had been busier. Lots of her loopy scrawls. He ran his finger along the rows of numbers, going backwards through time. Dentist. They hadn’t bothered going in the end. He couldn’t remember why. Martins with D. Oh yes, the day they took Dylan round, so he could mate with Elsie. They’d sat on a blanket in the garden, watching the rabbits ignoring each other. Saviour had brought out tea and cake. Rhubarb cake. It had been quite cold.
‘I wish we had a time machine,’ said Raff. He had taken the pen to bits and was examining the little tube inside.
Jonah kept looking at the calendar. Time, a whole month, one circling of the moon, turned into thirty squares on a page. ‘What for?’ he said.
‘To take us to when she comes home. Then we wouldn’t have to keep on waiting.’
‘Or it could take us back to this morning. Before she went out.’ Jonah flicked the calendar back to July. ‘Then we could stop her from going.’ He put his finger under the word beginning with C. It might be Clink. Or maybe …
‘You can’t actually do that.’
‘Do what? Don’t do that, Raff. The ink will come out and go everywhere.’
‘Change things that have already happened.’ Raff kept squeezing. There wasn’t any ink in it anyway. ‘Otherwise everything would explode. There’s no point in going back. Only forward.’
‘But if you go forward you lose some of your life.’ Jonah thought for a moment. ‘Well, not if you came back again.’
Raff nodded. ‘You could go forward, see what’s going to happen, like who gets a certificate in Assembly, and then come back and make a bet on it.’
‘Well, you could bet on a horse race,’ Jonah pointed out. ‘You could put all your money on it, sell your car and your house, because you’d absolutely know which horse was going to win.’
‘Daddy would like that!’
Jonah frowned, looking at the photograph of Roland and Rusty. Rusty had died, ages ago, before the Egyptian yoga holiday. He was buried in Bad Granny’s garden. There was a gravestone, with his name. ‘I don’t think he would. He would think it was cheating. Which it is.’ He looked back at the calendar. PED. On the last day of term. Perfect End Day? ‘And anyway. Once you’ve gone forward, coming back again, you’re actually going into the past. So putting the bet on in the past would make everything explode.’
‘No, because you’d put the bet on in the new time, that came after you went into the future. The bit that nothing’s happened in yet.’
PED. Jonah frowned at the letters, thinking about time travel. ‘But when you’re in the future, watching the horse race, then it’s actually the present, isn’t it? And the time leading up to the horse race must have actually happened, otherwise …’ He closed his eyes, seeing the strange blankness of unwritten time. ‘I think what must happen is that you split into two.’ He opened his eyes. Raff was fiddling with the bits of pen again. ‘So your old self just keeps going, and not putting on the bet, and then your new self …’ He stopped again, trying to work it out. It was incredibly complicated.
‘No such thing as time machines anyway, stupid Peck.’ Raff dropped the pen pieces on the table and left the room.
Her clogs were still there, and the umbrella, and the petrol can, and the bag with the swimming things. The stepladder was lying flat, taking up a lot of room. Jonah picked it up and rested it against the wall. Without saying anything, they wandered together from room to room, ending up in Lucy’s bedroom, where the air was still thick with the smell of her body. Raff climbed into her bed and lay down.
‘Why are they having roast chicken?’
‘Because of Dora’s cancer.’
‘She’s had that for ages.’
‘She got better from it. But Em said now she’s really ill and might die.’ Jonah surveyed the room. A big tear in the paper lampshade showed the curly light bulb inside it. The wardrobe door hung open, clothes spilling out, and two of the drawers were sticking out of the high chest of drawers. Lucy’s red silk dressing gown, with the dragon on its back, was hanging on one bedpost, and on the other was that smelly grey cardigan she’d borrowed the day they took Dylan to the Martins’. Her flowery top and denim shorts from yesterday were on the floor beside the bed, and her lacy pink pants were still inside the shorts. There was a dark stain on the cotton bit where her fanny went.
‘Do you believe her?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Mayo said it wasn’t actually that bad.’ Raff kicked the duvet off the bed. His trainers had made dirty marks on the bottom sheet.
‘When did she say that?’
‘I dunno.’ Raff sat up and swung his legs over so that he was sitting on the other side of the bed, facing Lucy’s dressing table, which was just a small, ordinary table with a piece of mirror propped on it. Jonah went and sat beside him, and they both looked at themselves in the dusty, greasy mirror. Jonah looked more like Roland, who was white, with a long, thin nose, whereas Raff looked more like Lucy, with his browner skin and his afro hair, and his huge, golden eyes.
Raff leaned forward and reached for her lipstick, which was lying amongst some lipsticky tissues. It didn’t have its lid on, and was all squashed and melted. Jonah noticed that two of Raff’s cornrows were coming out now. Lucy had put them in weeks ago, nice and tight, so they would last, but nothing lasts forever. He watched Raff putting the lipstick on his mouth, remembering Lucy doing the same thing the night before. The cricket had finished, and he’d gone upstairs to find her. She’d had her back to him, and their eyes had met in the mirror. She’d scraped her hair into a tight knot on top of her head, which made her look weirdly beautiful. ‘That hairstyle really suits you, Mayo,’ he had said. And then he’d said, ‘Lucy, I mean.’ He’d smiled, but she hadn’t smiled back; and her lipstick had been far too thick.
‘What’s up?’ said Raff, with bright red lips.
‘Nothing,’ said Jonah, but the memory had brought a coldness into his belly. ‘You look stupid with that lipstick.’
‘I look cool, bébé!’ Raff turned sideways to look over his shoulder into the mirror and blow a kiss at himself. Then he went over to her wardrobe and pulled out her sparkly fairy shoes. ‘Roast chicken’s my favourite. Why can’t we go to the Martins’? We could leave her a note.’
Jonah had a flash of the Martins’ house: of burrowing into that space behind the sofa and lying there, smelling what was cooking, and listening to Dora and Lucy talking. When they had first got to know them, when he and Emerald were in Reception, they used to go there nearly every day.
‘Or we could just tell Dora to phone her,’ said Raff.
The phone. Jonah turned to the bedside table. It was still there, next to the wine glass. ‘Have you seen her charger?’
Raff had put his feet into the sparkly shoes and was clopping around the room. ‘It’s down there.’ He pointed to the socket
