won’t know where we are.’ Jonah picked Raff’s bag up and held it out to him, aware that Christine was still watching them. ‘Come on, let’s go home. If she’s still not there, we can get in through the back.’
They crossed the crossing and walked down the hill again, Raff dragging his school bag along the ground.
‘Raff!’
It was Tameron. He was squatting on the kerb over the fox, with Tyreese from Jonah’s class, and their elder brother Theodore, who went to secondary school. Tyreese was poking at the fox with a stick and the others were watching.
‘They shouldn’t just leave it like that, man,’ said Theodore.
‘Look at its eye!’ cried Tameron. ‘You lookin’ at me, Mr Foxy?’
‘Should we burn it?’ suggested Tyreese. He looked at Jonah. ‘You know, like the Hindus.’ Theodore shrugged and pulled out a lighter.
‘Come on, Raff,’ said Jonah.
‘Wait! I want to see it burning!’ said Raff. Jonah stepped forward and peered over their heads. Theodore wasn’t holding the lighter near enough, and anyway the flame was tiny. He looked at the fox’s face. Its eye was open, and for a tiny moment it was like it was alive, alive and wanting his attention.
‘Let me try, bro,’ said Tyreese. Theodore passed him the lighter, and Tyreese managed to slightly singe the fox’s fur before burning his thumb and dropping the lighter to the ground.
Theodore picked up the lighter and put it back in his pocket. ‘Not gonna burn with just that little thing.’
‘We need petrol!’ said Tyreese.
‘Petrol!’ cried Raff. ‘We got petrol!’
The brothers looked at him, interested, and he looked back at Jonah. Jonah shook his head.
‘Why not!’ said Raff.
‘I don’t think we should,’ said Jonah. ‘And anyway, we might not be able to get in.’
‘Why not?’ asked Tameron.
‘Our mum might not be back.’
‘I need to wash my hands, man!’ Theodore got to his feet. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
‘Can you get the petrol tomorrow?’ Tyreese asked Jonah.
‘Fox gone by tomorrow, Tyreese, roadsweeper take it away.’ Theodore pushed his brother forward, and the three of them walked away down the hill.
13 (#ulink_a1c28b93-285e-5572-8b7a-80cf259ab888)
They tried knocking on the front door again, but not for long.
‘What, then?’ said Raff.
‘It’s fine,’ said Jonah. ‘The back door is definitely open. We can go through the Broken House.’
Around the corner, he trailed his fingers along the splintery fence, as he had that morning, but Raff kept to the kerb because he was scared of the passionflowers. Just as they reached the loose board, they heard a shout from across the road. It was Leonie, leaning out of her doorway.
‘Where’s your ma?’ she shouted.
‘Let’s run, fam!’ whispered Raff.
‘At the shops!’ Jonah called back.
Leonie shook her head, tutting and muttering, and came out onto the pavement, tossing her hair and clip-clopping in her high-heeled mules. She stood with her feet apart and her hands on her hips.
Raff snorted. ‘Hench!’ he whispered.
‘You’re not going in there, it’s too dangerous, you hear me,’ she shouted. The Kebab Shop Man came to lean in his own doorway, and she turned to him. ‘Some child is going to get themselves killed in there!’
The Kebab Shop Man nodded, and lit a smoke.
‘Come here!’ Leonie shouted, beckoning them. Ignoring Raff’s mutterings, Jonah took hold of his hand, looked right and left, and crossed them over. Leonie’s bosoms were straining out of her pink lace dress. Her fingernails were pink too, pink and incredibly long, and her black braids tumbled out of the top of her head like a waterfall.
‘I know you two boys got your heads screwed on,’ she said. ‘So I’m surprised at you, even thinking of going in that place. It’s dirty in there, you hear me?’ Like Miss Swan, she had beads of sweat in the groove between her upper lip and her nose. ‘There’s nasty things, poison, make you really sick.’
They both nodded.
‘Or, failing that, the place will topple over, smash them little bodies of yours into a pulp.’
Jonah nodded again, squeezing Raff’s hand. He looked over at the Kebab Shop Man, who shook his head, flicked his smoke away and disappeared back inside.
‘OK, come,’ said Leonie. ‘You can sit with me and Pat until your ma pulls her head out the clouds and remembers her responsibilities.’
‘No way,’ whispered Raff, as she clopped back in. ‘She is hench, and her sweets are rank.’
‘You coming or what?’ Leonie was holding open the door for them. Jonah took a firmer hold of Raff’s hand.
It was lovely and cool inside, from the many electric fans. The lady from the betting shop was having her hair done. She was a tiny little woman, very old and very white, and she was so low in the hairdresser’s chair she could only just see into the mirror. Pat was standing behind her, putting bright blue curlers in her thin white hair. In the mirror, the old woman’s broken-egg eyes slid to meet Jonah’s. She used to let Roland bring him and Raff into her shop on Saturdays, but she didn’t seem to recognise him. He reckoned she must be over a hundred years old.
‘Look who I found,’ said Leonie.
‘The young gentlemen! Such a nice afternoon, why ain’t they playing football in the park?’
‘That dumb-arse mother of theirs gone off to the shops, left them to fend for themselves in the street, can you believe it? No disrespect, boys,’ said Leonie.
She led them to the back of the shop, her pink lace bottom swinging, and sat them on the squishy white sofa. In front of them, on the glass coffee table, stood a bowl of sweets and a pile of magazines.
‘Someone needs to phone the council to come and mend that fence, before a child dies in there,’ said Leonie, lowering herself into the swivel chair behind the desk.
‘Go on, then,’ said Pat.
Leonie sucked her teeth. ‘And be hanging on the phone all afternoon and night. Got better things to do with my time. Help yourselves to sweets, boys.’
Jonah said, ‘Thank you,’ but he didn’t like Leonie’s sweets either. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a tall, pink shape appear outside the shop window, and he stiffened, because it was the Raggedy Man again. He was peering in, or maybe peering at his own reflection, his arms long and loose by his sides. It was a girl’s tracksuit, Jonah realised. That was why it was pink, and why it was so short on his arms and legs.
‘What’s he want?’ Pat moved forwards, waving her arms at him, and he stepped back from the glass.
‘Leave him be, poor soul,’ said Leonie.
‘Leave him be! I don’t want him staring in at me like a Peeping Peter!’
‘Tom,’ Leonie corrected her, gazing at the Raggedy Man, who was shuffling backwards and forwards now, like a car trying to park in a small space. ‘Something got to him today.’
The Raggedy Man moved out of sight, and Leonie sat forward and looked at the computer screen, clattering her fingernails on the desk. Then her hand became still, and a deep silence fell. Jonah and Raff sat upright, watching Pat’s hands wrapping strands of hair around the blue rollers. The old woman’s messy eyes were now closed. Maybe she was dead. Jonah heard Lucy giggle in his head. But her ghost would be here, until they burnt her body. He glanced around him. Was a ghost the same as a soul? He tried to remember what Miss Swann had said. That a ghost was a soul that was stuck, waiting to go to Heaven, or be reborn? ‘Leave him be, poor soul.’ But the Raggedy Man seemed more of a ghost than a soul, a sad, lost, waiting thing. Leonie pulled a tissue out of the box on the desk, and pressed it under her nose, leaning back in her chair. The loud electric buzz made the boys jump and the old lady’s eyes fly open. Leonie put the tissue down and said, ‘That’s my 4 o’clock.’
‘Bit early, ain’t he?’ said Pat. The old woman’s eyes closed again.
Leonie swung round in her chair. Her legs splayed and her hands rested on her belly as she and the boys surveyed the man on the tiny screen above the doorway that led out to the back. He was a fat white man, in shorts and a vest and flipflops. As they watched him he looked edgily around Leonie’s little backyard.
‘Better get him over with. He won’t take long,’ said Leonie, and with a groan she got back to her feet. They watched as she disappeared through the doorway, and then as the back of her head appeared on the screen. The man moved towards her, and then they were both gone, and the yard was empty again.
Jonah sank deep into the squishy sofa. The noise of the fans was making him feel sleepy, and he closed his eyes. Where have you gone, Lucy? He got a flash of her face, but then Bad Granny came looming at him, and he opened his eyes and sat up. He felt Raff’s elbow in his ribs, and looked down at the magazine open in his brother’s lap. Pictures of naked men and women, sexing each other. Raff was giggling silently, full of shocked delight, but Jonah took the magazine off him and put it down on the coffee table. ‘Let’s go,’ he mouthed.
Pat’s hands were busy with the old woman’s hair. They walked very softly past her, and to the front door. As Jonah pulled the handle, the old woman’s eyes opened and slid to them again. Pat said, ‘Off now, gentlemen, my regards to your ma.’
14 (#ulink_81f7a1c7-8767-5d4b-94e4-bd261d35903a)
Raff was looking edgy, like the man in Leonie’s backyard. ‘They’re just flowers,’ said Jonah. There were hundreds of them, all over the Broken House fence, staring silently, with their purple spiky eyelashes and their downturned yellow mouths.
‘I don’t like them. They look like Bad Granny.’
Jonah snorted, but Raff’s face was strained.
‘It won’t really fall on us, you know, Raff. It’s been standing up this long, it’s not going to suddenly collapse, just because we’re in there.’
Raff nodded.
‘You can wait for me round the front, if you don’t want to come.’
Raff shook his head. ‘Don’t want to be on my own.’
‘Well, OK, come, then.’
Jonah went first, picking his way carefully along the faint and narrow path that led through the rubbish-strewn vegetation. He looked up at the house, and its boarded-up windows were like blank, daydreaming eyes, and the doorless back doorway was mouthing a silent ‘Oh’. It had been here, all alone, for a very long time now, he found himself thinking, and he tried to remember which fairy tale it was when the prince hacks through the forest to get to the sleeping castle.
Inside it was dark and cool, and it smelt of dust and bird poo. They could hear the pigeons, hundreds of them, bustling and burbling in the rafters. The back doorway led straight into the kitchen, which was reasonably solid, with a floor and a ceiling. There was a hulk of an oven, and two halves of a filthy ceramic sink lying on the floor beneath two taps. The light leaking through the entrance fell on the table in the middle of the room, and Jonah saw that there was an old camping stove on it, along with a metal teapot, a plastic lemon and a cluster of bottles and jars. By the table were two chairs, or frames of chairs, their seats missing, which made him think of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò poem. Two old chairs, and half a candle. One old jug without a handle. These were all his worldly goods: in the middle of the woods. He looked at the huge, square, robot face which had been spray-painted onto the far wall. There was a hatch right in the middle of the face, and he went and peered through it, into the mouldy smelling darkness which had been the dining room. When he turned, Raff was at the table, examining one of the jars.
‘Honey,’ he whispered. ‘Does someone live here?’
These were all his worldly goods: in the middle of the woods. Jonah joined him at the table. ‘Maybe,’ he said. There was a smoke lighter, and half a candle, and a sticky-looking teaspoon. The bottles were empty, apart from one, which was about a third full of a dark liquid. He picked up another jar and opened it, and sniffed. A spice. He couldn’t think of the name. He put the jar down.
‘Come on,’ he said.
The hallway was more hazardous, because most of the floorboards were gone. There was more graffiti, pictures and symbols, and some words, mainly names. To their left rose the staircase, still grand-looking, though one of the banisters had been broken by a fallen chunk of ceiling. Light fell through the hole left by the chunk, and they could hear the pigeons more clearly. To their right, the hallway led to the front door, which would have given onto the street, if it hadn’t been boarded up, and the fence erected in front of it. The door was intact, with its stained-glass window, and there were pegs, still, running along the wall next to the door. There was even a coat hanging from one of them. Opposite the pegs was a side table, with a bowl in it, a china one, and Raff, his fear overcome by wonder, went and dipped his hand in. He pulled out a pair of gloves, but then dropped them quickly, with a quiet screech, brushing a spider off his arm. He ran back to Jonah, and they both looked into the sitting room.
It was huge, much bigger than the kitchen. Jonah knew there had originally been two rooms, but that the wall between them had been taken down. He wasn’t sure, but he thought it would have been in the 1970s, when the house was a children’s home. He pictured it as the children’s playroom, with beanbags, and a ping pong table, and the Wendy house for the little ones. Now it was more like a cave than a room. The ceiling had fallen in, and the ceiling above it, so you could look up through the remaining beams and see the outlines of the upstairs rooms: the boarded windows, the doorways, the fireplaces, and even some patches of wallpaper. The floorboards were gone too, fallen down into the basement, along with lots of bricks and rubble from the upper floors.
Jonah jumped down onto the rubble, and a group of pigeons flapped hastily upwards. It wasn’t too big a drop, but it was easy to hurt yourself, because what you landed on tended to move. It was dark too, apart from the pool of light under the hole in the roof. He turned to help Raff down, and they crunched forwards a little way, until they reached the shaft of light. Jonah looked up.
‘It’s like a swimming pool! We could dive into it!’ That’s what Lucy had said, the day they’d crept in together and taken the photographs. As he gazed up through the remaining beams into the lopsided rectangle of blue, a tiny silver aeroplane appeared. Watching it crawl its way across to the other side, he remembered a film they’d watched on TV one afternoon, a really old film, called Jason and the Argonauts. While Jason tried to find the Golden Fleece, the gods watched him from an airy white palace, in their swishing togas, through a blue rectangle of water.
There was a tiny plop, and Raff said, ‘Yuk!’ Jonah looked down. The gob of poo had spattered just in front of them. He looked up again, to the beam that formed one edge of the rectangle. It was covered with pigeons. He could see their tails sticking out, black against the blue.
Jonah peered forwards into the darkness and saw the bed. It was an olden-days bed, with four wooden posts. It must have plummeted down from the floor above when the ceiling fell in. Had there been someone asleep in it? What a surprise they must have got. Lucy had gone right up to it and taken pictures, but Jonah had kept back. It was just too spooky, with its mattress, blankets and pillows all tidy, as if it was still in use. These were all his worldly goods: in the middle of the woods, these were all the worldly goods, of the Yonghy-Bonghy … Trying to silence the chanting voice in his head, Jonah looked away from the bed and over to where they were heading, the patch of light in the far wall. He whispered to Raff to follow right behind him, and stepped over a big piece of carpet, noticing the noughts and crosses pattern. The rubble rose and fell, sometimes steeply, and he had to keep peering down to check each step. He noticed two ping pong balls, pale, like giant pearls. To his right loomed the Wendy house. She’d taken a picture of that too. ‘Such a dear little house, Joney, and it’s like those Russian dolls, it’s a baby Broken House inside the big one.’ Behind the Wendy house was a piece of concrete pipe. He’d crawled into it last time, but she’d been too big. Now his feet slid among a heap of books, mainly open, like fallen birds. Among the books were more ping pong balls, and a toy train, and a Monopoly board. Further along, a baby doll, one-armed, face down – yes, he remembered that doll, and the feeling of wanting to turn it over, to see its face. He was aware of the bed, over on his left, but he kept his eyes on the ground in front of him. Then they were there, below the hole in the wall that used to be a window. The board that had once covered it was propped against the wall underneath, providing a slope up to what had been the windowsill. It would have been quite easy for Lucy, or any adult, to take a couple of big steps up the board, but it was a scramble for the boys. Raff scraped both his hands on the rough brick ledge, and Jonah hurt his knee. Out in the narrow space between the Broken House and their back wall, they examined their injuries and dusted themselves down. Then they surveyed the wall, which was surprisingly high from this side.
‘How does Mayo get over it?’ said Raff.
Jonah looked at the kitchen chair that had been positioned against the wall to their left. The back of it was broken, but the legs and seat looked in good shape. ‘Like that,’ he said. ‘Come on.’
They got on the chair together, and Jonah gave Raff a leg-up before hoisting himself up. They sat on the wall, their legs dangling against the warm brick, looking down at the familiar cracked concrete, the bright flowers, the gold bike, the corduroy cushion and the watering can. He got down first, lowering himself until he was hanging from the top of the wall by his fingers, letting go and remembering to bend his knees as he landed. Then he helped Raff down, and they let themselves in through the back door.
15 (#ulink_d9e23161-4005-569b-b3ef-b91eb7f6a487)
The house was really smelly now, much smellier than the Broken House, and there were lots of fat, black flies. Jonah propped the back door open and opened up the windows, so that fresh air would come in. Then he went to the bin and opened it. The stench hit him full in the face, and he quickly closed it again.
‘I’m thirsty,’ said Raff. Jonah picked a glass up off the draining board, rinsed it and filled it, water splashing on the dirty plates piled up in the sink. He passed it to Raff, and then opened the drawer that Lucy kept the incense sticks in. He took two sticks out of the open packet and the box of matches. Raff glugged the water down and put the glass back on the side. ‘I’m hungry.’
Jonah opened the fridge. He saw a mustard jar, a lime pickle jar, a tomato ketchup bottle and a bunch of slimy spring onions. They really needed to go shopping. Jonah felt cross with her for a moment. Then he remembered his certificate, and pulled it out of his school bag. ‘Look.’
‘I saw you get it in Assembly, dumbhead.’
Jonah found a space for it on the fridge door, amongst the photographs and postcards and all the previous certificates.
WELL DONE, JONAH!
In recognition of your excellent work
on your local history project.
He stood back, and ran his eyes over the photos. They went back to when he was a baby, and even before. There was the one of Lucy in a bikini, which he didn’t like, though at least she had her bikini top on. It had been taken long before he was born, and she was thinner, and her bosoms – no, boobs – looked even bigger, and she was thrusting them out, with her hands on her hips. Her lips were blowing a kiss to the photographer, who was presumably Roland, but it was difficult imagining her being like that with Roland.
‘What special dinner are the Martins having, anyway?’
‘Roast chicken.’ Jonah stared at young Lucy’s face, trying to imagine her being in love with Roland. They had met on a yoga holiday in Egypt. The photo might even be from that holiday, although Lucy had been ill for most of it. Roland had heard her in the night, in the bathroom, moaning, and he’d looked after her. He skimmed all the photos again, looking for Roland. There was one of him when he was maybe a teenager, with his arm around Rusty, his dog. Rusty was looking at the camera, and Roland was looking at Rusty, so it was his profile you could see, with his long knobbly nose and his quiff.
The only other photo with him in it was the one of their wedding day. The two of them, standing on some steps, Roland in a suit, and Lucy in a strange blue dress with a white collar. He was smiling, but she looked serious. She was slightly turned away from him, even though they were holding hands, and you could see her bump, in which a little tadpole Jonah had been swimming around. About a third of the photo had been torn off. Presumably because it showed Bad Granny.
The photo next to it was of Raffy, Baby Raffy, only just born, his stripy monkey toy in his tiny fist. Jonah had given him that monkey, in the hospital. Lucy had been sitting up in her big bed, and someone had lifted him onto her lap, and put the bundle that was Raff on his lap, and Raff’s fierce little face had gazed up at him. Everyone had been amazed at the way he held the toy. ‘What a strong baby! What a strong little baby!’ Jonah got a match out and lit both incense sticks.
‘Maybe there’s some sweets left.’ Raff was looking at the Advent calendar, which was high up on the fridge door, fastened with four magnets at each corner. They’d made it together last year, with pieces of red and green felt. It had twenty-four pockets sewn onto it, and the word ‘Christmas’ across the top. When Christmas was over, Lucy had said she was so proud of the calendar she couldn’t bear to take it down.
Jonah and Raff stepped forward together and dipped their fingers into the pockets. No sweets any more, they’d gobbled them all up, but Lucy’s fountain pen was in pocket number 17.
‘That’s what she was writing with. In the garden,’ said Raff, snatching it from him. Jonah nodded. It had been a present from Dora, along with the heavy, thick-paged book.
Brighter today.
‘Where’s her diary?’ He turned, his eyes scanning the messy room.
‘Here’s her keys.’ Raff used the pen to fish them out from between two piles of dirty plates. Jonah took the keys and looked at her elephant key ring. She was always forgetting her keys. The elephant reminded him of his painting of Ganesha, and the little wise eye. The sweet smell of the incense was filling the air. He put the keys down on the table and noticed the calendar, and the changes he’d made that morning. The first two weeks still so clean and bare, but now, with his dark blue additions, the third and fourth row were looking untidy. He squinted at the word beginning with C, and tried to think what PED might stand for. Then he flicked back to June. Vrischikasana, or Scorpion. A very difficult pose, a kind of handstand, but with your toes coming down to meet your head, like a scorpion’s tail.
June had been busier. Lots of her loopy scrawls. He ran his finger along the rows of numbers, going backwards through time. Dentist. They hadn’t bothered going in the end. He couldn’t remember why. Martins with D. Oh yes, the day they took Dylan round, so he could mate with Elsie. They’d sat on a blanket in the garden, watching the rabbits ignoring each other. Saviour had brought out tea and cake. Rhubarb cake. It had been quite cold.
‘I wish we had a time machine,’ said Raff. He had taken the pen to bits and was examining the little tube inside.
Jonah kept looking at the calendar. Time, a whole month, one circling of the moon, turned into thirty squares on a page. ‘What for?’ he said.
‘To take us to when she comes home. Then we wouldn’t have to keep on waiting.’
‘Or it could take us back to this morning. Before she went out.’ Jonah flicked the calendar back to July. ‘Then we could stop her from going.’ He put his finger under the word beginning with C. It might be Clink. Or maybe …
‘You can’t actually do that.’
‘Do what? Don’t do that, Raff. The ink will come out and go everywhere.’
‘Change things that have already happened.’ Raff kept squeezing. There wasn’t any ink in it anyway. ‘Otherwise everything would explode. There’s no point in going back. Only forward.’
‘But if you go forward you lose some of your life.’ Jonah thought for a moment. ‘Well, not if you came back again.’
Raff nodded. ‘You could go forward, see what’s going to happen, like who gets a certificate in Assembly, and then come back and make a bet on it.’
‘Well, you could bet on a horse race,’ Jonah pointed out. ‘You could put all your money on it, sell your car and your house, because you’d absolutely know which horse was going to win.’
‘Daddy would like that!’
Jonah frowned, looking at the photograph of Roland and Rusty. Rusty had died, ages ago, before the Egyptian yoga holiday. He was buried in Bad Granny’s garden. There was a gravestone, with his name. ‘I don’t think he would. He would think it was cheating. Which it is.’ He looked back at the calendar. PED. On the last day of term. Perfect End Day? ‘And anyway. Once you’ve gone forward, coming back again, you’re actually going into the past. So putting the bet on in the past would make everything explode.’
‘No, because you’d put the bet on in the new time, that came after you went into the future. The bit that nothing’s happened in yet.’
PED. Jonah frowned at the letters, thinking about time travel. ‘But when you’re in the future, watching the horse race, then it’s actually the present, isn’t it? And the time leading up to the horse race must have actually happened, otherwise …’ He closed his eyes, seeing the strange blankness of unwritten time. ‘I think what must happen is that you split into two.’ He opened his eyes. Raff was fiddling with the bits of pen again. ‘So your old self just keeps going, and not putting on the bet, and then your new self …’ He stopped again, trying to work it out. It was incredibly complicated.
‘No such thing as time machines anyway, stupid Peck.’ Raff dropped the pen pieces on the table and left the room.
16 (#ulink_fcf3c931-2da3-53a4-8153-7c5243e07233)
Her clogs were still there, and the umbrella, and the petrol can, and the bag with the swimming things. The stepladder was lying flat, taking up a lot of room. Jonah picked it up and rested it against the wall. Without saying anything, they wandered together from room to room, ending up in Lucy’s bedroom, where the air was still thick with the smell of her body. Raff climbed into her bed and lay down.
‘Why are they having roast chicken?’
‘Because of Dora’s cancer.’
‘She’s had that for ages.’
‘She got better from it. But Em said now she’s really ill and might die.’ Jonah surveyed the room. A big tear in the paper lampshade showed the curly light bulb inside it. The wardrobe door hung open, clothes spilling out, and two of the drawers were sticking out of the high chest of drawers. Lucy’s red silk dressing gown, with the dragon on its back, was hanging on one bedpost, and on the other was that smelly grey cardigan she’d borrowed the day they took Dylan to the Martins’. Her flowery top and denim shorts from yesterday were on the floor beside the bed, and her lacy pink pants were still inside the shorts. There was a dark stain on the cotton bit where her fanny went.
‘Do you believe her?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Mayo said it wasn’t actually that bad.’ Raff kicked the duvet off the bed. His trainers had made dirty marks on the bottom sheet.
‘When did she say that?’
‘I dunno.’ Raff sat up and swung his legs over so that he was sitting on the other side of the bed, facing Lucy’s dressing table, which was just a small, ordinary table with a piece of mirror propped on it. Jonah went and sat beside him, and they both looked at themselves in the dusty, greasy mirror. Jonah looked more like Roland, who was white, with a long, thin nose, whereas Raff looked more like Lucy, with his browner skin and his afro hair, and his huge, golden eyes.
Raff leaned forward and reached for her lipstick, which was lying amongst some lipsticky tissues. It didn’t have its lid on, and was all squashed and melted. Jonah noticed that two of Raff’s cornrows were coming out now. Lucy had put them in weeks ago, nice and tight, so they would last, but nothing lasts forever. He watched Raff putting the lipstick on his mouth, remembering Lucy doing the same thing the night before. The cricket had finished, and he’d gone upstairs to find her. She’d had her back to him, and their eyes had met in the mirror. She’d scraped her hair into a tight knot on top of her head, which made her look weirdly beautiful. ‘That hairstyle really suits you, Mayo,’ he had said. And then he’d said, ‘Lucy, I mean.’ He’d smiled, but she hadn’t smiled back; and her lipstick had been far too thick.
‘What’s up?’ said Raff, with bright red lips.
‘Nothing,’ said Jonah, but the memory had brought a coldness into his belly. ‘You look stupid with that lipstick.’
‘I look cool, bébé!’ Raff turned sideways to look over his shoulder into the mirror and blow a kiss at himself. Then he went over to her wardrobe and pulled out her sparkly fairy shoes. ‘Roast chicken’s my favourite. Why can’t we go to the Martins’? We could leave her a note.’
Jonah had a flash of the Martins’ house: of burrowing into that space behind the sofa and lying there, smelling what was cooking, and listening to Dora and Lucy talking. When they had first got to know them, when he and Emerald were in Reception, they used to go there nearly every day.
‘Or we could just tell Dora to phone her,’ said Raff.
The phone. Jonah turned to the bedside table. It was still there, next to the wine glass. ‘Have you seen her charger?’
Raff had put his feet into the sparkly shoes and was clopping around the room. ‘It’s down there.’ He pointed to the socket under the dressing table. Jonah crouched down, connecting the phone to the electric current. ‘Why didn’t she take her phone?’
‘She must have forgotten it. Like she forgot her keys.’
‘But where is she?’
The phone seemed to be charging. Jonah tried pressing the ‘On’ button.
‘Jonah.’ It was Raff’s very young voice again.
‘What?’
‘Do you think Bad Granny will come and try and steal us again?’
‘Stealing isn’t the right word, really.’
‘Why not?’
Jonah frowned. It was the word Lucy used, when she told the story, but he was sure there was a more grown-up way of talking about it. ‘She didn’t think Lucy should be allowed to look after us. But that’s not the same as stealing.’
‘Will she try again?’
‘No. I don’t think so.’ The phone wouldn’t turn on.
‘Maybe we should tell the Martins Mayo’s not here.’
‘I don’t think we should.’
‘Because of the cancer?’
‘Because they might decide to phone the police. And then the police will tell Bad Granny.’
‘And she’ll come and steal us.’ Raff’s voice had gone all husky. The phone suddenly bleeped. Then it bleeped a few times more, indicating missed calls and messages.
‘Yesss!’ Raff clopped over and pulled the phone out of Jonah’s hand.
‘Raff, what are you doing!’
‘We’ve got a message from Mayo!’ he said, pressing the buttons.
‘They’re not going to be from her, stupid! They’re from people who phoned her! Give it to me! You’ll delete them if you’re not careful!’
Jonah grabbed it back off him. There was a missed call and a voice message and two new texts. He played the voice message first. ‘It’s Dora,’ he whispered. Dora sounded cross and upset, tearful, even.
‘What’s she saying? Is she saying she’s going to die?’ Raff tried to get his ear right next to Jonah’s, but Dora’s voice had stopped.
‘She said, what’s going on, you ignore my texts and then phone me up at the crack of dawn.’
‘Who, Mayo?’
‘Yes. Shush.’ He looked at the most recent text.
Awful in the hospital. Hubby lost it totally. You and me need to sort things out. Come over with boys after school?
‘Let me look.’
‘Wait.’
The earlier one, sent at 11.07, was in a different tone:
Worrying about you is the last thing I need right now.
PLEASE FUCKING REPLY
‘Give it, Peck!’ Raff snatched it.
‘Raff, give it back. I want to look at the old texts.’
‘“Come. Over. With. Boys. After. School”,’ Raff read out. ‘Right, let’s go.’ He kicked the sparkly shoes off.
‘And what shall we say about Lucy?’
‘Say she didn’t want to come. Anything. Come on, fam.’
‘They’ll think it’s weird. They’ll want to speak to her.’
Raff sat down next to him, sighing, but then jumped up again. ‘Hey! I know! Let’s pretend to be Mayo, and write that we’re coming, but she’s too busy!’
Jonah frowned. It was actually quite a good idea, although pretending to be Lucy would be like lying.
‘Come on, Joney! Then we can see Dylan!’
Dylan. Lovely, floppy Dylan. They hadn’t seen him for weeks. ‘OK. What shall I write?’
‘Say, boys coming over now, but I’m a bit busy.’
Jonah typed:
Sorry, I am OK but very busy so great if you could have boys for tea shall I send them over now from Lucy
He showed it to Raff, who studied it. ‘You don’t write “great” like that. It’s g, r and the number 8.’
Jonah made the change, and pressed Send. Raff whooped and started dancing.
‘Put your trainers back on, then. And take the lipstick off.’
‘The Martins don’t care about lipstick, fam!’
It was true. Saviour would laugh, and Dora would tell Raff how glamorous he looked. Watching Raff prancing, he imagined being with Saviour in the kitchen, helping him with the meal; Saviour glancing sideways at him, saying, ‘Penny for them.’ He wouldn’t answer, and Saviour’s brown eyes would get even kinder. ‘That bad, eh?’
‘Not that good,’ Jonah whispered to himself. ‘Lucy’s gone, and we haven’t got any food. But the thing is, I can’t tell you.’
The phone bleeped. Raff came running to read the reply. It was two words:
Fuck yourself.
‘Oh Em Gee!’ said Raff, his eyebrow shooting up. ‘Is it really Dora who wrote that? That is bad swearing, man!’
Jonah felt like crying. He lay down on the bed.
‘Is it because she’s going to die?’ Raff sat next to him.
Jonah pushed his face into Lucy’s pillow. Raff picked up the phone and started pushing buttons. After a few minutes he tapped Jonah’s shoulder.
‘Look.’
Jonah peered at the screen.
I am so soz. Please dont die xxx
‘Have you sent it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Idiot.’ Jonah put his face into the pillow again.
‘Why?’
‘People don’t say stuff like that.’
‘Yes they do!’ The phone bleeped. ‘Yesss!’
Jonah rolled over and watched him frowning at the screen.
‘“Want to see the boys. Tomorrow, not now.” Shit!’ Raff threw the phone onto the bed. Jonah reached for it.
Want to see the boys. Tomorrow not now. All too tired.
Em in bits.
‘But they’re having roast chicken! Let’s just go!’
‘We can’t,’ Jonah scrolled back to look at the old texts. The most recent had been sent on Sunday morning.
Tonight X
Not from Dora. From a number, not a name.
‘What are you doing now?’
‘Nothing.’
‘We need to do something, Peck!’ Raff’s fist bashed at his shoulder.
Jonah stood up, putting the phone into his pocket. ‘Calm down, Raff. Let’s go and have a look in the freezer.’
17 (#ulink_b9e02ddc-5aaa-5f0d-8ded-7c92a662f18a)
They found some ice cream in the freezer, and a pizza, which they cooked in the microwave, so it came out more like a Frisbee than a pizza. Jonah tried cutting into it and it splintered into bits. He chopped up the mango instead, which was difficult, and he cut his finger, and the blood mingled with the mango juice on the kitchen table. The mango was completely delicious, but they still felt hungry so they ate the ice cream, which was butterscotch. They ate it straight from the tub, and finished it, and then they felt sick and went and lay on the sofa in the sitting room. The cricket was finished so they watched the Tour de France, but Bradley Wiggins wasn’t in it, and it was hard to work out what was going on.
‘Where is she?’
‘I don’t know.’
Raff sighed. ‘She must be dead.’
‘Don’t say that, Raff. Of course she’s not dead.’
‘Dead, or a bad man’s got her. Otherwise she would of come back by now.’
Jonah felt in his pocket for her phone, and held it, feeling its solidness. ‘The thing is, she might come back at any minute.’
Raff got up and went and opened the front door, and looked left and right. Then he slumped down onto the doorstep. Jonah went and sat next to him. Shadows had started to fall across the road, and it felt quiet and sleepy. The sky was still very blue, and Jonah thought about the gods in Jason and the Argonauts again, looking down, deciding what would happen next. Then Alison, Greta and Mabel appeared, from the direction of the park. Alison was carrying a big bag with a towel trailing out of it, so they’d probably been to the paddling pool. They were all quite pink, and Greta and Mabel were arguing. Alison was telling them not to, but then she noticed the boys and shaded her eyes to look at them. Jonah waved, but Greta hit Mabel, who burst out crying, and Alison was distracted from waving back. They went into their house and the road was quiet again, and Jonah felt a deep sadness steal up on him.
‘Jonah.’ Raff’s voice was thoughtful, and he was sitting very still.
‘What?’
‘Why doesn’t Alison like us?’
‘Because she’s not a very nice person.’
‘Is it because of Angry Saturday?’
Jonah stared at Alison’s dark green shiny door. ‘I think she already didn’t like us. Or didn’t like Lucy.’ He was remembering long ago, the itch of his spots and Raff crying all the time, and Lucy crying too, though she’d tried to hide it. ‘Lucy invited them to tea once.’
‘Really?’ Raff sounded like he didn’t believe it.
‘We both had chicken pox and we couldn’t go out anywhere, and it was really boring, and Daddy said Mabel and Greta had already had chicken pox and to invite them all over.’ Roland was always telling her she should make more of an effort with people.
‘I don’t remember them coming to tea.’
‘You were just a toddler. And anyway, they didn’t.’
‘Why not?’
Jonah stared at the green door. It had been lovely weather and Raff had been crying and crying, and Lucy had seen Alison coming out of the Green Shop with the girls in their buggy, and had put Raff down and run and opened the front door. He closed his eyes, remembering Alison looking down at him, commenting on his spots, and saying they’d got that one over with a few months ago.
‘So you can come in for a coffee!’ Lucy had cried, but they were off to the park to meet up with some friends. ‘Pop in later, then! Come for tea! 5 p.m.!’ And Alison had replied, over her shoulder, that that would be lovely. Lucy had spent all day tidying up and had even managed to make a cake, in between walking Raff up and down.
‘Because of Angry Saturday?’
‘I already told you, Raff, it was before Angry Saturday.’
‘So why didn’t they, then?’
Jonah closed his eyes again. They hadn’t come at 5 p.m., and they’d waited and waited, and then they’d gone to sit on the step to look out for them. And when they did finally appear, with lots of other mums with buggies, and Lucy had stood up, Raff on her hip, waving and smiling, Alison had waved back – but then she’d opened her own front door and all the mums and buggies had gone inside and the door had shut. And Lucy had sat back down, staring, with her sad, tired eyes, at Alison’s dark green door; and Raff had started crying again.
‘Is Alison racist?’
Jonah opened his eyes. Opposite, one of the squatters, the one with the bald head, came out and sat on the doorstep, just like them. The squatter was the opposite of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò, he realised, the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò being tiny, with a huge head, and the squatter being big and tall, with a tiny head.
‘Is she?’ Raff nudged him.
‘I don’t know, Raff. Probably not.’
The squatter looked across and nodded at them, and got out his tobacco and rolling papers. It was finally starting to cool down.
‘She’s not coming,’ Raff said.
Jonah watched the squatter light his smoke. The sadness was making his stomach hurt. He looked back at Alison’s front door. Alison doesn’t like you, Lucy.No one likes you. Even Dora doesn’t like you any more. The squatter sucked. Jonah watched the smoke billowing out of his nostrils.
‘Maybe we should phone Daddy,’ said Raff.
‘You can’t just phone people in prison. It’s more complicated than that.’
In the silence, they could just hear Alison’s voice, shouting at Mabel and Greta. The squatter was leaning over his knees, squishing the smoke out on the pavement. Then he stood up and stretched his arms above his head.
Raff stood up too. ‘Slingsmen,’ he said.
18 (#ulink_1cab76f8-61ee-50ca-a693-d6a9226842a4)
Jonah was Slygon, and Raff was Baby Nail. Jonah kept winning, but Raff started getting fed up, so he let him win a few. He kept an eye on the clock, and when it got to 9 p.m. he said it was bedtime.
‘That’s not fair, I haven’t won hardly any yet!’ Raff threw his nunchuck down and went and lay on the sofa, face down.
Jonah stared down at Raff’s back. Then he scrunched his eyes tight shut, to pray, or to make a wish, or to try and reach her, somehow. Please come back. He said it over and over in his head, but the only answer was the Slingsmen tune. His stomach lurched at the endless emptiness of everything, and he tried to get a sense of a god, watching him: Ganesha, with his kind little elephant eye, or the Christian god, his bearded face all cloudy. Or maybe a group of gods in their togas? Was what was happening a kind of test? If he did the right thing, would he get her back? And was she up there, with the gods, was she waiting for him to work it out, to pass the test, so that she could return; holding her breath, wanting to shout clues to him?
The Slingsmen tune tinkled on and on, with the occasional phwoof of a released missile. He opened his eyes, dropped his nunchuck, and pulled her phone out of his pocket. The smallness of it, the lightness, the scratched redness, the way it flipped open and closed: so familiar, it was like an actual part of her. He flipped it open and looked at the text from Sunday morning.
Tonight X
He glanced down at Raff, and walked out of the room.
In the kitchen he pressed the green call button and held the phone to his ear. As it rang, he batted away a fly, and looked out at the corduroy cushion in the yard. The phone rang and rang, and then it rang off. No voice telling him to leave a message; just silence.
He snapped the phone closed and laid it on the table. He went out into the yard and checked that the diary hadn’t slid under the cushion. He walked back into the kitchen and looked for it on the windowsills and among the piled-up plates and bowls. Then he squeezed his eyes tightly shut again, trying to see her, to bring up her face. I don’t know what to do.Can’t you send me a message? Or some kind of sign?
Back in the sitting room, he wandered over to Roland’s aquarium. The fish had died long ago, just after he’d gone to prison, and they’d emptied the water, and now the tank was full of random objects: chess pieces, a stripy scarf, a broken kite. No diary though. He looked down the back of the sofa, and then pushed his hands under Raff’s body, feeling for the book. Raff pushed him away, swearing, and he rolled onto his back on the floor. There were flies, about ten of them, hanging out on the ceiling. The shape they made could be a messy J for Jonah. Or maybe an L for Lucy. He stared at the insects, waiting for them to form a different shape, to start spelling out a word.
They didn’t. Raff was crying now. Jonah got up and turned off the TV, and came back and perched next to him.
The sudden knock made them both jump into the air. They raced the few steps to the front door, Jonah arriving first and tugging it open.
‘Where have you …!’ he began, preparing to dive up into her arms, but he fell silent, because it wasn’t her. It was Saviour.
19 (#ulink_9334a61d-0048-505d-87ba-8400429e495e)
The sun was setting now, and Saviour’s face was glowing in the pink, spooky light. He was carrying a small wooden crate, and his fingers were still purple. Normally they were glad to see him, eager to let him in – but they both stood in the doorway, gazing out at him.
‘Hello, Saviour,’ said Raff, finally. Saviour nodded and cleared his throat, but instead of saying something, he offered Jonah the crate. His eyes were strangely pale: caramel instead of the usual brown.
‘Thank you,’ said Jonah, looking down. Plums, not blackcurrants; fat yellow ones, their skins breaking open, showing the squishy flesh. He turned and put the crate down, next to the petrol can.
‘Are you going to let me in?’ Saviour’s voice was very croaky and his breath smelt like Lucy’s nail varnish remover.
‘Lucy’s not here,’ he said quickly. ‘She’s gone to yoga. She’s only just left.’
Saviour looked down Southway Street, as if he might catch a glimpse of her going round the corner.
‘Are you having roast chicken?’ asked Raff.
Saviour shook his head. ‘Not tonight.’ The words were slurred, as well as croaky. He must have been drinking.
‘Is Dora going to die?’
‘Shut up, Raff,’ said Jonah. Saviour’s weird eyes fixed on him. His pupils were two tiny black dots, and it crossed Jonah’s mind that an alien had taken over his body.
‘You can come in if you want,’ said Raff. Jonah nudged him, but Raff elbowed him back and jumped down from the doorstep. ‘You can play Slingsmen with us, until she comes back!’
‘Good plan.’ Saviour took a breath and seemed to become himself again. He stepped forward, putting a hand on Raff’s shoulder, but then stopped. His eyes had closed and his mouth hung open, his bulldog cheeks sagging low. It was like he had fallen asleep. He must be really drunk, which was strange, because he was meant to have given up alcohol forever. Then his phone started ringing, from the pocket on his shirt, and Jonah and Raff both jumped, but Saviour’s eyes stayed shut. Jonah and Raff looked at each other as it kept on ringing.
‘You should answer it,’ said Raff, shrugging the hand off his shoulder and giving him a little push. Saviour’s eyes opened, and he nodded and felt for his phone. Once he had it in his hand, he stared at the flashing screen.
‘Answer it, then!’ said Raff.
Saviour nodded again and held the phone to his ear.
‘Dad?’ Emerald’s voice was small and tinny, but clear.
‘Yes, love.’
Emerald’s voice began to wail, and Saviour flinched, suddenly wide awake. He cleared his throat. ‘OK, love. Don’t worry. I’m on my way.’ She kept wailing, but he cut her off. Slipping the phone back into his pocket, his alien eyes came to rest on Jonah again.
‘Saviour.’ It was Alison. She had probably been watching them from her front window. Saviour’s face stretched into a peculiar grin, but then he covered his mouth with his hand, as if he’d realised about his breath.
‘Alison. How are you?’ he said, through his fingers.
‘Fine.’ She said it emphatically, folding her arms tightly. She looked at the boys. ‘How’s your mum? Isn’t it time you were in bed?’
Jonah nodded.
‘Good. Saviour, I was wondering if I could have a word?’
‘It’s actually not the greatest time, Ali—’ He pulled out his keys and looked over at his van, which was parked outside the Green Shop.
‘It won’t take a minute.’ Alison took Saviour’s arm. ‘Goodnight, boys!’
Back in the sitting room, they watched Alison and Saviour reaching the van, Alison talking and talking as Saviour put the key in the driver door. He looked over at them, and Alison looked too, so they ducked down and lay on the floor.
‘Can she tell that he’s drunk, do you think?’ Jonah whispered.
‘Is that what’s up with him!’ Raff got to his knees, and risked another peek. ‘She’s too busy cussing Mayo,’ he said, lying back down. They listened to Saviour’s van drive away, and Alison’s shoes clipping back to her house. Then there was just the tinkly Slingsmen tune again. Jonah gazed at Roland’s aquarium, remembering the bright, flitting fish. Four parrotfish, three angelfish and eight swordtails. The fish food had run out, so they’d fed them cornflakes, and they’d all died.
Raff sat up. ‘Who’s going to read us a story?’ His voice was very small.
‘I’ll read a story,’ said Jonah. ‘What story would you like, Raffy boy?’
20 (#ulink_c9879c0b-3d19-5886-a1e8-23e12fa8a072)
It was very hot upstairs. They went into the bathroom and Jonah stood on the lid of the toilet and pushed the window wide open. The sky was all streaky, and the birds were singing – sweet little chirps in the dusk. A couple of flies had drowned in Lucy’s bathwater, and neither of them wanted to put their hands in and pull out the plug. They brushed their teeth and took off their clothes, and Jonah bundled them all into the laundry basket, but then he took them out again, remembering that there were no clean ones. Raff got a book out of their bedroom, and they went into Lucy’s room with it, because that’s where she read to them sometimes, sitting up in her bed with a boy either side. They got in and pulled the sheet up over their naked bodies. Her smell was coming from the tiny particles of her left behind on the cotton, and in the air. Was that what a ghost was, millions of molecules, hanging together in an invisible swirl? He opened the book. It was one that they’d got out of the library ages ago, but never got round to reading, a proper chapter book, and the words looked very small and close together. Trying to get rid of the idea that Lucy was dead, he focused on the first sentence.
‘“Until he was four years old James Henry Trotter had a happy life,”’ he read. But sadness and worry gripped his stomach, and he let the book drop into his lap. Through the window, above the Broken House, he saw that the sky was finally darkening, and as he watched a single star came out.
‘Why have you stopped?’ Raff sat up and peered at Jonah’s face. Jonah looked down at the book. Then he shut it and got up and went over to Lucy’s chest of drawers.
Some of her underwear was spilling out of an open drawer, and he pushed it all back in and pushed the drawer shut. He climbed up, wedging his toes onto the wooden handles, and reached for the wire tray that lived on top of the chest. It was piled high, with letters and other bits of paper, and when he jumped back down with it, most of the papers slid out and fluttered to the floor.
‘What are you looking for?’
‘Her diary.’ It wasn’t there. He sat down and gathered up the fallen papers, which were mainly printed, and to do with money: lots from Jobcentre Plus, a couple from Smart Energy, a few from something called HSBC. As he gathered them up again, he noticed a postcard from the dentist saying they should come for a check-up, a letter about a clinic appointment, and one about their overdue library books, which made him shake his head. A white, handwritten envelope stood out from all the printed pages, and he stopped piling up the papers to look at it. Their address, of course, in handwriting he recognised; and there was a prison stamp on the back.
‘What are you doing?’ Raff sounded like he might start crying again. Jonah pulled the two sheets of letter paper out of the envelope.
Hello there, Lucy
Firstly, I want you to know that I don’t blame you for refusing to testify. I don’t really blame you for anything.
Raff had come to stand next to him. Jonah looked at his brother’s feet, which were big and long-toed, like Lucy’s, and then at the date at the top of the page. The letter was from 2011, the year Roland had got sent to prison. Ages ago. He stood up. ‘I think we should go into our own room,’ he said.
It was a tiny bit cooler in their room, and not as smelly. They could hear Leonie murmuring to someone, in between big drags on her smoke, and the other person grunting now and then. Raff got into his bed and Jonah sat on the floor, the carpet rough on his bare bottom. Raff said, ‘Read the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.’
Some of the words in the poem were hard, but he knew it more or less off by heart. He tried to read it like Lucy did, in the same soft, chanting voice.
On the Coast of Coromandel
Where the early pumpkins blow,
In the middle of the woods
Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.
As he read, he remembered again the feeling from the evening before, listening to Lucy’s voice: his own mother, unknown, unreachable.
Two old chairs, and half a candle,–
One old jug without a handle,–
These were all his worldly goods:
In the middle of the woods,
These were all the worldly goods,
Of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.
Such a sad story. Such a strange, lonely man, who loves the Lady Jingly Jones, who is also lonely, with only her hens to talk to. But when he asks her to be his wife, and to share his worldly goods with her, she cries and cries, and twirls her fingers, and says no.
‘Mr Jones – (his name is Handel, –
Handel Jones, Esquire, & Co.)
Dorking fowls delights to send,
Mr Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò!
Keep, oh! keep your chairs and candle,
And your jug without a handle,–
I can merely be your friend!
– Should my Jones more Dorkings send,
I will give you three, my friend!
Mr Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò!’
Raff sighed and rolled over. Jonah paused, staring at the picture: the Lady Jingly Jones, with her huge, feathered hat, weeping. Why had Handel Jones left her there on that heap of stones? And why did he send her hens? And would it really be so wrong of her to get together with Yonghy? Then he wondered if Handel might be in prison, like Roland, and Angry Saturday started flashing in his head. The sexing on the table, and then the peacock, with its terrible cry, and Bad Granny’s hand, reaching for him, like a claw. Although the way Raff was breathing meant he was already asleep, Jonah started reading again.
‘Down the slippery slopes of Myrtle,
Where the early pumpkins blow,
To the calm and silent sea
Fled the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò
There beyond the Bay of Gurtle,
Lay a large and lively Turtle, –
You’re the Cove,’ he said, ‘for me;
On your back beyond the sea,
Turtle, you shall carry me!’
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò,
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.’
There were another two verses, but it had got too dark to read them. Jonah sat still, feeling himself to be very small. Were the gods all talking about him, deciding whether to help him? Or had they forgotten about him? Had something more interesting come up? He closed the book and ran his finger over the title on the front cover. The black letters had been stamped into the red cardboardy stuff, so you could feel them.
THE JUMBLIES & OTHER
NONSENSE VERSES
The book had been Lucy’s mother’s book, and it was on its last legs. Lucy had Sellotaped its spine, to keep it going a bit longer. There had been a raggedy paper jacket, but it had fallen to bits. He opened it at the first page, where Lucy’s mother had written her name, very neatly. Rose Marjorie Arden. Arden, because she’d written it when she was a child, long before she’d married Lucy’s father and become Rose Marjorie Mwembe. Underneath, in much bigger, messier writing, was Lucy’s name: Lucy Nsansa Mwembe. She was still Lucy Mwembe, even though she was married to Roland. These days women who got married didn’t always change their names to their husband’s. Nsansa had a meaning; she’d told him, but he couldn’t remember what it was.
He let the book slip from his lap, tipped to one side and curled into a little ball on the floor. They hadn’t sung the song, he realised, the song she sang to them every bedtime; a kind of prayer, thanking God for the day, and asking him to look after them through the night. Glory to thee, my God this night … He sang the words in his head, picturing that old, Christian God, with his big white beard, all fatherly and silent, waiting to be noticed. Then he stopped, thinking instead about Rose. She had died a long time ago, when Lucy was a child. Lucy couldn’t remember her that well, but she remembered the bedtime song, which was an English song; and that she’d called her Mayo, a Zambian word for Mummy. She had a tiny photograph of her face in the locket she wore on her throat, showing that she’d been white, with a very straight fringe of dark hair. Their other grandmother. Was she up there with the old, fatherly God, and the angels, with their white, seagull wings? Or had she been reborn? What would she have come back as? He tried to get a sense of her, of her smile, her motherliness, but all he could get was that tiny, faded face in the locket.
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Tamsin Grey
'A wonderful, artfully addictive novel' IAN MCEWANWhen Jonah and Raff wake up on Monday, their mother Lucy isn’t there.Although he’s only nine, Jonah knows enough about the world to keep her absence a secret. If anyone found out she’d left them alone, who knows what could happen to him and his little brother?As the days go on, he puzzles over the clues left behind: who sent Lucy flowers? Why is her phone in a plant pot? Why are all her shoes still there? And who in their neighbourhood might know more about Lucy than he does?
Copyright (#ulink_1c8afd00-074a-5093-8caa-45f241ccb755)
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, whilst at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.
The Borough Press
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Tamsin Grey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © Tamsin Grey 2018
Excerpt from James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
reprinted by permission of Penguin Books. © Roald Dahl 1961
Excerpts from The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò by Edward Lear
Cover design by Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Cover photographs © Elisabeth Ansley / Trevillion Images (http://www.trevillion.com/) (boys), Shutterstock.com (https://www.shutterstock.com/) (city)
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Source ISBN: 9780008245634
Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008245627
Version: 2018-11-02
Praise for She’s Not There (#ulink_20c1d3a1-ccd0-5df3-93f3-354bb8172a7a)
‘Tamsin Grey is wise about the street, and wise about the heart, especially the hearts of children. Her multi-racial London pulses with Dickensian energy and delight. She has that rare gift of combining in her prose the lyrical with the precise. She’s Not There is a wonderful, artfully addictive novel’
IAN MCEWAN
‘Brilliant and heartbreaking (and funny)’
KIT de WAAL
‘[An] amazing debut, packed with South London atmosphere . . . it has To Kill a Mockingbird written all over it . . . brilliant’
DAILY MAIL
‘Mesmerisingly good’
LISA JEWELL
‘Tamsin Grey’s young narrator inhabits a south London that is diverse, inclusive and very real. She’s Not There is a beautiful, sad, strong story, enticingly told – and an extremely assured debut’
STELLA DUFFY
‘There’s an almost unbearable tenderness to Tamsin Grey’s sad, sweet debut’
PSYCHOLOGIES
‘A gripping read, the voices of the children are pitch perfect and will stay with you long after the last page’
ROSIE BOYCOTT
Dedication (#ulink_ed8b1516-d053-513d-9c7e-0f120e4b659b)
In memory of the artist
Michael Kidner RA
1917 – 2009
Contents
Cover (#u38ec41b6-78a0-5980-b247-259ab0adc572)
Title Page (#u7146416a-3e65-51d2-aef7-7221a6d35c9f)
Copyright (#u2784f57e-fa6f-589f-9634-df941cfbe275)
Praise for She’s Not There (#u1dead61c-f04f-54fd-b20f-d4014e6f23c0)
Dedication (#u7418904a-16fc-5e23-951d-2d66b18bf13f)
July 2018 (#u5875f319-9ab7-5fa2-9851-f51a7298a0f4)
Chapter 1 (#ue5afecb3-8224-5e0d-9ec0-97b37ba900b3)
Chapter 2 (#uad878bde-26e1-5b39-9586-92bfa2ac3a11)
Chapter 3 (#u9c522cf9-2215-5aef-953d-576a289b0388)
July 2013: Monday (#uf6e5bd05-d5a8-5ef1-ac7d-cfdad6fbf102)
Chapter 4 (#ub79e340b-904a-567b-8b5b-38bf55645575)
Chapter 5 (#u2006b260-700d-5b19-93ca-8d3afe88d685)
Chapter 6 (#ubfc9e24b-d236-5954-9b81-d870cb4db643)
Chapter 7 (#ua1e98c80-d4cb-51d9-a86a-c3d4c3d92be0)
Chapter 8 (#u7b45c9c6-de38-52c1-abe7-5ac8ad901746)
Chapter 9 (#u42062e37-2060-5473-8f57-af84ef5edf18)
Chapter 10 (#u26cc8eb8-0a5a-5bf6-a59f-471b77d3b40a)
Chapter 11 (#u492351f9-795f-5285-ab62-3bc3fc39b7eb)
Chapter 12 (#uf1c9984c-77d0-515f-8d71-868dda871b29)
Chapter 13 (#u71fbe720-b106-5771-a131-2df9693db649)
Chapter 14 (#udc247c99-8867-50ed-8d36-221142d05211)
Chapter 15 (#u0084fb16-c65d-5800-96a4-44e1965fcc82)
Chapter 16 (#uebee3906-299e-582e-82c9-623c3566bc1c)
Chapter 17 (#u0f9bcc94-8c30-5edf-8b6e-f0c05ebbb20e)
Chapter 18 (#u9609906d-d955-5d93-a5e6-e6be23d9f970)
Chapter 19 (#u51fbb1c0-00b1-5f3d-8d4a-b0c1c8d9dec9)
Chapter 20 (#udd9cb3fc-061f-54bf-a681-016b6dcf5a0a)
Tuesday (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Wednesday (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 47 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 48 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 49 (#litres_trial_promo)
Thursday (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 50 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 51 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 52 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 53 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 54 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 55 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 56 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 57 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 58 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 59 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 60 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 61 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 62 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 63 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 64 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 65 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 66 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 67 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 68 (#litres_trial_promo)
Friday (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 69 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 70 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 71 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 72 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 73 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 74 (#litres_trial_promo)
Saturday (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 75 (#litres_trial_promo)
July 2018 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 76 (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
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1 (#ulink_c2fb723a-57a2-5be3-8b40-094712e11755)
The invitation from Dora Martin caused that shift in Jonah’s belly, like a creature waking up in its dark pit. ‘Do we have to go?’ he murmured, knowing that they did. The trek into London to see the Martins had become a July tradition. He pushed away his cereal bowl, last year’s event flooding his head: the welcoming hugs and exclamations; the long, tense argument about politics; and then the vigil in the back garden, with the scarecrow and the wind chimes and the rabbits.
When the day arrived – a baking hot Friday – it turned out everyone was going to Frank’s for a swim after school. Jonah waited until after band practice to tell his friend he couldn’t make it.
‘That’s mad.’ Frowning, Frank nosed his guitar into its sleeve. It was cool and mellow in the practice room, the blinds drawn down against the sun. Because of his bad hand, Jonah used a harness to help him hold his trumpet. Frank watched him take it off. ‘Lola’s coming!’
His friend’s sly smile made Jonah blush. He turned away and watched Mr Melvin cross the room, open the door and step into the rectangle of blazing light.
‘Who even are the Martins?’ asked Frank.
‘We knew them when we lived in London. Dora and my mum were, like, best friends.’ The blinds flapped in a sudden gust, and Jonah got a flash of the sheets on the Martins’ washing line billowing, the crescendo of wind chimes, and Dora, sprawled in her deckchair, her feet in a bucket of water.
‘Come on, guys.’ The other band members had disappeared and Mr Melvin was waiting to lock the door. Jonah settled his trumpet into its case.
‘Get out of it. Say you’re ill.’ Frank zipped up his guitar, frowning again.
‘I just can’t, really.’ Jonah made a wry face, but now his friend wouldn’t look at him. ‘It’s – a kind of anniversary. They cook roast chicken.’
‘Roast chicken? That’s mad. It’s like 30 degrees centigrade.’ Frank spun away, towards the door.
‘It was our favourite. Well, more my brother’s,’ he explained, but to himself, because Frank was ducking under Mr Melvin’s arm. ‘Roast chicken and roast potatoes.’ He got a sudden flash of Raff, aged six, wolfing down a leg.
2 (#ulink_27057ff0-d56d-53f4-8738-412ac54bd55d)
It had been agreed that Jonah could go to the Martins straight from school, rather than traipsing all the way home to go with the others in the car. The thought of the journey cheered him up. He hadn’t travelled into London alone before. On the train, he put his backpack and his trumpet case in the luggage rack, shrugged off his blazer and sprawled across two seats, luxuriating in his independence. They’d been playing the ‘Summertime’/ ‘Motherless Child’ medley in band practice, and the interweaving tunes played on in his head as he gazed through the fast-moving glass at the slow-drifting clouds. Cumulus humilis. He had been obsessed with clouds that summer, had learnt all their names. He saw the white sheets rising again, Dora’s huge sunglasses, her yellow dress, the straggly hair in her armpits.
Dora Martin. Quite a famous artist these days. She had written the invitation, in her elegant, spiky slant, on a postcard featuring one of her paintings: ‘It’s that time again, and I’m so hoping you’ll join us.’ He noticed that the creature – a kind of trapped emotional density – was awake again, and he shifted himself sideways, resting his head on his bent arm. It would be nice to see Emerald, who’d been in his class and would have updates on Harold and all the other Haredale kids. Sometimes I feel like I’m almost gone. He closed his eyes, letting the sleepy, mournful tune weave with the rhythm of the train.
He dreamed he was high above London, among the cool, silent clouds, looking down at the glittering sprawl. You were our home. He felt a leap of hope and dropped closer, looking for a sign of welcome, but the cranes rose and tilted, like slingsmen, the river shone like a ribbon of foil and, to the west, an acrid plume of grief rose from a blackened finger. He dove down like Superman, circling his old familiars: the Cheese Grater, the Shard, the Knuckleduster. Down further, between the chimney pots, into the grime of the centuries, and then southwards, along arteries and veins. The high street now, their high street: Chicken Cottage, Hollywood Nails, We Buy Gold. Left up Wanless Road, low under the bridge, the car repair yard, that smell from the warehouse. Dropping to the ground, he was his nine-year-old self now: bare feet on the warm pavement, fingers dragging along the fence. Opposite, the four shops, asleep, their metal shutters pulled down. And on the corner, there it was, their house, so familiar, but long forgotten. There was someone looking out of the sitting-room window, someone waiting for him. Mayo?
The train entered an urban canyon, sound waves bouncing off concrete and glass. He sat up straight, wiping the drool from his chin, and leant his forehead against the window. The tall buildings had fallen away, and the clouds were towering. Cumulonimbus. He suddenly remembered the clouds poster, Blu-tacked to his and Raff’s bedroom wall, and the dream flooded him: the cool vapour, the eerie silence, the dizzying drop down; and their old house, right there, the scruffiness of it, every tiny detail. He hadn’t seen it since they’d left; they had never gone that way in the car: but now, he realised, he could go and have a look at it, on his way from the bus stop to the Martins’ house. A very short detour, to travel back five years. The shift again; the creature, wordless and sightless, like a blind baby seal, as his brother Raff’s voice came to him, clear as a bell, down the years. ‘We need a time machine.’ The two of them, in that messy kitchen, trying to work out what to do. Hands on his belly, he noticed his own face in the glass, his two eyes merged together. Then the train slid onto the bridge, and the breath caught in his throat. The million-year-old river, brown and glittering, full of boats, and the towers like giant androids, gazing glassily towards the future.
3 (#ulink_bb43bd8c-5ce6-56fa-b4f2-c535cf1ec247)
The car repair yard was silent, its gates padlocked, but there was that same oniony whiff from the warehouse. Same weather, of course, and the creature was moving again. Funny how, when it was asleep – and it was mostly asleep these days – he could forget it was there; that it had ever existed. He stopped at the bend in Wanless Road, setting his trumpet case down and wiping his palms on his trousers. Their house was still hidden from view, but he could see, across the road, the four shops. The Green Shop, the Betting Shop, the Knocking Shop, and London Kebabs. London Kebabs and the Betting Shop had their blinds down, and the Green Shop was all boarded up, but the Knocking Shop, on the face of it a hairdresser’s, looked open.
‘Why is it called the Knocking Shop, Mayo?’
‘Because of all Leonie’s visitors.’
‘But they don’t knock, they ring the buzzer, Mayo, so it should be the Buzzing Shop, shouldn’t it?’
She had laughed and kissed him, and he had beamed with pride. He had loved making her laugh. Standing there, looking at Leonie’s shop, he realised that the memory had brought the same grin to his fourteen-year-old face. He used to talk to her in his head when he wasn’t with her, he remembered; tell her jokes and see her laughing face. He picked up the case and walked on.
After five years, it was a huge amount to take in at once. First, there was a new building where the Broken House had been. Scaffolding still, and no windows, just the empty squares for them to go in. Running in front of it, a new fence, higher and more solid than the old one, with proper ‘Keep Out’ signs. A gap, and then the corner house, half on Wanless Road, half on Southway Street, the end of the Southway Street terrace; a strange, wedge-shaped house, which had once been a shop, and had been through many conversions. Their house.
Apart from it wasn’t their house. He stared, his eyes blurring. The same shape, and same size, but it had been all tidied and prettied, with pale blue walls and window boxes full of lavender.
Stupid idiot … He wiped his eyes on his sleeve. The house had sold very quickly, while he was still in hospital. It had been someone else’s house for five years. He walked round into Southway Street and looked at the shiny new front door, wanting to kneel and peer through the letter box. He turned away instead and looked up Wanless Road, towards the flats where his friend Harold had lived, and where he and Raff had had the run-in with the bigger boys. Then he looked back the way he had come. The passionflowers had survived, their gaudy, sulky faces tumbling over the new fence.
‘They look like Bad Granny.’ Raff’s six-year-old voice. He stepped forward and examined one in detail. Passiflora, a South American vine, named after the passion of Jesus Christ. He touched the crown of thorns, very lightly.
‘Jonah?’ A real voice, strident, familiar and – straightaway in his head, Raff again: ‘Let’s run!’ He gathered himself and turned. Her head was sticking out of the doorway. He gave a little wave, and she trailed out onto the pavement like a dilapidated peacock.
‘Hello, Leonie!’
‘Jonah! I knew it was you! Pat, look who’s here!’ She leant back into her shop, then turned, beckoning. He crossed the road and stopped with a bit of distance between them, but she stepped forward and took hold of his elbows, her bulgy eyes staring at him with a child’s frankness. Resisting the old urge to lift his good hand to cover the scarring, he tried to return her raking gaze. ‘Hench’. Raff’s word for her, because of her scary, weightlifter’s body, towering above them. Now, she only came up to his chin. Same brawniness, though; and same breasts, jostling to escape from their blue satin casing. He quickly looked back at her face. ‘Hello, Leonie,’ he repeated, aware of the awkwardness of his smile.
‘Mended good.’ The tang of her breath. Same hairstyle, with the beads on the braids, but fewer braids now and silvery threads in them. Same plastic, sequinned fingernails; she brushed one along the scarring. ‘Adds character. And you grown nice and tall. How long is it? Must be four, five years.’
‘It’s five.’
Leonie nodded. ‘Near enough to the day.’ She looked past him, at their old house. ‘What you doing here? This the first time you been back?’
‘Yes. I mean, I’ve been a few times, to visit friends, but not here …’ They’d never come this way, in the car; they’d always stayed on the main road and taken the turning by the park.
‘Pat!’ She called into the shop again, her ornate hand on the door. ‘She don’t hear me. You by yourself? Where’s your folks?’
‘I’m meeting them at our friends’ house. I came on the train, and they’re coming in the car.’
‘Pat! Where that dumb-arse woman got to.’ She shouldered the door wide open. ‘You better come in.’
He looked at his watch, hearing Raff’s voice echoing through time: ‘No way! She is HENCH and her sweets are RANK!’
‘Just five minutes. Have a cold drink. If she don’t get to see you, my life won’t be worth living.’ She ushered him over the threshold, and there was that same long, thin room with the mirrors, and the whir of the electric fans. Like his own ghost, he drifted behind her, past the three hairdressing chairs, and the one ancient hood-dryer; the desk, with the phone, and the box of tissues. The beaded doorway, the white, squishy sofa, the sweets in a bowl, and – an embarrassing stirring, Raff’s elbow in his ribs – the magazines.
‘Help yourself to a sweet.’
‘RANK!’
‘I’m OK, thanks.’
Leonie slammed the bowl back down, and kicked off her shoes. ‘Pat!’ She padded over to the beaded curtain, her big flat feet leaving damp marks on the polished tiles. ‘Losing her hearing. I keep telling her, but she won’t have it. You better take a seat.’
The fans whirred and whirred. The footprints evaporated, and the beaded strands shimmied to stillness. Above the doorway, the tiny monitor showed the litter-strewn backyard, where Leonie’s visitors waited to be let in. He got a sudden flash of her getting undressed, her blue satin dress dropping in a pile around her feet, and he cringed and tried to clear the thought from his head. He sat down on the sofa, which was as squishy as ever, but he was tall enough now to keep his feet on the ground. The magazines.Oh no. Remembering Raff’s shocked delight, he leant forward. The top one looked respectable enough – one of those TV guides – but the one underneath it … He stared for a moment, then put the TV guide back on top. Suddenly deeply uncomfortable, he looked towards the door. Too rude, though, to just leg it. He leant back, closing his eyes against the electric breeze.
‘The younger one was the looker. This one was always a bit drawn.’ Pat, trim little Pat, tufty-haired, fox-faced, with a jug and some plastic beakers. ‘World on his shoulders.’ She put the cordial and the beakers down, and perched next to him on the sofa. ‘Looks like life treating him better now.’ She grasped the lapel of his blazer and peered at the coat of arms on the breast pocket. ‘See, proper stitching – none of that stick-on.’
‘Private school.’ Leonie sank into the chair by the desk, and clasped her hands over her belly. ‘Folks doing OK, then.’
Jonah opened his mouth, then closed it again. Explaining about the scholarship would sound like boasting.
‘Cordial?’ Pat reached for the jug.
‘I’m OK, thanks.’
Pat looked at Leonie. ‘Must be thirsty, on a day like this?’
Leonie shrugged. ‘Maybe he don’t like cordial. Maybe too sweet for him.’
‘What about his hand?’
Leonie shrugged again. ‘Why you asking me?’
Jonah drew his bad hand out of his pocket, and presented it.
‘Your right one, is it?’ Pat took hold of it, and Leonie tipped forwards to look. ‘You right-handed?’
‘Yes, but it’s fine. I can do most things.’ He waggled his remaining finger and thumb.
‘Hope you don’t get teased for it.’ Pat set his hand down on his lap. ‘Do your school friends know how brave you were, trying to save your little brother?’
‘He don’t want to talk about that,’ snapped Leonie, and Pat clapped her hand over her mouth, chastened.
‘It’s OK,’ said Jonah. ‘Anyway,’ he nodded at the case, ‘I play the trumpet.’
‘The trumpet!’ Pat reached for the case and pulled it onto her lap. She opened it, and the trumpet nestled, gleaming, in the dark blue fur. ‘Play for us!’
Jonah hesitated. ‘I’m not sure if …’
‘Just one quick tune! Or you need a drink first? Will I get him plain water?’ Pat looked at Leonie again.
‘It’s just that the Martins are expecting me.’
‘The Martins. I remember them,’ Leonie was nodding. ‘With the little girl. Same age as you. Yellow tails, each side. So they still live round here? They never come this way. Or if they do, I never seen them.’
‘Her mother was sick,’ said Pat. ‘Must have passed by now.’
‘No, she’s better,’ said Jonah.
‘Better? I heard it was curtains.’ Leonie looked dubious.
‘Dora’s fine. She’s … we’re having roast chicken.’
‘Bit hot for roast chicken,’ said Pat. ‘Better with a salad, on a day like this.’
‘But nice you stayed friends with them,’ said Leonie.
‘What about the dad? Remember, Leonie – with the veg boxes. He still in that business?’
Jonah shook his head. ‘He lives in the country now. In an eco-village.’
‘Eco-village?’ asked Pat.
‘Living off the land,’ explained Leonie. ‘No electricity or nothing. Do their business in the woods.’
Pat shook her head. ‘So he left his sick wife.’
‘No, she was already better,’ said Jonah. ‘And anyway they’re still married. Dora and Em go and stay with him quite a lot.’
‘In the eco-village.’ Leonie nodded thoughtfully, as if she was planning a trip there herself. ‘And does he come back to London? Will he be there now? To see you?’
‘I expect so.’ He tried to remember if Dora’s email had said. Then he stood up, which was an effort, given how far he’d sunk into the sofa, and put his backpack on.
‘You got to go,’ Leonie sighed, and heaved herself up too.
‘Or roast chicken might get cold.’ Pat held out the trumpet case.
‘Yes.’ He suddenly felt how male he was, next to these middle-aged women: how tall, and strong and young. He took the case, and turned towards the door, trying to formulate a suitable goodbye, but was suddenly enveloped by Leonie. Her metal smell, her breasts, her damp armpits … He had to plant his feet firmly in order not to stagger back. She seemed to be crying. Still gripping the handle of his trumpet case, he put his free arm around her waist.
‘Leonie, she still feels so bad.’ Pat’s pointy face had gone soft and slack.
‘Bad? Why?’
‘Here all day, looking out the window, and never saw nothing was wrong.’ She patted Leonie’s shaking shoulder. ‘Enough now, Miss. Young man needs to go and eat roast chicken. And your 6.30 will be here. Need to bubble down.’
‘That 6.30 always late.’ But Leonie released him, and reached for a tissue from the box on the desk. She wiped her eyes, looking old, and Jonah felt a terrible tenderness for her.
‘Don’t feel bad. You were very good to us. Very kind.’ She was so alien, so not of his tribe – and yet so familiar. He patted her other shoulder.
‘Just glad …’ Her voice was shaky, still full of tears. ‘Just glad you doing so well.’
‘Better get going.’ Pat gave him a little push, but Jonah hesitated.
‘You know …’ He looked out into the sunny street and then down at his watch. The two women gazed at him. ‘Maybe I have got time to play something quick. If – if that’s what you’d like.’
‘Yes!’ Embarrassed by her own delight, Pat clapped her hand over her mouth again.
(#ulink_28fb3fc0-2759-5f02-97c3-fa48e26db136)
4 (#ulink_0667d4d4-cbb6-55d9-af61-6cf860a9f904)
On Monday morning Jonah woke up trying to say something. He was making tiny croaking noises, trying to get the words out, and his sheet was all tangled up in his legs. The room was full of sunlight, because of the fallen-down curtain, and outside the birds were screeching like crazy.
He sat up, kicking the sheet away, and looked over at the clock: 04.37. The sun must have just that minute risen, or rather Earth had just tipped far enough towards it. He was naked. It had been so hot in the night he’d pulled off his vest and wriggled out of his pyjama bottoms. His dream was like a word on the tip of his tongue. The birds had calmed down, but a dog was barking, and now there was a man talking, down in the street, right under the wide open window.
Jonah lay back down and tried to remember what it was he wanted to say, but the strange, hissing voice outside kept telling someone to shut their mouth. No one else was saying anything, so the man was either talking to himself, or talking into his phone. His tongue found his loose tooth, and waggled it. ‘This tooth is movious,’ Lucy, his mother, had said at bedtime, in her Zambian doctor voice, her finger pushing it gently. ‘It will be coming out on Wednesday.’
He rolled onto his side and looked down at the book she’d read from at bedtime, lying open on the floor, surrounded by clothes. It was a poetry book by a man called Edward Lear. She’d read them ‘The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò’, a very sad story about a tiny little man with an enormous head. It was her favourite. He and Raff preferred ‘The Duck and the Kangaroo’. As he gazed at the picture of the Lady Jingly Jones, surrounded by her hens, telling the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò to go away, he remembered his feeling, as she read, that his mother was a stranger, lost in an unknown world. Such a weird feeling; difficult to explain.
He tugged at his tooth. He’d made a bet with her – £1 it would come out before Wednesday – which he was sure he would win. His eyes travelled up to his cloud poster. The clouds were grouped into families and species. His favourite was Stratocumulus castellanus. Next to the cloud poster were Raff’s three athlete posters: Usain Bolt, Mo Farah and Oscar Pistorius. Raff was a really good runner. Which reminded him … Which reminds me, Mayo. No, not Mayo, he’d started calling her Lucy, to be more grown-up. Which reminds me, Lucy. What was it that he needed to tell her? He noticed that the top left corner of the Oscar Pistorius poster was curled over, detached from its lump of Blu-tack. Oh yes, Sports Day. That was it. Sports Day had been cancelled the week before, because of all the rain, but everyone had been so disappointed that Mr Mann had decided they could squeeze in a shortened version this Thursday. There had been a letter about it. Probably still in his school bag.
He sat up again, to see the clock. 04.40, a mirror number. He climbed down the ladder past Raff’s sleeping head, pulled on his boxers and crept out of the room. It was only three and a half steps across the landing and into Lucy’s bedroom. Her curtains were drawn tight, so it was dark and the warm air smelt of her grown-up body. There were clothes all over the floor. Jonah stood on a coat hanger and said ‘Ouch’, but quietly. He reached her bed and climbed onto it, fumbling for the sheet and pulling it over him. The smell of her was stronger, more secret, and he rolled across to snuggle up. But she wasn’t there.
Jonah rolled to the far side of the bed and looked at the crowd of things on Lucy’s bedside table. Her Tibetan bells alarm clock, a wine glass with a smudge of lipstick on it, the mugs he’d brought her tea in, the days she’d stayed in bed. The card with the X on it was leaning against one of the mugs, and he reached for it. People usually did a few Xs, little ones, under their signature. This single X filled the whole card. One long kiss, then. He pictured his father Roland’s face, with hopeful lips. The card had come with the flowers, was it Thursday or Friday? They were a mixture of roses and lilies, the roses red and fat like cabbages, and the lilies all creamy and freckled with gold. He’d brought them up to her, and she’d taken the card and told him to put the flowers in a vase. Which he had done, but without any water, so they had died. Jonah put the card back down and wobbled his tooth, seeing Roland’s face again – his anxious frown, his sticky-out ears. They hadn’t been to visit him for ages. Maybe he would ask if he could phone him up. He would tell him about the tooth bet first. Then he’d check about the flowers.
He rolled over again, back to the near side of the bed, sat up and swung his feet down to the floor. By the skirting board was her big tub of coconut oil, without the lid. The oil was thick and white, like wax, and there were three indents where her fingers had dug into it. It would come out in white lumps, but then, as she rubbed it into her skin, it would melt into transparent liquid. He crouched down and put three of his own fingers in the holes. They were wet and oozy: the wax was melting because it was so warm. He wiped his fingers on the sheet and went to see if she was in the bathroom.
His pupils, large from the darkness, had to quickly shrink again, because light was flooding in through the open window, bouncing between the mirrors and the taps and the water in the bath. The bathwater was green and shimmery, with a few black squiggly hairs floating on the surface. Jonah put his hand in and the light on the ceiling broke into ripples. The water was lukewarm and very oily, and when he pulled out his hand one of the hairs was coiled around his fingers. He got some toilet paper and wiped it off, and then he put the paper down the toilet. There was wee in the toilet, very dark, smelly wee, and Jonah flushed it, before leaving the bathroom and going to stand at the top of the stairs. He looked down and his heart beat faster, because the front door was open.
Jonah padded downstairs and out into the street. Under his feet the pavement was still cool, but the light was blinding. Their house was on a corner. The front door was on Southway Street, but the sitting-room window and the boys’ bedroom window were on the other side of the house. Jonah looked that way first, towards Wanless Road, which was still in shadow. On the far side of the road, the metal blinds were still down over the four shops, one of them spray-painted with the word ‘Pussy’. A wheelie bin, its lid thrown open, balanced precariously on the kerb. Then he turned his head and shaded his eyes with his hand to look down sun-drenched Southway Street. The pretty houses looked like they still had their eyes closed. Only the light moved, glinting on the parked cars and the netted metal cages around the spindly white trees.
Jonah turned and walked around the corner into Wanless Road. It was wider than Southway Street, with no trees, and wheelie bins were parked at intervals along the pavements, like Daleks. The Broken House was next to theirs, but there was a gap in between. It was older than all the terraced houses, and had been much bigger and grander, all on its own in its garden. They could see right into it from Lucy’s bedroom window, but from here it was hidden by high, joined-together boards, covered in places by a tumbling passionflower, and dotted with ‘Keep Out’ signs. In fact, it was easy to get in. One of the boards had come loose and you could push it open like a door and slip inside.
Jonah walked through the stillness like he was the only thing left alive, dragging his fingers along the splintery boards. The loose board had been left ajar, and he peered through. The nettles had grown as high as his chest. The Broken House looked back at him, like a sad old horse. It was a long time since he’d been in there. As he turned away, with a start, he noticed Violet.
The fox was standing, still as a statue, on the bonnet of a filthy white van. Their eyes met, and although he knew her well, he felt shy of her, almost scared. He said, ‘Hello, Violet’, trying to sound normal, but his voice croaked, and all of a sudden she leapt onto the pavement and flitted into the Broken House’s tangled garden. Animals can sense your fear, he remembered his mother saying, they can smell it, and it makes them frightened. He looked after the fox for a moment, and then at the white marks her scrabbling paws had left in the van’s thick grey dirt. There was a V-shape, and two long scribbles, like a signature. He turned to walk back to their house – which was when he saw the Raggedy Man.
The Raggedy Man was standing against the wall of the squatters’ house; like Violet, so still that Jonah hadn’t noticed him. His feet were turned in and his arms hung down like coat sleeves. ‘Remember, he was a boy like you once,’ Jonah heard Lucy say, but he quickened his step, crossing his arms over his naked chest. The Raggedy Man was tall and black and gnarled like a tree, growing out of his filthy, raggedy pink tracksuit. He never said anything, ever, not a single word. Jonah found himself saying, A boy like you once, over and over in his head, as his feet padded quickly along the pavement. He turned into Southway Street and, from the corner of his eye, he saw the Raggedy Man put his hand in the pocket of his tracksuit bottoms and pull something out. Then his arm snapped out straight, the hand splayed open … offering something? Jonah hesitated on his doorstep. There was an object glinting in the Raggedy Man’s palm. A coin? He darted a look up at the grizzly face. The huge, angry eyes stared back at him. He looked away quickly, scurried inside and closed the door.
5 (#ulink_d8014a29-d94c-5848-a35a-bde5e502765c)
He had only been out for a few seconds, but it felt like he’d come back from another world. Standing in the familiar jumble of the hallway, he could smell their wet swimming things, still in the bag. They’d gone to the Lido the day before, Sunday, on their bikes, early, to avoid the queue. Lucy loved to swim, but had sat on the edge, her wild hair crammed under a big straw hat, gold locket at her throat, her body wrapped in her enormous red sarong. As he’d glided like a manta ray above the slime-smeared floor of the pool, he had looked up and seen her strong brown feet dangling in the water. Why won’t you come in? he had asked her silently. Her toes had rings on them – gold, like the locket – and her toenails matched the sarong.
Her red umbrella was leaning against the wall. He and Raff had taken it to school the day it rained. Next to the umbrella was the stepladder, which she must have pulled out from the cupboard under the stairs, as a reminder to get the curtain in their room back on its rail. Under the ladder was the can of petrol that, weeks and weeks ago, they’d walked all the way to the service station on the main road to get. They’d taken it on the bus, all the way across south London, to where they’d had to abandon the car the evening before. They’d been too late, though – the car had been towed away, so they’d brought the petrol back home. Getting the car back cost lots of money, which they didn’t have. They didn’t really need a car anyway. Next to the petrol was a pile of shoes, among which, Jonah was relieved to see, were her clogs. She must be here after all. He turned and pushed open the sitting-room door.
She wasn’t there. Jonah looked down at her yoga mat, lying like a green lake amidst a jumble of Lego, nunchucks and cheese on toast remains. Part of Raff’s Ben 10 jigsaw encroached upon the mat, like a jetty. He looked up. Through the sitting-room window, he saw the open-lidded wheelie bin balancing on the kerb.
She’d been burning incense in the kitchen, but the smell of the bin was stronger than ever. They hadn’t emptied it for days – maybe weeks. Lucy had been ill for quite a while, off and on. Washing-up was stacked high on every surface, and the dirty clothes they’d collected up to put in the machine lay in piles all over the floor. He kicked through the clothes and went through into the tiny conservatory (if you could call it that), just big enough for the table, the three ordinary chairs and Raff’s old Tripp Trapp ladder chair. The dead flowers had shed some more petals, onto the drawings they’d done of them when they’d got back from the Lido. Lucy had said she didn’t mind they were dead. ‘I prefer them when they get like this. Much more interesting.’ Maybe she had just wanted to make him feel better about them, but she had carried on, her voice low and dreamy. ‘The intricate husks of them, like skeletons, on their way to dust.’ Jonah traced the line she had drawn, a fragile curl of dried-out lily petal. Her book was on the table, too, the book she’d been reading for weeks, even though it was very thin. There was a picture of a mask on the cover, an African-looking mask, with feathers and round empty eyeholes. Ants were crawling over the book and the drawings, and up and down the glass jug she’d made the orange squash in. There was a layer of black on the remaining inch of orange liquid: a floating blanket of drowned ants. The dead ants made him think of their holiday in the house with the swimming pool, and Lucy rescuing insects from the pool all day, using a net on a long pole. It was in France, the house. The Martins had taken them, as a treat, after Angry Saturday, and Roland getting sent to prison.
There were two new things on the table: a green wine bottle, empty; and a yellow mango, fat and ripe. The bottle was green, and the label was white, very white, with a grey drawing of jagged hilltops poking out of a sea of cloud like shark fins. The cloud was stratus, which wasn’t all that interesting to look at from below, but from above it was all misty and rolling. Jonah picked up the mango. Its skin squished under his fingers. ‘A Chaunsa,’ he whispered. The King of Mangoes. The Green Shop Man had introduced them to Chaunsas, which grow in Pakistan, but only in July. Last year, the Green Shop Man had given her three of them, as a present.
Near the edge of the table were three little heaps. When he looked closer, he saw that they were made of the shavings from the coloured drawing pencils, mixed with crumbs and his and Raff’s fingernails. She’d cut their nails after they’d done the drawings, and it had been about time; they’d been long and ragged and dirty, like witches’ fingernails. The heaps were like tiny pyramids. He touched one of them gently, imagining her sitting at the table after she’d put them to bed, all alone, with her too-thick lipstick on, slowly pushing the fingernails and the pencil shavings and the crumbs together with her fingers. Then maybe her phone had rung, and it had been Dora Martin. And then maybe Dora had come round with the bottle of wine.
It would be good if Dora had come. She hadn’t come for ages, and they hadn’t been to the Martins’ house for a while either. They’re still our friends, though. Aren’t they? He noticed how much he talked to her in his head, instead of just having his own thoughts. Did other children do that, to their mothers, or maybe their fathers?
There were no glasses on the table. He looked over at the pile of things on the draining board, and then remembered the wine glass by Lucy’s bed, with the smudge of lipstick. If there was only that one wine glass, then maybe she had decided to pop to the Green Shop and buy a whole bottle of wine to drink on her own. Taken the last glass of it up to bed with her. He looked at the label again. Such a beautiful, soft drawing, and the words Cloudy Bay, in such fine, thin letters, with lots of space in between. It didn’t look like the kind of wine you could get in the Green Shop. Then he saw that a steady stream of ants was heading down into the jug, despite the blanket of corpses. He thought about trying to divert them from their death, but the only thing he could think of would be to empty the jug and wash it, and the sink was too full of plates and pots.
Jonah looked up at the calendar. Yoga Poses 2013. The pose for July was Ustrasana, or Camel, and there was a picture of a woman, on her knees, arching backwards. The pages of previous calendars had always got filled with Lucy’s scrawls, but this one had stayed very bare and clean. He stepped closer, gazing up at the four and a half rows of squares, thinking how each square was a complete turn of the planet on its axis. The first two weeks were all empty. Then, in the middle of the third row, Wednesday the 17th, she’d written two letters, S and D. An acronym. For the rained-off Sports Day. There was a squiggly word beginning with C on the 18th, and then, on the fourth row, she had circled the 26th, and written three letters, P, E and D, in blobby brown felt-tip. PED. Trying to think what they might stand for, he reached up to take the calendar off its nail, and laid it on the table. Using the dark blue drawing pencil, he crossed out the cancelled SD, and wrote a new one in Thursday, the 25th. He thought for a moment. She hadn’t put ‘Haredale’s Got Talent’ on the calendar, even though Raff had been talking about nothing else for weeks. He wrote in HGT, right under SD. A busy day. He paused, and then went over the letters again, because the blue pencil didn’t come out that well on the shiny calendar paper.
Jonah put the pencil down, yawned and looked at the kitchen clock. 5.25. Where had she gone, so early? He turned and tried the back door. It wasn’t locked. Roland used to tell her off about not locking the back door. The backyard had a concrete floor, with brick walls on all three sides, the Broken House rising up behind the far wall. In the middle of the concrete floor was the brown corduroy cushion she’d been sitting on the day before. Yellow-flowering weeds were sprouting from the cracks in the concrete and from between the bricks. Lucy’s plant pots were sprouting weeds too, as well as the things she’d planted. Her dirt-covered trowel was resting against the wall. Her bicycle, which was a heavy, olden-days one, but painted gold, was gleaming against the back wall. Both the tyres were flat and weeds were growing through the spokes of the wheels. It was all looking very beautiful. He saw the watering can, and wondered if Lucy had watered the pots before she went.
A movement made him jump and look up. The fox had appeared on top of the back wall. Again their eyes met, and again he felt scared of her.
His heart banging, he cleared his throat. ‘Violet, are you following me this morning?’
He had tried to sound calm and amused, but his voice sounded thin and silly against the silence. ‘Fear is like a magnet,’ he heard Lucy say. ‘It can actually make bad things happen.’ He wondered if the Raggedy Man was still standing outside, waiting to give him the coin. He turned away from the fox, trying to stop his heart from thudding, and stared at the dip Lucy’s bottom had left in the corduroy cushion. He remembered the loops and the lines and the spatters, blue-black ink on the sunlit white page.
Brighter today.
That’s what she’d written, sitting on the corduroy cushion. He’d squeezed onto her lap, feeling her bosoms squishing against his back, and looked down at the shape of the words. Then a breeze had lifted the pages, and they had fluttered and batted against each other, all covered in her squiggly writing. And she’d reached forward with her dry, brown hand and flipped the book closed.
He checked the pots. They hadn’t been watered but under the surface the soil was still quite moist from all the rain the week before. In the biggest pot, which had honeysuckle growing out of it, and also delphiniums, there was something red and shiny sunk into the soil. A particular red. Definitely an object he’d seen before. A toy? One of his and Raff’s old cars? His fingers closed around it. Not a car. Not a toy, even. He pulled it out, and something caught in his throat, because it was a mobile phone, just like Lucy’s, a snap-shut Nokia. It probably was Lucy’s. But why would Lucy bury her phone in a flowerpot? His heart banging again, he wiped it on his boxers, but it left a dirty mark, so he shook it to get the rest of the dirt off it, and it came apart. The back of it and the battery plopped back into the soil. He retrieved them and carried the three parts of the phone back into the house. He laid them out on the table, and fetched a tea towel to wipe them properly clean, before clicking them back together.
It was her phone. It had to be. No one else had those Nokias any more. He pressed the ‘On’ button. There was a bleep, and the screen lit up. It was showing a very low battery, but it seemed to be working fine. After a few seconds there was another bleep, and a missed call popped upon the screen. DORA. So she had phoned, and maybe she had come round with the wine. The last time they’d been to the Martins’ must be the afternoon they’d taken Dylan round to mate with Elsie. Weeks ago. The phone bleeped again, and died. He weighed it in his hand, wondering where the charger might be, and remembering that chilly afternoon in the Martins’ garden, watching the rabbits.
The charger wasn’t in any of the wall sockets in the kitchen, and it wasn’t in the socket in the hall. In the hall he looked at Lucy’s clogs again. They were wooden clogs, very old, kind of chewed looking, but so comfortable, Lucy said. They were the only shoes she’d worn for weeks. He put his own feet into them, remembering seeing her red toenails through the water. His feet would be as big as hers soon. DORA. The word danced in his head. Maybe they would go round to the Martins’ after school. It would be nice to see the rabbits. And Saviour. He saw Saviour’s warm brown eyes, and heard his friendly, cockney voice. Fancy giving me a hand with the cooking?
He stepped out of the clogs and went upstairs. The charger wasn’t in the socket on the landing. Back in Lucy’s room, it was still quite dark and, instead of continuing his search, he found himself getting back into her bed, half expecting her to be there after all. She wasn’t. Where have you gone, silly Mayo? No, silly Lucy. He closed his eyes, and saw Dora, lying by the pool at the French holiday house, while Lucy, in just her bikini bottoms, walked up and down with her net. ‘Nice to get away from it all!’ Dora’s cheerful voice, her sunglasses, her long, thin body covered against the sun. ‘Nice to get away from it all!’ She’d kept saying it, all the way through the holiday, as if … As if what? He rolled onto his side, seeing Lucy’s net full of wet insects, her bosoms and her concentrating face as she tipped them out onto the paving stones; and got that weird feeling again, the one he got when she was reading the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò poem. That she was separate from him, different, a stranger; and it wasn’t just her grown-upness, or her femaleness, or her Africanness, which came and went with her mood. He pictured the three tiny pyramids on the kitchen table; and then the single, glinting disc on the Raggedy Man’s palm; the stepladder, the red umbrella, the scribble Violet’s paws made in the filth on the white van: and then he must have fallen asleep, because the next thing that happened was the ringing of the Tibetan bells.
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The bells were a lovely sound. Jonah listened with his eyes closed, imagining the monks in their monastery in the misty mountains. Then Raff came running in, like a tornado.
‘There’s some guy swearing his head off in the street! You got to hear him, fam!’
Jonah opened his eyes and watched his little brother scamper around the bed, holding up his pyjama bottoms, which had lost their elastic. He realised he was still clutching the red phone, and put it down next to the lipsticky wine glass.
‘What’s that? Where’s Mayo? Why have you got her phone?’ One of Raff’s cornrows had started to come out. ‘Anyway, come on, you got to hurry. You seriously got to hear this!’
Jonah switched off the bells and followed his brother into their bedroom, where he was already leaning too far out of the window. ‘Be careful, Raff!’ He squashed in beside him, putting an arm around his waist. His skin felt very warm and dry.
‘Oh my days! It’s the bloomin’ Raggedy Man!’ Raff leaned even further, and Jonah tightened his hold. ‘But he never talks!’ said Raff. ‘Why is he saying those things?’
Jonah looked down, and saw that the Raggedy Man had moved from outside the squatters’ house and was on the pavement directly below. ‘I don’t know.’
‘He got issues, man! Who is he talking to? Oi! You talking to us?’ Jonah tried to clap his hand over Raff’s mouth, but Raff wriggled out of his hold. He pranced, making signs with his fingers. ‘Don’t call me snake tongue, you fuckin’ rat, you crazy fuckin’ vampire bat!’ he hissed, his cute face all mean.
‘Don’t say fuck, Raff.’
‘Why? He said it!’ Raff yanked up his pyjama bottoms. ‘And you just said it, you fuckin’ giraffe neck!’
‘Anyway. It’s time to get dressed.’ Their school uniforms would be downstairs, among the dirty washing on the kitchen floor. Out in the street, the Green Shop door opened, and the Raggedy Man fell silent. The Green Shop Man came out, holding the stick with the hook on the end that he used to push up his metal blinds. Raff aimed an imaginary catapult at him, pulling back the stone in the sling, then letting go, his fingers exploding into a star, his lips blowing a kind of raspberry. ‘Phwoof! Right in the head!’ His pyjama bottoms fell to his ankles. He reached down to pull them back up. ‘Is it Haredale’s Got Talent this week?’
‘Yes. Thursday.’
‘Yesss!’ Raff went spinning off, doing his dance again. ‘Is Mayo writing her diary in the garden, like yesterday?’
‘No.’
‘Oh my days! It’s Sports Day on Thursday too!’
‘Yes.’ It would be a bit of a scramble, Mr Mann had said, but he didn’t want to deprive the athletes of their moments of glory; and parents who were already planning to come to the talent show could come early and kill two birds with one stone.
‘Is she still better, or is she back to being ill?’ Raff had stopped dancing.
‘Better.’ Brighter. The squiggly words on the fluttering page.
‘Where is she, anyway?’ Raff was suddenly very still, his tortoiseshell eyes fixed on Jonah.
‘I’m not sure. Probably gone to the park.’
The Green Shop Man pushed at his stick. The huge noise of the metal blinds going up filled the air.
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The pint of milk on the doorstep had already gone warm. It had a note under it from the milkman – a bill probably. Jonah carried the milk and the note into the kitchen. The mango and the bottle of wine were still there, and the ants were still crawling up and down the jug to their deaths. Raff sat down, and Jonah got the Weetabix out of the cupboard. The only clean bowls he could find were a wooden salad bowl and a white mixing bowl. Raff looked at the bowls and snorted.
‘Or we could do some washing up,’ Jonah said.
Raff raised one eyebrow. ‘No way is I doing washing up, Little Peck!’
‘Raff, you are not allowed to call me that.’
‘Who you tellin’, Dirty Little Peck?’ Raff jumped up from the chair and shoved his face close to Jonah’s.
Jonah moved away, ignoring him, which is what Lucy told him was always the best policy, and got on with putting three Weetabix into each bowl.
‘Come on then, Peck!’ Raff was snarling, his lips rolling back, showing his tiny white teeth. He lifted his arms, aiming his catapult at him. ‘Peck versus the Slingsman! Phwooff!’
‘Shut up, Raff!’ He put his hands over his ears, but he could still hear Raff saying it, and making his stupid raspberry sounds.
‘Little Peck. Fuckin’ Peck.’
‘Don’t swear!’ In a rush of rage, Jonah pushed Raff to the floor.
Raff jumped straight up and threw himself at Jonah, and they staggered through the kitchen and out into the hall, where Jonah managed to shove his brother off him. Raff fell back against the stairs, grabbing the stepladder as he went, and it fell on top of him, and he started crying, really loudly.
Panicked, Jonah shoved the stepladder away and knelt beside him. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Are you OK, Raff? Where does it hurt?’
Raff just screamed louder, like when he was a toddler. ‘Mayo!’ he was screaming, over and over, and Jonah put his hands over his ears again.
‘STOP!’
Raff stopped. They looked at each other for a moment, and then Raff slid himself off the stairs and opened up his arms, and Jonah knelt down and hugged him. They rolled over and lay side by side, amongst the shoes.
‘What’s she doing in the park?’ asked Raff.
‘Yoga.’
‘But her yoga mat’s in the sitting room.’
‘Yes, but your Ben 10 puzzle’s on it. She probably didn’t want to break it.’ Out of the side of his eye Jonah could see the yellow word on the rusty red of the can they’d filled up at the service station. GASOLINE. The American word for petrol. Closer in, by his temple, the chewed-up heel of one of her clogs. Why haven’t you got your shoes on? he asked her silently.
‘Jonah,’ Raff whispered.
‘What?’
‘Is Bad Granny going to come?’
Jonah got a flash of Bad Granny’s looming, brightly coloured face, and felt a shiver run through his body. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said. Raff had sounded like a really young child, which he was, of course. Jonah wriggled his arm under his shoulders.
‘Alright, me old Peck,’ said Raff, but in a little cockney chirrup, not that horrible gangster voice. Jonah giggled.
‘How nice to meet you, Lord Pecker!’ he said in his Your Majesty voice, and Raff rolled around, snorting. Jonah chuckled. It was usually Raff who made him laugh. Through their laughing came a sound, which Jonah hardly heard, but Raff suddenly sat up straight, looking wide-eyed at the door. ‘Mayo?’ he whispered.
Jonah sat up too. Raff was holding his body very stiff. There was a moment’s silence.
‘What was it?’ Jonah whispered.
‘Someone. Looking through the letter box.’ Raff got to his feet, but Jonah grabbed his ankle.
‘Don’t open it!’ he hissed.
‘Why?’
‘It might be the Raggedy Man.’
‘The Raggedy Man?’ Raff crouched back down. Jonah reached for his hand. They both stared at the letter box, listening hard. A car came up Wanless Road and turned the corner.
‘Why do you think it was the Raggedy Man?’ Raff whispered.
‘I don’t know. Just because he was outside our house.’
‘And he wants to come in?’
‘I don’t know. Are you sure you saw someone?’
Raff nodded. He lifted his arms and aimed his sling at the letter box. ‘Phwoof.’ He made the sound very quietly. Then he stood up and stretched, and pulled up his pyjama bottoms. ‘Bags the wood bowl,’ he said, in a normal voice.
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Having breakfast in the enormous bowls made them laugh again, the way they had to reach down to get their spoons to the Weetabix. Then Raff said, ‘Who sent them?’
Jonah looked at the skeletal flowers. On their way to dust. ‘Roland,’ he said.
‘What, from prison?’
‘You can still send people things. He sent you those posters of the runners.’
‘Did Daddy give me those?’
‘Yes!’
‘I thought it was Saviour.’
‘It was Roland. Last year, when the Olympics were on. You should remember that, Raff! Imagine if Roland knew you’d got him mixed up with Saviour!’
‘Fuck off, Jonah, because I didn’t mix him up with Saviour. I just thought Saviour gave me the posters.’
‘Anyway. He sent Lucy flowers before.’
‘When?’
‘On her birthday.’
‘So why did he send some now?’
‘Maybe because she was ill? How should I know, Raff?’ Sometimes Raff’s questions went on and on.
‘But how did he know she was ill?’
‘Maybe he phoned her.’ Jonah suddenly remembered finding her red phone in the flowerpot, and tried to think what he’d done with it.
‘Why didn’t he speak to us, then?’
‘I don’t know, Raff! I don’t know anything about it! I don’t even know if it was him who sent the flowers!’
‘No need to fuckin’ shout, fam.’
‘Don’t swear! You always swear!’ Jonah picked up the mixing bowl and tried to put it in the sink, but the sink was too full.
‘You got anger management, bro.’ Raff shook his head for a bit, squashing ants with the back of his spoon. ‘Maybe he sent them because he’s coming out on patrol.’
‘Parole.’ There was no room on the draining board either.
‘Maybe he’ll get out in time for Sports Day.’ Raff examined the ants on the back of the spoon. ‘Do you remember when he came to Sports Day with Bad Granny?’
‘Yes.’ Jonah put the bowl back on the table. He was surprised Raff could remember. He’d been tiny, not much more than a toddler.
‘But it was before she tried to steal us.’
‘Stop killing the ants, Raff.’
‘Will he bring her this time?’
‘Raff, he won’t come to Sports Day. He’s not getting out that soon. Lucy would have told us.’
‘She might of forgotten.’ Raff squashed some ants with the back of his spoon. ‘Anyway, why do you call her Lucy now? What’s wrong with Mayo?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Is it because it’s Zambian?’
‘No. I just like calling her Lucy.’ She liked it too. She liked it that he was getting so grown up.
Raff squashed some more ants. ‘What about Haredale’s Got Talent? I bet he’ll get out for that!’
‘Raffy, that’s the same day, remember! And stop killing the ants!’
‘Dey ants, Peck.’
‘Ants are amazing!’ Jonah grabbed the spoon off him and sat back down. ‘Did you know they have two stomachs?’ He watched the ants reorganise themselves. ‘One for themselves, and one to store food to take back to their queen.’
‘Queen gonna be hungry, den.’ Raff snatched the spoon back and rolled it over a whole cluster of them.
‘Raff! That is such bad karma!’
‘Saviour says that karma shit is rubbish. He says everything’s just random.’ But Raff laid the spoon down. ‘You know Bad Granny?’
‘Yes.’ Jonah looked at the empty eyeholes of the mask on the cover of the book.
‘Will we know her again? When Roland comes out on patrol? Will he take us to see her?’
Shattered glass, Sadie’s crazy face, and the peacock, screaming. ‘I don’t know.’ After she’d tried to take them from school, Dora and Lucy had talked about going to court to get – what was it called? – a thing to stop her from coming anywhere near them. He wasn’t sure if they’d actually done it, though. He opened the book. It was Dora’s, she’d written her name on the inside cover, Dora Martin, in black ink, the letters very pointed, and all leaning forwards. Underneath it, she’d done lots of scribbling in pencil, words and some doodles, but no, actually it was Lucy who’d done the stuff in pencil, he could tell by the handwriting, and the doodles.
‘Raff.’ He closed the book.
‘What.’
‘What does Peck actually mean?’
‘Peck means Peck!’
‘Doh! Did you get it off Saviour?’
‘I didn’t get it off no one. It’s from my head.’ Raff put down the spoon and stood up, very straight, with his arms by his sides. ‘This is what it is!’ He made a bobbing movement with his head. It looked like a move from a street dance, but also exactly like a pecking pigeon. It made Jonah laugh again, and try it himself. They both walked around the table pecking for a while.
Raff stopped first. ‘Maybe it was the Angry Saturday man who sent her the flowers.’
‘It wouldn’t be him.’ Jonah noticed the clock. ‘Raff, we need to hurry! We’re going to be late for school!’
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Jonah hesitated before opening the front door, and looked from side to side before stepping onto the pavement. The Raggedy Man was nowhere to be seen. There were clouds now, great billowing ones: cumulus, not cumulonimbus, so it wouldn’t rain.
‘Mind, Peck!’ Raff shoved past him. He had a toothpaste beard, his shirt was filthy and he was wearing trainers, which wasn’t allowed. Jonah passed him his school bag, and hoisted his own onto his shoulder. They scurried along Southway Street, but stopped dead on the corner, because there was a fox lying just off the kerb.
‘Violet!’ Raff cried, clapping his hand over his mouth, but Jonah shook his head.
‘It’s not her. It might be one of her cubs though.’ The back of the fox’s body had been squashed into a bloody mess by the wheels of a car, but its head and its front legs were untouched. Jonah wondered if it had died straightaway, or whether it had lain there for a while, trying and trying to make its back half work. He wriggled his shoulders to shake off the thought, and took Raff’s hand. ‘Come on,’ he said.
The bell started ringing as they went through the gate. Jonah went with Raff into the Infants, and watched him run off into his classroom, before walking through into the Juniors’ playground. It had nearly emptied out. Among the stragglers were Emerald and Saviour, and Jonah ran over to say hello. Saviour was squatting down so that Emerald could hug him goodbye, which he didn’t need to do any more, because he was quite short, and Emerald had got really tall. Something about the way they were hugging, and the expression on Saviour’s face, made Jonah stop a foot or two away and wait to be noticed. They didn’t look like father and daughter: Saviour browner than ever, so brown you might not realise he was a white person, whereas Emerald’s skin had gone just slightly golden. And Emerald was all fresh and neat in her school dress, with her long yellow hair in bunches, whereas Saviour was scruffy, in his torn T-shirt, and his paint-spattered Crocs, with bits of leaves and twigs in his curly hair. Jonah noticed that it was more grey than black now, his hair, and that you could see his scalp through it, hard and brown as a nut. His eyebrows were dark still; dark and bushy, which could make him seem cross, or at least lost in his thoughts – until he looked at you, like he did now, over Emerald’s shoulder, with his kind, interested eyes.
‘Jonah, mate. Where’s the whale?’ If you didn’t know him, you might expect a deep, growly voice, maybe with a foreign accent, and be surprised by the warm, cockney lightness. He winked, and Jonah grinned and winked back, and Saviour reached up and high-fived him, because Jonah had been trying to wink for weeks.
‘Fourteen runs!’ Jonah said.
Saviour frowned.
‘England won by fourteen runs! Didn’t you watch it?’ He and Raff had been glued to it the whole of Sunday afternoon.
‘Course they did.’ Saviour was wobbling a bit, because Emerald’s hug was getting tighter.
‘I didn’t like that Hawk-Eye business. I didn’t think it was really fair,’ said Jonah.
Saviour nodded and stood up, and Jonah noticed he was getting fat again. He’d lost quite a lot of weight from giving up alcohol, but he was putting it back on. Emerald slid down onto her knees, wrapping her arms around his legs, and Saviour staggered, and put his hands on her shoulders. He didn’t seem interested in talking about the cricket, so Jonah said: ‘Lucy hasn’t been very well.’
Saviour nodded again, looking down at Emerald. Her parting was dead straight and the bunches were like long silky ears which flopped around as she burrowed her head into his stomach.
‘She stayed in bed for three days. I made her cups of tea.’
‘Good on you, mate,’ murmured Saviour.
‘But yesterday she got up. We went swimming. Apart from she didn’t actually swim.’ Saviour had taken hold of one of Emerald’s bunches and was twirling the yellow hair around his dark fingers. ‘And she didn’t watch the cricket with us. She went for a lie-down instead. But she doesn’t really like cricket.’
Saviour let go of Emerald’s hair and looked at his watch.
Jonah suddenly remembered the wine bottle. ‘Did Dora come over to our house last night?’
‘Dora,’ said Saviour, as if he hardly knew her, but Emerald stood up and turned around, her bunches flying.
‘No, my mum didn’t come over. Because she’s really ill. She’s so ill she might even die!’
Saviour put his hand onto her pale head, and Jonah saw that his fingers were dark purple, almost black, from picking blackcurrants, probably.
‘Really, Emerald!’ Jonah said it with a smile, and a little look at Saviour, because Emerald was such a drama queen.
‘Jonah, it’s actually true – isn’t it, Dad?’ Saviour stared down at her with a strange, stiff smile on his face, and Jonah felt himself blush.
‘Mum is ill, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to die, Emmy,’ said Saviour. ‘Not for a good long while anyway.’
Emerald put on her grown-up face. She said, ‘You need to face the facts, Dad!’ And Saviour’s smile got wider and stranger, as if he might be trying not to cry. ‘She’s going to hospital this morning.’ Emerald stroked her bunches, her grey eyes flicking between Jonah’s face and Saviour’s. ‘To get her results. And tonight we’re going to have roast chicken and roast potatoes for dinner.’
‘Oh,’ said Jonah. He couldn’t think of anything to say, so he said, ‘Anyway. I’d better go.’
He moved off, but Emerald let go of her bunches, picked up her bag and grabbed his arm. ‘OK, wait for me, then. Bye, Dad!’
They left Saviour standing there in the middle of the empty playground, like a kind of scarecrow clown, with his orange Crocs and his purple hands and his leafy hair sticking straight up in the air.
10 (#ulink_aa2dd2f1-040b-5a96-84fe-39cbec3f2a9a)
Miss Swann had already started the Year 4 register. She looked up over her reading glasses. ‘Emmy, Jonah, you made it! Awesome!’ She was smiling, and the classroom smelt of her rosewater.
As he slid into his seat, Harold grinned at him with his loony grin. ‘Yo, fam,’ he whispered. They fist-bumped, and then Jonah looked back at Miss Swann. She was wearing a stripy summer dress with shoulder straps, and when she leant forward you could see her strangely long thin bosoms hanging down. Not bosoms. That’s what Lucy called them, but no one else did. Most people said ‘boobs’, but it didn’t feel right, calling Miss Swann’s that. Maybe ‘mammary glands’. Her long, thin mammary glands. Lucy would think that was funny. He smiled, picturing her laughing. Hers were nicer: fat and round, with puffy brown nipples.
In Assembly they rehearsed ‘Star Man’, which they’d be singing at the end of the Talent Show on Thursday evening. After the singing Mr Mann did certificates, and Jonah got one for his Broken House project, which he’d been working on all term as part of the Local History theme. All the Local History projects were on display in the hall, and at the end of Assembly Jonah hung back to gaze up at his.
The house next door to us was built in 1862, by a rich Timber Merchent called Mr Samuels. It was a detatched Villa, in a Full-blooded Gothic Style, enlivened by vigorus Foliated Carvings.
He’d copied that last bit out from the London Survey website. He and Lucy had crept into the house to take the photos, showing the ruin it was now. One of the photos was amazing, looking up from the inside of the house, through the broken roof, to the sky. He imagined showing the certificate to Lucy when he got home from school, and telling her he would share it with her, because of the brilliant photo she’d taken – and Lucy sticking the certificate on the fridge.
‘OK, Jonah, that’s enough drooling over your own genius!’ Mr Mann’s hand came down onto his back, and propelled him out into the sunshine.
The playground was a swirl of children, flying about and screeching. The clouds had all gone, leaving a mysterious blue emptiness. All the colours are there, he remembered. It’s just that blue light waves are shorter and smaller, so they scatter more when they hit the molecules. The endlessness of the emptiness made his stomach drop, as if he was falling. Then he saw Harold, over by the fence, looking through into the Infants’ playground.
‘Is your mum better?’ asked Harold as Jonah drew up beside him.
‘Yes.’ In the Infants, Raff and Tameron and their three chorus girls were rehearsing the Camber Sands rap for the Talent Show.
‘Can I come to tea, then?’
‘Maybe.’ Jonah remembered the first time Harold had come to tea, when they were in Reception. Harold hadn’t been himself, to begin with. He hadn’t wanted to play anything, or eat or drink anything, but had just stood with his hands in his pockets, mute. Jonah had been at his wits’ end, but then Lucy had asked Harold what his favourite animal was. ‘A peregrine falcon.’ He’d whispered it so quietly they had only just heard.
‘A peregrine falcon!’ Lucy had gasped. ‘How fast can it fly?’
‘Two hundred and forty-two miles per hour,’ Harold had told her. ‘Which is the same as three hundred and eighty-nine kilometres.’ After tea, on the way back to his flat, Harold had held Lucy’s hand all the way.
‘Your brother’s a boss dancer.’
Jonah leaned his forehead against the wire fence and watched. A crowd had gathered around Raff and Tameron and were joining in at the chorus. ‘Ooh, Smelly Shelly! Uh, Smelly Shelly!’
‘Who is Smelly Shelly anyway?’ asked Harold.
‘It’s a shell. They found it on the beach, when they went on the school trip.’
‘A shell!’
‘Yep.’
‘Did they make up all those words themselves? I bet your mum helped them.’
‘A bit.’ Her face came into his head, and he wondered if she was back in the house yet. ‘Saviour helped more. He thought of lots of the rhymes.’
‘Emerald’s dad?’
‘Yep.’ Jonah leaned more heavily onto the fence, feeling the wire digging into his forehead.
‘I think they’ll win. Do you?’
‘I dunno.’ Jonah pictured Raff’s face, glowing with triumph; Lucy’s face, in the audience, crying probably. Crying and clapping. He smiled.
‘Why are you smiling? Do you want them to win?’
Jonah slid his eyes towards Harold, who was inspecting him, his eyes tiny because of his thick glasses, his cheek resting on the wire. ‘Is there even going to be a winner?’ he asked. ‘I thought it was more – just a show.’
‘Well, if there is a winner, it should be them.’ Harold looked back at Raff, who had started breakdancing. He shook his head. ‘You might be Gifted and Talented, fam, but your brother’s boss at everything. He’ll win all the Sports Day races.’
Jonah shrugged. He rocked back onto his feet, and felt the grooves the wire had left with his fingertips. ‘You know the universe?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you think it really goes on forever?’
Harold shook his head. ‘No, there’s other universes. Millions of them.’
‘And then what?’
‘I dunno. Can I come round to tea tomorrow?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘If your mum’s better, why can’t I?’
‘I’ll ask, OK.’
11 (#ulink_f3fa31b4-b372-58e8-bb7c-5b38744caabd)
In the afternoon it was RE. The classroom had got really hot. Miss Swann’s boobs swung in her dress as she set out the painting stuff. Her hair, which was grey, even though she was quite young, had gone all frizzy.
‘So we’re all going to do a painting of something we’ve learned about Hinduism.’ There were drops of sweat glistening on her top lip. ‘Put on your overalls, please. Isiah. What are you going to paint?’
‘The burning bodies!’ said Isiah, with relish, and everyone started talking. They’d been doing Hinduism all term: the Diwali festival, some of the gods, the idea of karma and reincarnation, the Om symbol. It was Pearl who had told them about the dead bodies, burning beside the River Ganges. She’d seen them on a trip to India with her family.
‘The burning bodies. Cool. Anyone else? What about the Diwali festival?’ Miss Swann was setting out the paints and the water pots. She sounded tired.
‘Their melting faces!’ shouted Isiah. ‘And their skulls, cracking open!’ All the laughing and shrieking made it feel even hotter.
‘You can’t even see their faces,’ said Pearl. ‘They’re all wrapped up in cloth.’
‘Like mummies!’ shouted Will Rooney, and Jonah thought of Lucy. Are you back yet?
‘How do they burn them?’ Tyreese was asking. ‘With petrol?’ Tyreese was Raff’s friend Tameron’s elder brother. Jonah looked at his overall. He didn’t want to put it on. It was too hot.
‘No, with wood,’ said Pearl. ‘But some families can’t afford enough wood to burn the whole of the body, and they throw the leftovers into the river. So they put all these snapping turtles in the river, to eat up the leftovers.’
The class erupted. Jonah stayed silent, deciding what to paint. Maybe a picture showing the karma idea: lots of boomerangs, turning round and coming back, whacking into the throwers. But no, it was more complicated than that. Beside him, Harold was already painting, but Will and Isiah were still screaming about the man-eating turtles. Trying to work out how to do the karma boomerangs, he watched Miss Swann wipe her top lip with the back of her hand. It was actually too complicated. He would paint Ganesha, the god with the elephant’s head, instead. He slipped on his overall and picked up his paintbrush. Ganesha had an elephant’s head because when his father came home from a long trip he didn’t recognise him and cut his real head off thinking he was his wife’s new boyfriend. He thought of Roland and smiled, because of course Roland would recognise him. He remembered the scene at the end of The Railway Children, the clearing of the steam on the station platform, Bobbie crying, ‘Daddy!’ Such a happy ending. He closed his eyes, imagining Roland’s silhouette in the steam: tall, with high, square shoulders, and a little head with sticky-out ears.
When they had finished, Miss Swann pegged the pictures up to dry on the washing line that ran along the wall behind her desk. Jonah’s Ganesha had turned out quite good. He had one little wise smiley eye. Roxy, the girl who had only started at the school a few weeks ago, had done Ganesha too, but hers was just a pink blob with a trunk. There were lots of burning bodies, black shapes amid orange flames.
‘I love the way you’ve done the fire, Daniella,’ said Miss Swann. Daniella had done lots of curly waves, in red, orange and yellow. ‘And, you know, the body, to a soul, is like a set of worn-out clothes. Burning the body is setting the soul free.’
Emerald had done an Om sign, and Jonah gazed at it, trying to remember what Om meant. Something interesting. Lucy would know, because they chanted it in yoga lessons. He looked at the clock. Ten minutes until home time. Will you come and meet us? She didn’t usually, but maybe she would today.
‘This is awesome!’ Miss Swann was holding up Shahana’s painting. Shahana was the only Hindu in the class. She’d done a burning body, but hovering in the air above it was a baby, or maybe an angel. ‘Shahana, is this showing reincarnation?’
Shahana shrugged.
‘Who can remember what reincarnation means?’ Miss Swann pegged Shahana’s picture up.
‘It’s when you get reborn,’ said Pearl. ‘Your soul escapes through your skull, and it stays in the sky for a while, and then goes into another body.’
‘And if you’re bad, you come back as an animal,’ said Tyreese.
‘That’s it!’ Isiah shrieked. ‘I gonna be bad! Then come back as a leopard, and munch up my enemies!’
Everyone laughed and shot their hands up, wanting to say which animals they’d like to be reborn as. Emerald wanted to be a rabbit, and Tyreese wanted to be a python. Pearl wanted to be a unicorn. ‘Peregrine falcon,’ Harold whispered to Jonah. Jonah smiled. He was still trying to remember what Om meant, and put his hand up to ask.
‘Do Hindus believe in ghosts?’ asked Daniella.
‘Ghosts. Yes, I think they do!’ Miss Swann glanced at Shahana. ‘You’re a ghost before you get reborn. Just for a few days. Isn’t that right, Shahana? And the cremation of the body, and all the other rituals, help the ghost to leave, and get on with its next life.’
‘So is a ghost the same as a soul?’ asked Clem. Jonah’s shoulder was starting to ache, so he switched arms. Everyone was just shouting out, when it should be his turn.
‘I don’t think it’s the same, no,’ said Miss Swann. ‘I think a ghost is a trapped soul. But anyway, guys …’
‘I saw my auntie’s ghost once,’ said Shahana.
‘Oh.’ Miss Swann wiped her top lip again, and tucked her hair behind her ears.
‘Do you know what she’s come back as?’ asked Pearl.
‘She’s still a ghost. She’s trapped.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she was murdered.’
There were a few gasps. Miss Swann glanced at her watch, then at the clock.
‘Did the ghost have a knife sticking in it, then?’
Shahana turned around in her seat. ‘Daniella, he didn’t even kill her with a knife, actually.’
‘Could you see through her, or did she look normal?’ asked Clem.
‘She looked normal. She was in the kitchen, and when I came in she got up and walked out.’
‘Did she touch you?’ asked Clem. ‘Was she freezing cold?’
‘Shahana’s got allergies!’ shrieked Daniella. ‘She got touched by a dead ghost!’
Everyone went mad. Miss Swann’s top lip was glistening again, and her hair was free of her ears. ‘Quiet! Time for one more question. Jonah?’
‘Oh.’ Jonah had had his hand up for so long it took a moment to remember. ‘Miss Swann, what does Om mean?’
‘That is random!’ shouted Isiah. Everyone laughed, and Daniella leant across to poke him. Then the bell rang.
12 (#ulink_01aba5c7-f9e2-536c-adfc-c59947c42bae)
‘Is she here, have you seen her?’ Raff had come running out of his class.
‘Shut up, shut up!’ Jonah grabbed Raff’s arm and pulled him across the Infants’ playground.
‘Shut up yourself, dumbhead!’ Raff said, trying to kick his ankles.
‘You don’t have to talk so loud. Mrs Blakeston could have heard.’
‘So what?’
They were out of school, standing by the crossing. Saviour and Emerald had already crossed and were walking up the hill, hand in hand.
‘Let’s go with them,’ said Raff, tugging him. ‘I want to see Dylan.’
‘No, come on, let’s go home and see if she’s there.’
The dead fox was looking much deader now. Jonah wondered if its soul was already reborn, or whether it was a ghost, still, looking down at its smashed body. On Southway Street they passed Mabel and Greta, and their mother Alison, as they were going through their front gate.
‘Hello boys,’ said Alison. ‘Everything OK?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ said Jonah. Alison didn’t like Lucy, and she didn’t think the boys should walk to and from school by themselves. Taking Raff’s arm again, Jonah slowed them both right down, to make sure Alison and the girls were inside their own house before they got to their front door.
The door had been painted maroon, but a long time ago, and the maroon was all peeling off, showing the white paint beneath it. Jonah banged the knocker. Then he banged it again. Raff couldn’t quite reach the knocker, but he shouted, ‘Mayo!’ a few times through the letter box, while Jonah kept knocking. Then they stopped. The sun beat down and Jonah felt sweat trickle from his armpits. The white patches in the maroon reminded him of the marks Violet’s paws had made in the dirt on the van, and he stared at them for a moment, imagining they were some kind of code which, if he could crack it, would tell him what to do. He turned and looked over at the squatters’ house. Their front door was open, and he could see all the way along the dark hallway, with its red and gold wallpaper, to the rectangle of light at the end.
‘What shall we do?’ said Raff.
Jonah gazed at the rectangle, which was the squatters’ open back door. Were the two open doors, that blaze of light, another sign, a kind of call? He imagined walking down the hallway and out into the garden. The squatters would be sitting, or lying down, probably smoking, one of those big, fat sharing smokes, which had made Lucy ill. He felt Raff nudging him, and cleared his throat. ‘Maybe we should ask Ilaria if we can wait with her,’ he said.
‘Nah, fam.’ Raff shook his head and crossed his arms, his nose wrinkled. ‘Remember those sausages.’
Jonah nodded. It was the only time they’d been in the squatters’ house – a long time ago, just after Angry Saturday. The three of them, Lucy clutching a bottle, had walked through the open door and down the hallway, with its crazy velvet wallpaper, and its smell of incense and mould. Ilaria had been in the kitchen, making the big, ghostly sausages she called nori wraps, which were vegan, she’d told them. She had given him and Raff one each, and they were slimy and floppy, with bits sticking out each end. Neither of them could bear to take a bite, and had carried them around, not knowing how to get rid of them. In the back garden there had been a bonfire, the squatters and their friends all squatting around it, holding their hands out to it, their faces lit orange in the growing darkness. Everyone was white, and drab and raggedy compared to Lucy, who was wearing her red jumpsuit and her red lipstick. The red jumpsuit had a gold zip up the front, and the zip had worked itself down, so that you could see where her bosoms touched each other. He’d reached up to try and push it back up again.
Then a man had offered Lucy a big smoke, and she’d taken a few puffs on it. The man had a single, very long dreadlock coming out of his chin, and Jonah and Raff hadn’t liked him, but Lucy had started chatting to him, all giggly and bright. The dreadlock man had stayed quiet, and after a while Lucy had stopped talking and gone inside. He and Raff had found her in the sitting room, lying on the floor with her eyes closed, moaning. They had both been really worried about her, and had taken it in turns to stroke her forehead. Ilaria had come in with a glass of water, and Lucy had managed to sit up and sip some. After a while she’d been well enough to stand up, and Jonah and Raff had taken her home.
‘Let’s go back to school,’ said Raff. ‘She might have gone in through the other gate, and still be waiting for us.’
‘OK.’ Jonah followed him back the way they’d come.
The school gate was already closed, so you couldn’t get in without pressing the buzzer, but they could see that both playgrounds were empty by looking through the railings.
‘OK, let’s go to the park, then,’ said Jonah. He could see Christine, who was the school manager, and much stricter than any of the teachers, peering at them through the office window. ‘Come on.’ He tugged Raff’s arm. ‘We could practise, for Sports Day.’
‘I want to go to the Martins’,’ said Raff.
‘We can’t. They’re having a special dinner.’
‘So? They won’t mind us coming.’
‘They might want to be on their own.’
Raff dropped his school bag on the ground and kicked it.
‘And when Lucy gets back, she won’t know where we are.’ Jonah picked Raff’s bag up and held it out to him, aware that Christine was still watching them. ‘Come on, let’s go home. If she’s still not there, we can get in through the back.’
They crossed the crossing and walked down the hill again, Raff dragging his school bag along the ground.
‘Raff!’
It was Tameron. He was squatting on the kerb over the fox, with Tyreese from Jonah’s class, and their elder brother Theodore, who went to secondary school. Tyreese was poking at the fox with a stick and the others were watching.
‘They shouldn’t just leave it like that, man,’ said Theodore.
‘Look at its eye!’ cried Tameron. ‘You lookin’ at me, Mr Foxy?’
‘Should we burn it?’ suggested Tyreese. He looked at Jonah. ‘You know, like the Hindus.’ Theodore shrugged and pulled out a lighter.
‘Come on, Raff,’ said Jonah.
‘Wait! I want to see it burning!’ said Raff. Jonah stepped forward and peered over their heads. Theodore wasn’t holding the lighter near enough, and anyway the flame was tiny. He looked at the fox’s face. Its eye was open, and for a tiny moment it was like it was alive, alive and wanting his attention.
‘Let me try, bro,’ said Tyreese. Theodore passed him the lighter, and Tyreese managed to slightly singe the fox’s fur before burning his thumb and dropping the lighter to the ground.
Theodore picked up the lighter and put it back in his pocket. ‘Not gonna burn with just that little thing.’
‘We need petrol!’ said Tyreese.
‘Petrol!’ cried Raff. ‘We got petrol!’
The brothers looked at him, interested, and he looked back at Jonah. Jonah shook his head.
‘Why not!’ said Raff.
‘I don’t think we should,’ said Jonah. ‘And anyway, we might not be able to get in.’
‘Why not?’ asked Tameron.
‘Our mum might not be back.’
‘I need to wash my hands, man!’ Theodore got to his feet. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
‘Can you get the petrol tomorrow?’ Tyreese asked Jonah.
‘Fox gone by tomorrow, Tyreese, roadsweeper take it away.’ Theodore pushed his brother forward, and the three of them walked away down the hill.
13 (#ulink_a1c28b93-285e-5572-8b7a-80cf259ab888)
They tried knocking on the front door again, but not for long.
‘What, then?’ said Raff.
‘It’s fine,’ said Jonah. ‘The back door is definitely open. We can go through the Broken House.’
Around the corner, he trailed his fingers along the splintery fence, as he had that morning, but Raff kept to the kerb because he was scared of the passionflowers. Just as they reached the loose board, they heard a shout from across the road. It was Leonie, leaning out of her doorway.
‘Where’s your ma?’ she shouted.
‘Let’s run, fam!’ whispered Raff.
‘At the shops!’ Jonah called back.
Leonie shook her head, tutting and muttering, and came out onto the pavement, tossing her hair and clip-clopping in her high-heeled mules. She stood with her feet apart and her hands on her hips.
Raff snorted. ‘Hench!’ he whispered.
‘You’re not going in there, it’s too dangerous, you hear me,’ she shouted. The Kebab Shop Man came to lean in his own doorway, and she turned to him. ‘Some child is going to get themselves killed in there!’
The Kebab Shop Man nodded, and lit a smoke.
‘Come here!’ Leonie shouted, beckoning them. Ignoring Raff’s mutterings, Jonah took hold of his hand, looked right and left, and crossed them over. Leonie’s bosoms were straining out of her pink lace dress. Her fingernails were pink too, pink and incredibly long, and her black braids tumbled out of the top of her head like a waterfall.
‘I know you two boys got your heads screwed on,’ she said. ‘So I’m surprised at you, even thinking of going in that place. It’s dirty in there, you hear me?’ Like Miss Swan, she had beads of sweat in the groove between her upper lip and her nose. ‘There’s nasty things, poison, make you really sick.’
They both nodded.
‘Or, failing that, the place will topple over, smash them little bodies of yours into a pulp.’
Jonah nodded again, squeezing Raff’s hand. He looked over at the Kebab Shop Man, who shook his head, flicked his smoke away and disappeared back inside.
‘OK, come,’ said Leonie. ‘You can sit with me and Pat until your ma pulls her head out the clouds and remembers her responsibilities.’
‘No way,’ whispered Raff, as she clopped back in. ‘She is hench, and her sweets are rank.’
‘You coming or what?’ Leonie was holding open the door for them. Jonah took a firmer hold of Raff’s hand.
It was lovely and cool inside, from the many electric fans. The lady from the betting shop was having her hair done. She was a tiny little woman, very old and very white, and she was so low in the hairdresser’s chair she could only just see into the mirror. Pat was standing behind her, putting bright blue curlers in her thin white hair. In the mirror, the old woman’s broken-egg eyes slid to meet Jonah’s. She used to let Roland bring him and Raff into her shop on Saturdays, but she didn’t seem to recognise him. He reckoned she must be over a hundred years old.
‘Look who I found,’ said Leonie.
‘The young gentlemen! Such a nice afternoon, why ain’t they playing football in the park?’
‘That dumb-arse mother of theirs gone off to the shops, left them to fend for themselves in the street, can you believe it? No disrespect, boys,’ said Leonie.
She led them to the back of the shop, her pink lace bottom swinging, and sat them on the squishy white sofa. In front of them, on the glass coffee table, stood a bowl of sweets and a pile of magazines.
‘Someone needs to phone the council to come and mend that fence, before a child dies in there,’ said Leonie, lowering herself into the swivel chair behind the desk.
‘Go on, then,’ said Pat.
Leonie sucked her teeth. ‘And be hanging on the phone all afternoon and night. Got better things to do with my time. Help yourselves to sweets, boys.’
Jonah said, ‘Thank you,’ but he didn’t like Leonie’s sweets either. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a tall, pink shape appear outside the shop window, and he stiffened, because it was the Raggedy Man again. He was peering in, or maybe peering at his own reflection, his arms long and loose by his sides. It was a girl’s tracksuit, Jonah realised. That was why it was pink, and why it was so short on his arms and legs.
‘What’s he want?’ Pat moved forwards, waving her arms at him, and he stepped back from the glass.
‘Leave him be, poor soul,’ said Leonie.
‘Leave him be! I don’t want him staring in at me like a Peeping Peter!’
‘Tom,’ Leonie corrected her, gazing at the Raggedy Man, who was shuffling backwards and forwards now, like a car trying to park in a small space. ‘Something got to him today.’
The Raggedy Man moved out of sight, and Leonie sat forward and looked at the computer screen, clattering her fingernails on the desk. Then her hand became still, and a deep silence fell. Jonah and Raff sat upright, watching Pat’s hands wrapping strands of hair around the blue rollers. The old woman’s messy eyes were now closed. Maybe she was dead. Jonah heard Lucy giggle in his head. But her ghost would be here, until they burnt her body. He glanced around him. Was a ghost the same as a soul? He tried to remember what Miss Swann had said. That a ghost was a soul that was stuck, waiting to go to Heaven, or be reborn? ‘Leave him be, poor soul.’ But the Raggedy Man seemed more of a ghost than a soul, a sad, lost, waiting thing. Leonie pulled a tissue out of the box on the desk, and pressed it under her nose, leaning back in her chair. The loud electric buzz made the boys jump and the old lady’s eyes fly open. Leonie put the tissue down and said, ‘That’s my 4 o’clock.’
‘Bit early, ain’t he?’ said Pat. The old woman’s eyes closed again.
Leonie swung round in her chair. Her legs splayed and her hands rested on her belly as she and the boys surveyed the man on the tiny screen above the doorway that led out to the back. He was a fat white man, in shorts and a vest and flipflops. As they watched him he looked edgily around Leonie’s little backyard.
‘Better get him over with. He won’t take long,’ said Leonie, and with a groan she got back to her feet. They watched as she disappeared through the doorway, and then as the back of her head appeared on the screen. The man moved towards her, and then they were both gone, and the yard was empty again.
Jonah sank deep into the squishy sofa. The noise of the fans was making him feel sleepy, and he closed his eyes. Where have you gone, Lucy? He got a flash of her face, but then Bad Granny came looming at him, and he opened his eyes and sat up. He felt Raff’s elbow in his ribs, and looked down at the magazine open in his brother’s lap. Pictures of naked men and women, sexing each other. Raff was giggling silently, full of shocked delight, but Jonah took the magazine off him and put it down on the coffee table. ‘Let’s go,’ he mouthed.
Pat’s hands were busy with the old woman’s hair. They walked very softly past her, and to the front door. As Jonah pulled the handle, the old woman’s eyes opened and slid to them again. Pat said, ‘Off now, gentlemen, my regards to your ma.’
14 (#ulink_81f7a1c7-8767-5d4b-94e4-bd261d35903a)
Raff was looking edgy, like the man in Leonie’s backyard. ‘They’re just flowers,’ said Jonah. There were hundreds of them, all over the Broken House fence, staring silently, with their purple spiky eyelashes and their downturned yellow mouths.
‘I don’t like them. They look like Bad Granny.’
Jonah snorted, but Raff’s face was strained.
‘It won’t really fall on us, you know, Raff. It’s been standing up this long, it’s not going to suddenly collapse, just because we’re in there.’
Raff nodded.
‘You can wait for me round the front, if you don’t want to come.’
Raff shook his head. ‘Don’t want to be on my own.’
‘Well, OK, come, then.’
Jonah went first, picking his way carefully along the faint and narrow path that led through the rubbish-strewn vegetation. He looked up at the house, and its boarded-up windows were like blank, daydreaming eyes, and the doorless back doorway was mouthing a silent ‘Oh’. It had been here, all alone, for a very long time now, he found himself thinking, and he tried to remember which fairy tale it was when the prince hacks through the forest to get to the sleeping castle.
Inside it was dark and cool, and it smelt of dust and bird poo. They could hear the pigeons, hundreds of them, bustling and burbling in the rafters. The back doorway led straight into the kitchen, which was reasonably solid, with a floor and a ceiling. There was a hulk of an oven, and two halves of a filthy ceramic sink lying on the floor beneath two taps. The light leaking through the entrance fell on the table in the middle of the room, and Jonah saw that there was an old camping stove on it, along with a metal teapot, a plastic lemon and a cluster of bottles and jars. By the table were two chairs, or frames of chairs, their seats missing, which made him think of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò poem. Two old chairs, and half a candle. One old jug without a handle. These were all his worldly goods: in the middle of the woods. He looked at the huge, square, robot face which had been spray-painted onto the far wall. There was a hatch right in the middle of the face, and he went and peered through it, into the mouldy smelling darkness which had been the dining room. When he turned, Raff was at the table, examining one of the jars.
‘Honey,’ he whispered. ‘Does someone live here?’
These were all his worldly goods: in the middle of the woods. Jonah joined him at the table. ‘Maybe,’ he said. There was a smoke lighter, and half a candle, and a sticky-looking teaspoon. The bottles were empty, apart from one, which was about a third full of a dark liquid. He picked up another jar and opened it, and sniffed. A spice. He couldn’t think of the name. He put the jar down.
‘Come on,’ he said.
The hallway was more hazardous, because most of the floorboards were gone. There was more graffiti, pictures and symbols, and some words, mainly names. To their left rose the staircase, still grand-looking, though one of the banisters had been broken by a fallen chunk of ceiling. Light fell through the hole left by the chunk, and they could hear the pigeons more clearly. To their right, the hallway led to the front door, which would have given onto the street, if it hadn’t been boarded up, and the fence erected in front of it. The door was intact, with its stained-glass window, and there were pegs, still, running along the wall next to the door. There was even a coat hanging from one of them. Opposite the pegs was a side table, with a bowl in it, a china one, and Raff, his fear overcome by wonder, went and dipped his hand in. He pulled out a pair of gloves, but then dropped them quickly, with a quiet screech, brushing a spider off his arm. He ran back to Jonah, and they both looked into the sitting room.
It was huge, much bigger than the kitchen. Jonah knew there had originally been two rooms, but that the wall between them had been taken down. He wasn’t sure, but he thought it would have been in the 1970s, when the house was a children’s home. He pictured it as the children’s playroom, with beanbags, and a ping pong table, and the Wendy house for the little ones. Now it was more like a cave than a room. The ceiling had fallen in, and the ceiling above it, so you could look up through the remaining beams and see the outlines of the upstairs rooms: the boarded windows, the doorways, the fireplaces, and even some patches of wallpaper. The floorboards were gone too, fallen down into the basement, along with lots of bricks and rubble from the upper floors.
Jonah jumped down onto the rubble, and a group of pigeons flapped hastily upwards. It wasn’t too big a drop, but it was easy to hurt yourself, because what you landed on tended to move. It was dark too, apart from the pool of light under the hole in the roof. He turned to help Raff down, and they crunched forwards a little way, until they reached the shaft of light. Jonah looked up.
‘It’s like a swimming pool! We could dive into it!’ That’s what Lucy had said, the day they’d crept in together and taken the photographs. As he gazed up through the remaining beams into the lopsided rectangle of blue, a tiny silver aeroplane appeared. Watching it crawl its way across to the other side, he remembered a film they’d watched on TV one afternoon, a really old film, called Jason and the Argonauts. While Jason tried to find the Golden Fleece, the gods watched him from an airy white palace, in their swishing togas, through a blue rectangle of water.
There was a tiny plop, and Raff said, ‘Yuk!’ Jonah looked down. The gob of poo had spattered just in front of them. He looked up again, to the beam that formed one edge of the rectangle. It was covered with pigeons. He could see their tails sticking out, black against the blue.
Jonah peered forwards into the darkness and saw the bed. It was an olden-days bed, with four wooden posts. It must have plummeted down from the floor above when the ceiling fell in. Had there been someone asleep in it? What a surprise they must have got. Lucy had gone right up to it and taken pictures, but Jonah had kept back. It was just too spooky, with its mattress, blankets and pillows all tidy, as if it was still in use. These were all his worldly goods: in the middle of the woods, these were all the worldly goods, of the Yonghy-Bonghy … Trying to silence the chanting voice in his head, Jonah looked away from the bed and over to where they were heading, the patch of light in the far wall. He whispered to Raff to follow right behind him, and stepped over a big piece of carpet, noticing the noughts and crosses pattern. The rubble rose and fell, sometimes steeply, and he had to keep peering down to check each step. He noticed two ping pong balls, pale, like giant pearls. To his right loomed the Wendy house. She’d taken a picture of that too. ‘Such a dear little house, Joney, and it’s like those Russian dolls, it’s a baby Broken House inside the big one.’ Behind the Wendy house was a piece of concrete pipe. He’d crawled into it last time, but she’d been too big. Now his feet slid among a heap of books, mainly open, like fallen birds. Among the books were more ping pong balls, and a toy train, and a Monopoly board. Further along, a baby doll, one-armed, face down – yes, he remembered that doll, and the feeling of wanting to turn it over, to see its face. He was aware of the bed, over on his left, but he kept his eyes on the ground in front of him. Then they were there, below the hole in the wall that used to be a window. The board that had once covered it was propped against the wall underneath, providing a slope up to what had been the windowsill. It would have been quite easy for Lucy, or any adult, to take a couple of big steps up the board, but it was a scramble for the boys. Raff scraped both his hands on the rough brick ledge, and Jonah hurt his knee. Out in the narrow space between the Broken House and their back wall, they examined their injuries and dusted themselves down. Then they surveyed the wall, which was surprisingly high from this side.
‘How does Mayo get over it?’ said Raff.
Jonah looked at the kitchen chair that had been positioned against the wall to their left. The back of it was broken, but the legs and seat looked in good shape. ‘Like that,’ he said. ‘Come on.’
They got on the chair together, and Jonah gave Raff a leg-up before hoisting himself up. They sat on the wall, their legs dangling against the warm brick, looking down at the familiar cracked concrete, the bright flowers, the gold bike, the corduroy cushion and the watering can. He got down first, lowering himself until he was hanging from the top of the wall by his fingers, letting go and remembering to bend his knees as he landed. Then he helped Raff down, and they let themselves in through the back door.
15 (#ulink_d9e23161-4005-569b-b3ef-b91eb7f6a487)
The house was really smelly now, much smellier than the Broken House, and there were lots of fat, black flies. Jonah propped the back door open and opened up the windows, so that fresh air would come in. Then he went to the bin and opened it. The stench hit him full in the face, and he quickly closed it again.
‘I’m thirsty,’ said Raff. Jonah picked a glass up off the draining board, rinsed it and filled it, water splashing on the dirty plates piled up in the sink. He passed it to Raff, and then opened the drawer that Lucy kept the incense sticks in. He took two sticks out of the open packet and the box of matches. Raff glugged the water down and put the glass back on the side. ‘I’m hungry.’
Jonah opened the fridge. He saw a mustard jar, a lime pickle jar, a tomato ketchup bottle and a bunch of slimy spring onions. They really needed to go shopping. Jonah felt cross with her for a moment. Then he remembered his certificate, and pulled it out of his school bag. ‘Look.’
‘I saw you get it in Assembly, dumbhead.’
Jonah found a space for it on the fridge door, amongst the photographs and postcards and all the previous certificates.
WELL DONE, JONAH!
In recognition of your excellent work
on your local history project.
He stood back, and ran his eyes over the photos. They went back to when he was a baby, and even before. There was the one of Lucy in a bikini, which he didn’t like, though at least she had her bikini top on. It had been taken long before he was born, and she was thinner, and her bosoms – no, boobs – looked even bigger, and she was thrusting them out, with her hands on her hips. Her lips were blowing a kiss to the photographer, who was presumably Roland, but it was difficult imagining her being like that with Roland.
‘What special dinner are the Martins having, anyway?’
‘Roast chicken.’ Jonah stared at young Lucy’s face, trying to imagine her being in love with Roland. They had met on a yoga holiday in Egypt. The photo might even be from that holiday, although Lucy had been ill for most of it. Roland had heard her in the night, in the bathroom, moaning, and he’d looked after her. He skimmed all the photos again, looking for Roland. There was one of him when he was maybe a teenager, with his arm around Rusty, his dog. Rusty was looking at the camera, and Roland was looking at Rusty, so it was his profile you could see, with his long knobbly nose and his quiff.
The only other photo with him in it was the one of their wedding day. The two of them, standing on some steps, Roland in a suit, and Lucy in a strange blue dress with a white collar. He was smiling, but she looked serious. She was slightly turned away from him, even though they were holding hands, and you could see her bump, in which a little tadpole Jonah had been swimming around. About a third of the photo had been torn off. Presumably because it showed Bad Granny.
The photo next to it was of Raffy, Baby Raffy, only just born, his stripy monkey toy in his tiny fist. Jonah had given him that monkey, in the hospital. Lucy had been sitting up in her big bed, and someone had lifted him onto her lap, and put the bundle that was Raff on his lap, and Raff’s fierce little face had gazed up at him. Everyone had been amazed at the way he held the toy. ‘What a strong baby! What a strong little baby!’ Jonah got a match out and lit both incense sticks.
‘Maybe there’s some sweets left.’ Raff was looking at the Advent calendar, which was high up on the fridge door, fastened with four magnets at each corner. They’d made it together last year, with pieces of red and green felt. It had twenty-four pockets sewn onto it, and the word ‘Christmas’ across the top. When Christmas was over, Lucy had said she was so proud of the calendar she couldn’t bear to take it down.
Jonah and Raff stepped forward together and dipped their fingers into the pockets. No sweets any more, they’d gobbled them all up, but Lucy’s fountain pen was in pocket number 17.
‘That’s what she was writing with. In the garden,’ said Raff, snatching it from him. Jonah nodded. It had been a present from Dora, along with the heavy, thick-paged book.
Brighter today.
‘Where’s her diary?’ He turned, his eyes scanning the messy room.
‘Here’s her keys.’ Raff used the pen to fish them out from between two piles of dirty plates. Jonah took the keys and looked at her elephant key ring. She was always forgetting her keys. The elephant reminded him of his painting of Ganesha, and the little wise eye. The sweet smell of the incense was filling the air. He put the keys down on the table and noticed the calendar, and the changes he’d made that morning. The first two weeks still so clean and bare, but now, with his dark blue additions, the third and fourth row were looking untidy. He squinted at the word beginning with C, and tried to think what PED might stand for. Then he flicked back to June. Vrischikasana, or Scorpion. A very difficult pose, a kind of handstand, but with your toes coming down to meet your head, like a scorpion’s tail.
June had been busier. Lots of her loopy scrawls. He ran his finger along the rows of numbers, going backwards through time. Dentist. They hadn’t bothered going in the end. He couldn’t remember why. Martins with D. Oh yes, the day they took Dylan round, so he could mate with Elsie. They’d sat on a blanket in the garden, watching the rabbits ignoring each other. Saviour had brought out tea and cake. Rhubarb cake. It had been quite cold.
‘I wish we had a time machine,’ said Raff. He had taken the pen to bits and was examining the little tube inside.
Jonah kept looking at the calendar. Time, a whole month, one circling of the moon, turned into thirty squares on a page. ‘What for?’ he said.
‘To take us to when she comes home. Then we wouldn’t have to keep on waiting.’
‘Or it could take us back to this morning. Before she went out.’ Jonah flicked the calendar back to July. ‘Then we could stop her from going.’ He put his finger under the word beginning with C. It might be Clink. Or maybe …
‘You can’t actually do that.’
‘Do what? Don’t do that, Raff. The ink will come out and go everywhere.’
‘Change things that have already happened.’ Raff kept squeezing. There wasn’t any ink in it anyway. ‘Otherwise everything would explode. There’s no point in going back. Only forward.’
‘But if you go forward you lose some of your life.’ Jonah thought for a moment. ‘Well, not if you came back again.’
Raff nodded. ‘You could go forward, see what’s going to happen, like who gets a certificate in Assembly, and then come back and make a bet on it.’
‘Well, you could bet on a horse race,’ Jonah pointed out. ‘You could put all your money on it, sell your car and your house, because you’d absolutely know which horse was going to win.’
‘Daddy would like that!’
Jonah frowned, looking at the photograph of Roland and Rusty. Rusty had died, ages ago, before the Egyptian yoga holiday. He was buried in Bad Granny’s garden. There was a gravestone, with his name. ‘I don’t think he would. He would think it was cheating. Which it is.’ He looked back at the calendar. PED. On the last day of term. Perfect End Day? ‘And anyway. Once you’ve gone forward, coming back again, you’re actually going into the past. So putting the bet on in the past would make everything explode.’
‘No, because you’d put the bet on in the new time, that came after you went into the future. The bit that nothing’s happened in yet.’
PED. Jonah frowned at the letters, thinking about time travel. ‘But when you’re in the future, watching the horse race, then it’s actually the present, isn’t it? And the time leading up to the horse race must have actually happened, otherwise …’ He closed his eyes, seeing the strange blankness of unwritten time. ‘I think what must happen is that you split into two.’ He opened his eyes. Raff was fiddling with the bits of pen again. ‘So your old self just keeps going, and not putting on the bet, and then your new self …’ He stopped again, trying to work it out. It was incredibly complicated.
‘No such thing as time machines anyway, stupid Peck.’ Raff dropped the pen pieces on the table and left the room.
16 (#ulink_fcf3c931-2da3-53a4-8153-7c5243e07233)
Her clogs were still there, and the umbrella, and the petrol can, and the bag with the swimming things. The stepladder was lying flat, taking up a lot of room. Jonah picked it up and rested it against the wall. Without saying anything, they wandered together from room to room, ending up in Lucy’s bedroom, where the air was still thick with the smell of her body. Raff climbed into her bed and lay down.
‘Why are they having roast chicken?’
‘Because of Dora’s cancer.’
‘She’s had that for ages.’
‘She got better from it. But Em said now she’s really ill and might die.’ Jonah surveyed the room. A big tear in the paper lampshade showed the curly light bulb inside it. The wardrobe door hung open, clothes spilling out, and two of the drawers were sticking out of the high chest of drawers. Lucy’s red silk dressing gown, with the dragon on its back, was hanging on one bedpost, and on the other was that smelly grey cardigan she’d borrowed the day they took Dylan to the Martins’. Her flowery top and denim shorts from yesterday were on the floor beside the bed, and her lacy pink pants were still inside the shorts. There was a dark stain on the cotton bit where her fanny went.
‘Do you believe her?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Mayo said it wasn’t actually that bad.’ Raff kicked the duvet off the bed. His trainers had made dirty marks on the bottom sheet.
‘When did she say that?’
‘I dunno.’ Raff sat up and swung his legs over so that he was sitting on the other side of the bed, facing Lucy’s dressing table, which was just a small, ordinary table with a piece of mirror propped on it. Jonah went and sat beside him, and they both looked at themselves in the dusty, greasy mirror. Jonah looked more like Roland, who was white, with a long, thin nose, whereas Raff looked more like Lucy, with his browner skin and his afro hair, and his huge, golden eyes.
Raff leaned forward and reached for her lipstick, which was lying amongst some lipsticky tissues. It didn’t have its lid on, and was all squashed and melted. Jonah noticed that two of Raff’s cornrows were coming out now. Lucy had put them in weeks ago, nice and tight, so they would last, but nothing lasts forever. He watched Raff putting the lipstick on his mouth, remembering Lucy doing the same thing the night before. The cricket had finished, and he’d gone upstairs to find her. She’d had her back to him, and their eyes had met in the mirror. She’d scraped her hair into a tight knot on top of her head, which made her look weirdly beautiful. ‘That hairstyle really suits you, Mayo,’ he had said. And then he’d said, ‘Lucy, I mean.’ He’d smiled, but she hadn’t smiled back; and her lipstick had been far too thick.
‘What’s up?’ said Raff, with bright red lips.
‘Nothing,’ said Jonah, but the memory had brought a coldness into his belly. ‘You look stupid with that lipstick.’
‘I look cool, bébé!’ Raff turned sideways to look over his shoulder into the mirror and blow a kiss at himself. Then he went over to her wardrobe and pulled out her sparkly fairy shoes. ‘Roast chicken’s my favourite. Why can’t we go to the Martins’? We could leave her a note.’
Jonah had a flash of the Martins’ house: of burrowing into that space behind the sofa and lying there, smelling what was cooking, and listening to Dora and Lucy talking. When they had first got to know them, when he and Emerald were in Reception, they used to go there nearly every day.
‘Or we could just tell Dora to phone her,’ said Raff.
The phone. Jonah turned to the bedside table. It was still there, next to the wine glass. ‘Have you seen her charger?’
Raff had put his feet into the sparkly shoes and was clopping around the room. ‘It’s down there.’ He pointed to the socket under the dressing table. Jonah crouched down, connecting the phone to the electric current. ‘Why didn’t she take her phone?’
‘She must have forgotten it. Like she forgot her keys.’
‘But where is she?’
The phone seemed to be charging. Jonah tried pressing the ‘On’ button.
‘Jonah.’ It was Raff’s very young voice again.
‘What?’
‘Do you think Bad Granny will come and try and steal us again?’
‘Stealing isn’t the right word, really.’
‘Why not?’
Jonah frowned. It was the word Lucy used, when she told the story, but he was sure there was a more grown-up way of talking about it. ‘She didn’t think Lucy should be allowed to look after us. But that’s not the same as stealing.’
‘Will she try again?’
‘No. I don’t think so.’ The phone wouldn’t turn on.
‘Maybe we should tell the Martins Mayo’s not here.’
‘I don’t think we should.’
‘Because of the cancer?’
‘Because they might decide to phone the police. And then the police will tell Bad Granny.’
‘And she’ll come and steal us.’ Raff’s voice had gone all husky. The phone suddenly bleeped. Then it bleeped a few times more, indicating missed calls and messages.
‘Yesss!’ Raff clopped over and pulled the phone out of Jonah’s hand.
‘Raff, what are you doing!’
‘We’ve got a message from Mayo!’ he said, pressing the buttons.
‘They’re not going to be from her, stupid! They’re from people who phoned her! Give it to me! You’ll delete them if you’re not careful!’
Jonah grabbed it back off him. There was a missed call and a voice message and two new texts. He played the voice message first. ‘It’s Dora,’ he whispered. Dora sounded cross and upset, tearful, even.
‘What’s she saying? Is she saying she’s going to die?’ Raff tried to get his ear right next to Jonah’s, but Dora’s voice had stopped.
‘She said, what’s going on, you ignore my texts and then phone me up at the crack of dawn.’
‘Who, Mayo?’
‘Yes. Shush.’ He looked at the most recent text.
Awful in the hospital. Hubby lost it totally. You and me need to sort things out. Come over with boys after school?
‘Let me look.’
‘Wait.’
The earlier one, sent at 11.07, was in a different tone:
Worrying about you is the last thing I need right now.
PLEASE FUCKING REPLY
‘Give it, Peck!’ Raff snatched it.
‘Raff, give it back. I want to look at the old texts.’
‘“Come. Over. With. Boys. After. School”,’ Raff read out. ‘Right, let’s go.’ He kicked the sparkly shoes off.
‘And what shall we say about Lucy?’
‘Say she didn’t want to come. Anything. Come on, fam.’
‘They’ll think it’s weird. They’ll want to speak to her.’
Raff sat down next to him, sighing, but then jumped up again. ‘Hey! I know! Let’s pretend to be Mayo, and write that we’re coming, but she’s too busy!’
Jonah frowned. It was actually quite a good idea, although pretending to be Lucy would be like lying.
‘Come on, Joney! Then we can see Dylan!’
Dylan. Lovely, floppy Dylan. They hadn’t seen him for weeks. ‘OK. What shall I write?’
‘Say, boys coming over now, but I’m a bit busy.’
Jonah typed:
Sorry, I am OK but very busy so great if you could have boys for tea shall I send them over now from Lucy
He showed it to Raff, who studied it. ‘You don’t write “great” like that. It’s g, r and the number 8.’
Jonah made the change, and pressed Send. Raff whooped and started dancing.
‘Put your trainers back on, then. And take the lipstick off.’
‘The Martins don’t care about lipstick, fam!’
It was true. Saviour would laugh, and Dora would tell Raff how glamorous he looked. Watching Raff prancing, he imagined being with Saviour in the kitchen, helping him with the meal; Saviour glancing sideways at him, saying, ‘Penny for them.’ He wouldn’t answer, and Saviour’s brown eyes would get even kinder. ‘That bad, eh?’
‘Not that good,’ Jonah whispered to himself. ‘Lucy’s gone, and we haven’t got any food. But the thing is, I can’t tell you.’
The phone bleeped. Raff came running to read the reply. It was two words:
Fuck yourself.
‘Oh Em Gee!’ said Raff, his eyebrow shooting up. ‘Is it really Dora who wrote that? That is bad swearing, man!’
Jonah felt like crying. He lay down on the bed.
‘Is it because she’s going to die?’ Raff sat next to him.
Jonah pushed his face into Lucy’s pillow. Raff picked up the phone and started pushing buttons. After a few minutes he tapped Jonah’s shoulder.
‘Look.’
Jonah peered at the screen.
I am so soz. Please dont die xxx
‘Have you sent it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Idiot.’ Jonah put his face into the pillow again.
‘Why?’
‘People don’t say stuff like that.’
‘Yes they do!’ The phone bleeped. ‘Yesss!’
Jonah rolled over and watched him frowning at the screen.
‘“Want to see the boys. Tomorrow, not now.” Shit!’ Raff threw the phone onto the bed. Jonah reached for it.
Want to see the boys. Tomorrow not now. All too tired.
Em in bits.
‘But they’re having roast chicken! Let’s just go!’
‘We can’t,’ Jonah scrolled back to look at the old texts. The most recent had been sent on Sunday morning.
Tonight X
Not from Dora. From a number, not a name.
‘What are you doing now?’
‘Nothing.’
‘We need to do something, Peck!’ Raff’s fist bashed at his shoulder.
Jonah stood up, putting the phone into his pocket. ‘Calm down, Raff. Let’s go and have a look in the freezer.’
17 (#ulink_b9e02ddc-5aaa-5f0d-8ded-7c92a662f18a)
They found some ice cream in the freezer, and a pizza, which they cooked in the microwave, so it came out more like a Frisbee than a pizza. Jonah tried cutting into it and it splintered into bits. He chopped up the mango instead, which was difficult, and he cut his finger, and the blood mingled with the mango juice on the kitchen table. The mango was completely delicious, but they still felt hungry so they ate the ice cream, which was butterscotch. They ate it straight from the tub, and finished it, and then they felt sick and went and lay on the sofa in the sitting room. The cricket was finished so they watched the Tour de France, but Bradley Wiggins wasn’t in it, and it was hard to work out what was going on.
‘Where is she?’
‘I don’t know.’
Raff sighed. ‘She must be dead.’
‘Don’t say that, Raff. Of course she’s not dead.’
‘Dead, or a bad man’s got her. Otherwise she would of come back by now.’
Jonah felt in his pocket for her phone, and held it, feeling its solidness. ‘The thing is, she might come back at any minute.’
Raff got up and went and opened the front door, and looked left and right. Then he slumped down onto the doorstep. Jonah went and sat next to him. Shadows had started to fall across the road, and it felt quiet and sleepy. The sky was still very blue, and Jonah thought about the gods in Jason and the Argonauts again, looking down, deciding what would happen next. Then Alison, Greta and Mabel appeared, from the direction of the park. Alison was carrying a big bag with a towel trailing out of it, so they’d probably been to the paddling pool. They were all quite pink, and Greta and Mabel were arguing. Alison was telling them not to, but then she noticed the boys and shaded her eyes to look at them. Jonah waved, but Greta hit Mabel, who burst out crying, and Alison was distracted from waving back. They went into their house and the road was quiet again, and Jonah felt a deep sadness steal up on him.
‘Jonah.’ Raff’s voice was thoughtful, and he was sitting very still.
‘What?’
‘Why doesn’t Alison like us?’
‘Because she’s not a very nice person.’
‘Is it because of Angry Saturday?’
Jonah stared at Alison’s dark green shiny door. ‘I think she already didn’t like us. Or didn’t like Lucy.’ He was remembering long ago, the itch of his spots and Raff crying all the time, and Lucy crying too, though she’d tried to hide it. ‘Lucy invited them to tea once.’
‘Really?’ Raff sounded like he didn’t believe it.
‘We both had chicken pox and we couldn’t go out anywhere, and it was really boring, and Daddy said Mabel and Greta had already had chicken pox and to invite them all over.’ Roland was always telling her she should make more of an effort with people.
‘I don’t remember them coming to tea.’
‘You were just a toddler. And anyway, they didn’t.’
‘Why not?’
Jonah stared at the green door. It had been lovely weather and Raff had been crying and crying, and Lucy had seen Alison coming out of the Green Shop with the girls in their buggy, and had put Raff down and run and opened the front door. He closed his eyes, remembering Alison looking down at him, commenting on his spots, and saying they’d got that one over with a few months ago.
‘So you can come in for a coffee!’ Lucy had cried, but they were off to the park to meet up with some friends. ‘Pop in later, then! Come for tea! 5 p.m.!’ And Alison had replied, over her shoulder, that that would be lovely. Lucy had spent all day tidying up and had even managed to make a cake, in between walking Raff up and down.
‘Because of Angry Saturday?’
‘I already told you, Raff, it was before Angry Saturday.’
‘So why didn’t they, then?’
Jonah closed his eyes again. They hadn’t come at 5 p.m., and they’d waited and waited, and then they’d gone to sit on the step to look out for them. And when they did finally appear, with lots of other mums with buggies, and Lucy had stood up, Raff on her hip, waving and smiling, Alison had waved back – but then she’d opened her own front door and all the mums and buggies had gone inside and the door had shut. And Lucy had sat back down, staring, with her sad, tired eyes, at Alison’s dark green door; and Raff had started crying again.
‘Is Alison racist?’
Jonah opened his eyes. Opposite, one of the squatters, the one with the bald head, came out and sat on the doorstep, just like them. The squatter was the opposite of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò, he realised, the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò being tiny, with a huge head, and the squatter being big and tall, with a tiny head.
‘Is she?’ Raff nudged him.
‘I don’t know, Raff. Probably not.’
The squatter looked across and nodded at them, and got out his tobacco and rolling papers. It was finally starting to cool down.
‘She’s not coming,’ Raff said.
Jonah watched the squatter light his smoke. The sadness was making his stomach hurt. He looked back at Alison’s front door. Alison doesn’t like you, Lucy.No one likes you. Even Dora doesn’t like you any more. The squatter sucked. Jonah watched the smoke billowing out of his nostrils.
‘Maybe we should phone Daddy,’ said Raff.
‘You can’t just phone people in prison. It’s more complicated than that.’
In the silence, they could just hear Alison’s voice, shouting at Mabel and Greta. The squatter was leaning over his knees, squishing the smoke out on the pavement. Then he stood up and stretched his arms above his head.
Raff stood up too. ‘Slingsmen,’ he said.
18 (#ulink_1cab76f8-61ee-50ca-a693-d6a9226842a4)
Jonah was Slygon, and Raff was Baby Nail. Jonah kept winning, but Raff started getting fed up, so he let him win a few. He kept an eye on the clock, and when it got to 9 p.m. he said it was bedtime.
‘That’s not fair, I haven’t won hardly any yet!’ Raff threw his nunchuck down and went and lay on the sofa, face down.
Jonah stared down at Raff’s back. Then he scrunched his eyes tight shut, to pray, or to make a wish, or to try and reach her, somehow. Please come back. He said it over and over in his head, but the only answer was the Slingsmen tune. His stomach lurched at the endless emptiness of everything, and he tried to get a sense of a god, watching him: Ganesha, with his kind little elephant eye, or the Christian god, his bearded face all cloudy. Or maybe a group of gods in their togas? Was what was happening a kind of test? If he did the right thing, would he get her back? And was she up there, with the gods, was she waiting for him to work it out, to pass the test, so that she could return; holding her breath, wanting to shout clues to him?
The Slingsmen tune tinkled on and on, with the occasional phwoof of a released missile. He opened his eyes, dropped his nunchuck, and pulled her phone out of his pocket. The smallness of it, the lightness, the scratched redness, the way it flipped open and closed: so familiar, it was like an actual part of her. He flipped it open and looked at the text from Sunday morning.
Tonight X
He glanced down at Raff, and walked out of the room.
In the kitchen he pressed the green call button and held the phone to his ear. As it rang, he batted away a fly, and looked out at the corduroy cushion in the yard. The phone rang and rang, and then it rang off. No voice telling him to leave a message; just silence.
He snapped the phone closed and laid it on the table. He went out into the yard and checked that the diary hadn’t slid under the cushion. He walked back into the kitchen and looked for it on the windowsills and among the piled-up plates and bowls. Then he squeezed his eyes tightly shut again, trying to see her, to bring up her face. I don’t know what to do.Can’t you send me a message? Or some kind of sign?
Back in the sitting room, he wandered over to Roland’s aquarium. The fish had died long ago, just after he’d gone to prison, and they’d emptied the water, and now the tank was full of random objects: chess pieces, a stripy scarf, a broken kite. No diary though. He looked down the back of the sofa, and then pushed his hands under Raff’s body, feeling for the book. Raff pushed him away, swearing, and he rolled onto his back on the floor. There were flies, about ten of them, hanging out on the ceiling. The shape they made could be a messy J for Jonah. Or maybe an L for Lucy. He stared at the insects, waiting for them to form a different shape, to start spelling out a word.
They didn’t. Raff was crying now. Jonah got up and turned off the TV, and came back and perched next to him.
The sudden knock made them both jump into the air. They raced the few steps to the front door, Jonah arriving first and tugging it open.
‘Where have you …!’ he began, preparing to dive up into her arms, but he fell silent, because it wasn’t her. It was Saviour.
19 (#ulink_9334a61d-0048-505d-87ba-8400429e495e)
The sun was setting now, and Saviour’s face was glowing in the pink, spooky light. He was carrying a small wooden crate, and his fingers were still purple. Normally they were glad to see him, eager to let him in – but they both stood in the doorway, gazing out at him.
‘Hello, Saviour,’ said Raff, finally. Saviour nodded and cleared his throat, but instead of saying something, he offered Jonah the crate. His eyes were strangely pale: caramel instead of the usual brown.
‘Thank you,’ said Jonah, looking down. Plums, not blackcurrants; fat yellow ones, their skins breaking open, showing the squishy flesh. He turned and put the crate down, next to the petrol can.
‘Are you going to let me in?’ Saviour’s voice was very croaky and his breath smelt like Lucy’s nail varnish remover.
‘Lucy’s not here,’ he said quickly. ‘She’s gone to yoga. She’s only just left.’
Saviour looked down Southway Street, as if he might catch a glimpse of her going round the corner.
‘Are you having roast chicken?’ asked Raff.
Saviour shook his head. ‘Not tonight.’ The words were slurred, as well as croaky. He must have been drinking.
‘Is Dora going to die?’
‘Shut up, Raff,’ said Jonah. Saviour’s weird eyes fixed on him. His pupils were two tiny black dots, and it crossed Jonah’s mind that an alien had taken over his body.
‘You can come in if you want,’ said Raff. Jonah nudged him, but Raff elbowed him back and jumped down from the doorstep. ‘You can play Slingsmen with us, until she comes back!’
‘Good plan.’ Saviour took a breath and seemed to become himself again. He stepped forward, putting a hand on Raff’s shoulder, but then stopped. His eyes had closed and his mouth hung open, his bulldog cheeks sagging low. It was like he had fallen asleep. He must be really drunk, which was strange, because he was meant to have given up alcohol forever. Then his phone started ringing, from the pocket on his shirt, and Jonah and Raff both jumped, but Saviour’s eyes stayed shut. Jonah and Raff looked at each other as it kept on ringing.
‘You should answer it,’ said Raff, shrugging the hand off his shoulder and giving him a little push. Saviour’s eyes opened, and he nodded and felt for his phone. Once he had it in his hand, he stared at the flashing screen.
‘Answer it, then!’ said Raff.
Saviour nodded again and held the phone to his ear.
‘Dad?’ Emerald’s voice was small and tinny, but clear.
‘Yes, love.’
Emerald’s voice began to wail, and Saviour flinched, suddenly wide awake. He cleared his throat. ‘OK, love. Don’t worry. I’m on my way.’ She kept wailing, but he cut her off. Slipping the phone back into his pocket, his alien eyes came to rest on Jonah again.
‘Saviour.’ It was Alison. She had probably been watching them from her front window. Saviour’s face stretched into a peculiar grin, but then he covered his mouth with his hand, as if he’d realised about his breath.
‘Alison. How are you?’ he said, through his fingers.
‘Fine.’ She said it emphatically, folding her arms tightly. She looked at the boys. ‘How’s your mum? Isn’t it time you were in bed?’
Jonah nodded.
‘Good. Saviour, I was wondering if I could have a word?’
‘It’s actually not the greatest time, Ali—’ He pulled out his keys and looked over at his van, which was parked outside the Green Shop.
‘It won’t take a minute.’ Alison took Saviour’s arm. ‘Goodnight, boys!’
Back in the sitting room, they watched Alison and Saviour reaching the van, Alison talking and talking as Saviour put the key in the driver door. He looked over at them, and Alison looked too, so they ducked down and lay on the floor.
‘Can she tell that he’s drunk, do you think?’ Jonah whispered.
‘Is that what’s up with him!’ Raff got to his knees, and risked another peek. ‘She’s too busy cussing Mayo,’ he said, lying back down. They listened to Saviour’s van drive away, and Alison’s shoes clipping back to her house. Then there was just the tinkly Slingsmen tune again. Jonah gazed at Roland’s aquarium, remembering the bright, flitting fish. Four parrotfish, three angelfish and eight swordtails. The fish food had run out, so they’d fed them cornflakes, and they’d all died.
Raff sat up. ‘Who’s going to read us a story?’ His voice was very small.
‘I’ll read a story,’ said Jonah. ‘What story would you like, Raffy boy?’
20 (#ulink_c9879c0b-3d19-5886-a1e8-23e12fa8a072)
It was very hot upstairs. They went into the bathroom and Jonah stood on the lid of the toilet and pushed the window wide open. The sky was all streaky, and the birds were singing – sweet little chirps in the dusk. A couple of flies had drowned in Lucy’s bathwater, and neither of them wanted to put their hands in and pull out the plug. They brushed their teeth and took off their clothes, and Jonah bundled them all into the laundry basket, but then he took them out again, remembering that there were no clean ones. Raff got a book out of their bedroom, and they went into Lucy’s room with it, because that’s where she read to them sometimes, sitting up in her bed with a boy either side. They got in and pulled the sheet up over their naked bodies. Her smell was coming from the tiny particles of her left behind on the cotton, and in the air. Was that what a ghost was, millions of molecules, hanging together in an invisible swirl? He opened the book. It was one that they’d got out of the library ages ago, but never got round to reading, a proper chapter book, and the words looked very small and close together. Trying to get rid of the idea that Lucy was dead, he focused on the first sentence.
‘“Until he was four years old James Henry Trotter had a happy life,”’ he read. But sadness and worry gripped his stomach, and he let the book drop into his lap. Through the window, above the Broken House, he saw that the sky was finally darkening, and as he watched a single star came out.
‘Why have you stopped?’ Raff sat up and peered at Jonah’s face. Jonah looked down at the book. Then he shut it and got up and went over to Lucy’s chest of drawers.
Some of her underwear was spilling out of an open drawer, and he pushed it all back in and pushed the drawer shut. He climbed up, wedging his toes onto the wooden handles, and reached for the wire tray that lived on top of the chest. It was piled high, with letters and other bits of paper, and when he jumped back down with it, most of the papers slid out and fluttered to the floor.
‘What are you looking for?’
‘Her diary.’ It wasn’t there. He sat down and gathered up the fallen papers, which were mainly printed, and to do with money: lots from Jobcentre Plus, a couple from Smart Energy, a few from something called HSBC. As he gathered them up again, he noticed a postcard from the dentist saying they should come for a check-up, a letter about a clinic appointment, and one about their overdue library books, which made him shake his head. A white, handwritten envelope stood out from all the printed pages, and he stopped piling up the papers to look at it. Their address, of course, in handwriting he recognised; and there was a prison stamp on the back.
‘What are you doing?’ Raff sounded like he might start crying again. Jonah pulled the two sheets of letter paper out of the envelope.
Hello there, Lucy
Firstly, I want you to know that I don’t blame you for refusing to testify. I don’t really blame you for anything.
Raff had come to stand next to him. Jonah looked at his brother’s feet, which were big and long-toed, like Lucy’s, and then at the date at the top of the page. The letter was from 2011, the year Roland had got sent to prison. Ages ago. He stood up. ‘I think we should go into our own room,’ he said.
It was a tiny bit cooler in their room, and not as smelly. They could hear Leonie murmuring to someone, in between big drags on her smoke, and the other person grunting now and then. Raff got into his bed and Jonah sat on the floor, the carpet rough on his bare bottom. Raff said, ‘Read the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.’
Some of the words in the poem were hard, but he knew it more or less off by heart. He tried to read it like Lucy did, in the same soft, chanting voice.
On the Coast of Coromandel
Where the early pumpkins blow,
In the middle of the woods
Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.
As he read, he remembered again the feeling from the evening before, listening to Lucy’s voice: his own mother, unknown, unreachable.
Two old chairs, and half a candle,–
One old jug without a handle,–
These were all his worldly goods:
In the middle of the woods,
These were all the worldly goods,
Of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.
Such a sad story. Such a strange, lonely man, who loves the Lady Jingly Jones, who is also lonely, with only her hens to talk to. But when he asks her to be his wife, and to share his worldly goods with her, she cries and cries, and twirls her fingers, and says no.
‘Mr Jones – (his name is Handel, –
Handel Jones, Esquire, & Co.)
Dorking fowls delights to send,
Mr Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò!
Keep, oh! keep your chairs and candle,
And your jug without a handle,–
I can merely be your friend!
– Should my Jones more Dorkings send,
I will give you three, my friend!
Mr Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò!’
Raff sighed and rolled over. Jonah paused, staring at the picture: the Lady Jingly Jones, with her huge, feathered hat, weeping. Why had Handel Jones left her there on that heap of stones? And why did he send her hens? And would it really be so wrong of her to get together with Yonghy? Then he wondered if Handel might be in prison, like Roland, and Angry Saturday started flashing in his head. The sexing on the table, and then the peacock, with its terrible cry, and Bad Granny’s hand, reaching for him, like a claw. Although the way Raff was breathing meant he was already asleep, Jonah started reading again.
‘Down the slippery slopes of Myrtle,
Where the early pumpkins blow,
To the calm and silent sea
Fled the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò
There beyond the Bay of Gurtle,
Lay a large and lively Turtle, –
You’re the Cove,’ he said, ‘for me;
On your back beyond the sea,
Turtle, you shall carry me!’
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò,
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.’
There were another two verses, but it had got too dark to read them. Jonah sat still, feeling himself to be very small. Were the gods all talking about him, deciding whether to help him? Or had they forgotten about him? Had something more interesting come up? He closed the book and ran his finger over the title on the front cover. The black letters had been stamped into the red cardboardy stuff, so you could feel them.
THE JUMBLIES & OTHER
NONSENSE VERSES
The book had been Lucy’s mother’s book, and it was on its last legs. Lucy had Sellotaped its spine, to keep it going a bit longer. There had been a raggedy paper jacket, but it had fallen to bits. He opened it at the first page, where Lucy’s mother had written her name, very neatly. Rose Marjorie Arden. Arden, because she’d written it when she was a child, long before she’d married Lucy’s father and become Rose Marjorie Mwembe. Underneath, in much bigger, messier writing, was Lucy’s name: Lucy Nsansa Mwembe. She was still Lucy Mwembe, even though she was married to Roland. These days women who got married didn’t always change their names to their husband’s. Nsansa had a meaning; she’d told him, but he couldn’t remember what it was.
He let the book slip from his lap, tipped to one side and curled into a little ball on the floor. They hadn’t sung the song, he realised, the song she sang to them every bedtime; a kind of prayer, thanking God for the day, and asking him to look after them through the night. Glory to thee, my God this night … He sang the words in his head, picturing that old, Christian God, with his big white beard, all fatherly and silent, waiting to be noticed. Then he stopped, thinking instead about Rose. She had died a long time ago, when Lucy was a child. Lucy couldn’t remember her that well, but she remembered the bedtime song, which was an English song; and that she’d called her Mayo, a Zambian word for Mummy. She had a tiny photograph of her face in the locket she wore on her throat, showing that she’d been white, with a very straight fringe of dark hair. Their other grandmother. Was she up there with the old, fatherly God, and the angels, with their white, seagull wings? Or had she been reborn? What would she have come back as? He tried to get a sense of her, of her smile, her motherliness, but all he could get was that tiny, faded face in the locket.
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Tamsin Grey
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: ′A wonderful, artfully addictive novel′ IAN MCEWANWhen Jonah and Raff wake up on Monday, their mother Lucy isn’t there.Although he’s only nine, Jonah knows enough about the world to keep her absence a secret. If anyone found out she’d left them alone, who knows what could happen to him and his little brother?As the days go on, he puzzles over the clues left behind: who sent Lucy flowers? Why is her phone in a plant pot? Why are all her shoes still there? And who in their neighbourhood might know more about Lucy than he does?