‘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.
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