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‘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!’
