Читать книгу She’s Not There - Tamsin Grey, Tamsin Grey - Страница 17

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.