for the leaves and red for the apples. She knows the painting, done by Rene’s pa, like a face, with all its asymmetries and wrinkles. Her parents say nothing. Ella says nothing. In the silence, she kneels down.
Ella has never seen a child’s coffin. She’s only been to the funeral of her great-aunt Lydia. Suddenly she is possessed by the strange notion that if she opens the case, she will find a body inside. Of course, the dimensions do not allow for that – the legs would be too squashed up in that long neck of the case.
‘Mrs Mauchlen came by this morning …’ her father begins, but her mother puts a hand on him and he stops abruptly.
Ella crouches forward and puts her hands on the case, then feels around the lid, undoing the clasps. She lifts the lid, which crackles as it hinges upwards. Gleaming in the warm light, Rene’s guitar is as beautiful as it ever was. Ella’s eyes trail over the floral pattern around the sound hole, the gleam of the tuning pegs, the thick velvet lining the case.
For all this, Ella doesn’t want it. She feels no desire for the guitar, to own it or even touch it. This absence of desire is the most troubling thing she has ever felt, so keen it is. She thinks this not-wanting must be a mistake and reaches to take out the guitar.
She lifts it slowly by the neck and body and places it on her knees. She does not strum the strings. She does not want to hear them. Both hands are placed over the strings, muting them, like a hand over a mouth. She hopes they stay silent forever.
* * *
Ella supposes it’s because she’s a child that she keeps waiting to see Rene. She doubts that adults expect to see their dead friends turning a street corner, or sitting on the step outside their close, waiting for them to come and play. She doubts they feel the same missed-step jolt in their belly when they remember. She doubts adults see those person-shaped holes in the world. It is a stupidity unique to childhood, she thinks, and cannot wait to outgrow it.
She goes to the funeral, undistinguished as Rene’s best friend among the rest of her class. She sees Robert, through the crowds, but does not speak to him. He’s wearing a black jacket and tie, with black shorts and a black cap. The whole outfit must have been bought for the occasion. Ella thinks he looks like a crow with skinny white legs. She watches as he’s hugged by a succession of relatives. They look like they’re trying to squeeze the breath out of him, and Ella wants to tell them to stop. Robert just stands there, unmoving, until they let him go.
Back at school, Ella sits at the edge of the playground. It’s not because she’s mourning, but because she can’t think of anything else to do. She comes home every afternoon, spends the evenings with her parents, half-listening to the radio until it’s time for bed, where she goes without complaint. On Sundays there is church, but Saturdays drag on endlessly, longer than the rest of the week combined.
Ella fades into the background. People stop noticing her. She becomes ghost-like. She doesn’t mind. After all, this is all her fault.
* * *
A month after the funeral, Ella is sitting on the low wall at one edge of the playground, her back against the wire fence. She’s examining her own shadow. The December sun is not shining, exactly, but the clouds today are paper-thin. As she watches, another shadow draws near and intersects with her own, creating a patch between them that is darker than either on its own.
‘Hello, Eleanor.’
She looks up and sees a halo of auburn curls surrounding a serious face. If Ella were to say that Robert Mauchlen looks angelic it would not be entirely complimentary. He looks like one of those Old Testament angels she’s seen in church, who the Almighty has given an especially onerous task – casting out Satan, evicting Adam and Eve, sweeping over Egypt to take the souls of first-born children. More than the average nine-year-old boy, Robert looks like he has something on his mind.
Ella has been expecting this moment. Hoping for it, even. She wants Robert to tell her off. She wants him to shout at her. She wants him to blame her for Rene. Even as fear curdles in her belly, she’s anticipating the relief of punishment. Robert just stands there, as though he’s about to say something. But the words never come. Then his hand shoots out and he places something in her lap. He sits next to her.
Ella can feel her heart pounding. The object in her lap is wrapped in brown paper. She assumes it’s something disgusting. Dog poo, perhaps. Or insects – a collection of earwigs and centipedes. She resists the urge to shrug the parcel onto the ground and pinches the corner between thumb and forefinger. The brown paper opens almost like a flower.
Sitting in the middle is the biggest block of tablet that Ella has ever seen. Of all the sweets that Ella and Rene most treasured – soor plooms, sherbet straws, Berwick cockles – tablet was the most precious. Mrs Mauchlen makes it herself, with a tin of condensed milk and a huge bag of sugar, stirring the pan until her arm aches and the mixture solidifies into something crumbly at the edges, fudgy in the centre. Ella’s mum always gets it wrong, overcooking the mix so it sets hard as toffee.
Ella breaks a piece off and pops it in her mouth. The sugar coats the roof of her mouth, makes the back of her throat tickle, and she finally believes it’s real. She quickly wraps up the precious stuff and shoves it in her cardigan before anybody notices what she’s got. She tries to think of something to say to Robert. He asks a question instead.
‘What do you like to do?’ Robert asks.
Before, Ella would have said that she likes playing with Rene.
‘I like listening to the radio.’
‘Oh?’ Robert’s eyebrows rise. ‘What do you like to listen to?’
Ella thinks. Actually, she doesn’t like the radio that much any more. She doesn’t like the comedians and the storytellers that were always her favourites. They all seem like they’re trying to distract her from how she feels, and she doesn’t want to be distracted.
‘I like the music,’ she says, at last. This is true. Music doesn’t distract her. Music lets her feel what she’s feeling more strongly. To Ella’s surprise, Robert is nodding.
‘Me too.’
‘You do?’
‘I’d like to be a musician, when I grow up.’
‘Don’t you want to do something with books? You could be a librarian. Or, um … the man who delivers books to the library.’
‘Hm.’ Robert sounds sceptical. ‘Maybe. But it would be fun to play music.’
‘Fun?’
‘Aye. Else why would they call it “play”?’
This is the most insightful thing Ella has heard anyone around her age say, by such a large degree, that it strikes her as mystical. She has never thought a job could be like playing before. It seems like a secret hidden in plain sight. For a minute they are silent. Ella feels she shouldn’t waste this opportunity.
‘D’you think it gets easier?’ she asks, very quietly.
Robert runs a hand through his curls, breathes in and out. He looks so adult to Ella, he might as well be one of the teachers.
‘People keep saying that … But I don’t know. Maybe they’re just saying it so that we don’t give up.’
‘Give up what?’
‘On being normal, I guess.’
‘Oh.’ Ella can’t say anything more. She couldn’t have expressed the feeling she has had for the last few weeks better than Robert just has.
‘You’re clever,’ she says at last. When she looks over at him, Robert is blushing furiously. He clears his throat.
‘I should go.’
‘Okay.’
He gets up to leave and walks away without looking back.
‘Thank you!’ Ella blurts out.
Robert