‘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

  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

  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

  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.

 

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