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.
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