toys out. Grandad appears and tries to catch them. When a stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh hits him in the face he starts to fight it. It’s really funny. I turn round to tell Rose to come and watch, but then I change my mind. There’s no way she’s getting off that sofa.
Rose used to be all right. No, she was better than all right. She was funny and laughed at my jokes and, except for the dark, she wasn’t scared of anything. It was Rose who jumped off the harbour wall one summer, right in front of all those teenage boys, and Rose who worked out that we could sledge down the sand dunes on trays. At school we were in the same class and played together every break time. I thought Rose liked this as much as I did, until our head teacher decided to mix up the Year Five classes.
We were given a piece of paper and told to write down the names of three people we wanted to be with. I wrote down one name: Rose. I didn’t need anyone else. But then our teacher left the pieces of paper on his desk and I saw Rose’s list. She’d written:
Angel
Nisha
Briony
Rose was really happy in 5A with her three friends. Across the corridor in 5B, I wasn’t so happy. Then Rose got her phone and got into YouTube, make-up and her mates, and the Rose I knew just sort of disappeared.
I turn back to the window and shake out the last of the toys. Grandad is lying flat on his back now, letting them fall all over him. After the last teddy has bounced off his stomach I go to clear out the darkest corner of the attic.
I push aside a chunky TV and find myself staring into the sparkly eyes of a rocking horse. It rocks slightly, eyes wide, teeth bared, as if it’s angry about being left in this dingy spot for so long.
I grab its mane and pull it out. ‘Look who I’ve found, Rose!’
She looks up. ‘What? It’s just the old rocking horse.’
‘Yes, but it’s your old rocking horse, isn’t it? It was you who painted it black and covered it in glitter, and then you said it belonged to you and I was never allowed to sit on it. What did you call it?’
‘Prosecco,’ she says flatly. ‘You’d better put it in the charity shop pile. Someone might want it.’
Suddenly I want to make Rose admit that she used to love this rocking horse. I want her to look at it, and be interested in it, and stop being cool, just for a second . . .
‘Hey, Rose.’ I drag it towards the window. ‘Do you think Prosecco would like to fly?’
She looks up. ‘What’re you on about?’
‘He’s been stuck in the attic for too long. I think he’d like to feel the wind beneath his hooves.’ I’m at the window now.
She leaps off the sofa and grabs hold of the mane. ‘You can’t throw him out of the window, Arthur. He’s an antique!’
‘He?’ I say. ‘He? ’
Rose narrows her eyes.
‘Do you think you can you still talk to him, Rose?’
She yanks the rocking horse out of my hands. ‘Let’s see, shall we?’ Then she crouches down and presses her ear to his mouth. ‘What was that, Prosecco? Uh-huh. Got it.’ She looks up. ‘Prosecco wants me to tell you that you smell like the corridor outside the boys’ toilets. In fact, Prosecco thinks that the corridor outside the boys’ toilets might actually smell of Arthur.’ She smiles sweetly. ‘It looks like I can still talk to him!’
‘Yeah? Well, maybe I can too.’ I stick my ear next to its mouth. ‘Sorry, Prosecco? You think Rose’s perfume smells like cat poo after it’s been in the sun? OK, I’ll pass it on.’
Now it’s Rose’s turn. She rams her ear against his mouth. ‘Uh-huh, yep, got it.’ She looks up. ‘What Prosecco actually said was that it’s you who smells like cat poo after it’s been in the sun. You got it wrong because, unlike me, you don’t speak fluent Moonlight Stallion.’
Moonlight Stallion. Ha! I knew Rose was still into Prosecco! He used to pop up in loads of our games and I’m sure she was always sitting on him when we played Roar.
Roar. In a flash it’s back, and an image darts into my mind of Rose sitting high on Prosecco, bossing me around and translating his insults for me.
Prosecco rocks forwards and again I feel like he’s looking at me. I tug him towards the window by his tail, suddenly desperate to get away from his sparkly staring eyeballs. ‘He still wants to fly,’ I say. ‘He said so.’
Rose’s hands grab the tail. ‘I’d let go of that if I were you.’
‘Why?’
Her voice drops to a dramatic whisper. ‘Because since you last saw Prosecco his tail has become poisonous and every single strand stings like a bee. The pain is intense, Arthur, and it will shoot through you like a thousand needles burrowing into your skin!’
‘So? You’re holding the tail too!’
She shoves her face close to mine, eyes shining, and whispers, ‘The poison only affects BOYS!’
A chuckle makes us look up. Grandad is standing in the doorway with a cup of coffee. ‘It’s so wonderful to see you two playing again. Nothing could make me happier.’
‘We’re not playing, Grandad.’ Rose lets go of Prosecco’s tail. ‘We’re fighting. Big difference.’
‘Sounded a bit like playing to me,’ he says, then he sits on the sofa, props his feet on a suitcase and says, ‘Well, get on with it. This attic won’t clear itself out.’
It’s fun having Grandad in the attic. He plays tunes on the keyboard and seems excited by everything we find.
Grandad and Nani grew up in Mauritius, and when I discover something I think came from there I show it to him: an empty bottle of Labourdonnais rum, one of Nani’s old saris, a tin that once contained Bois Cheri tea.
‘I can smell home,’ says Grandad, sticking his nose in the tin and breathing deeply.
All this nostalgia makes Grandad move on to singing sea shanties in French, and Rose and I fall quiet as his deep voice fills the room. We’ve only visited Mauritius once, when we were little, and I can hardly remember it. I can hardly remember Nani either. She died when we were three. Rose and I start to put anything that might have belonged to Nani on the sofa next to Grandad. He glances down at the beads and scarves and boxes, but he doesn’t stop singing until Rose pulls a half-deflated dinghy into the middle of the room.
It’s not the dinghy that interests him, but something hidden behind it.
He disappears into the shadows of the eaves and comes back dragging a camp bed. ‘Remember this old thing?’ he asks.
I catch my breath. It’s an ancient camp bed, one of those ones on wheels
