stronger – Santa or God?’ Alex asks Elizabeth.
‘That’s a hard one …’
‘Do you think Santa died?’
‘No, of course he didn’t. Santa can’t die.’
‘So then why didn’t he come last Christmas?’
Elizabeth sits forward, sighs. ‘I suppose I could say … well he’s a supernatural being, like a god really, so he can’t truly die. He’s protected by force fields. He’ll come this year, just you wait.’
Duncan makes a sound of spit in his throat which is disrespectful to Santa. Elizabeth does her frown at him to tell him not to give the game away.
Alex goes back to his DS for a bit. We hear swooshes and a beep-countdown then the game-over theme.
‘I absolutely hate Santa,’ he says.
Elizabeth: ‘No you don’t.’
‘Yes I do. I hate him and I hate God. And I hate baby Jesus and I hate the tooth fairy.’
‘You forgot the Easter bunny,’ Duncan says, doing his sound of spit again.
Alex says nothing.
‘Who wants a bedtime snack?’ Elizabeth asks.
By bedtime snack she means supper. By dinner she usually means tea. And when she says lunch, really that means dinner. It’s her own habit. I learnt that Elizabeth is in a separate country, and time, when it comes to food, because she’s from England.
Now Calum Ian calls her an incomer – which is kind of true, but not truly kind.
‘Incomers like their own name for food,’ he says.
Elizabeth looks away sadly, so I decide to stand up for her at once: ‘When Elizabeth’s mum and dad came to the island, they decided it was too risky for babies to be born here,’ I remind Calum Ian. ‘This meant that I got born in Glasgow. Same with all the other kids at school. So we are all incomers. Which makes you the odd-one-out.’
Alex claps; Elizabeth smiles. Calum Ian gives me the rude two-finger sign.
We turn on the gas fire. It dances blue when I blow on it. I almost prefer it to the real fire. Elizabeth gets out the sleeping bags, and we gather in to toast biscuits.
In the fire-dark her skin looks bumpy like Duncan’s. You can’t tell where the black or the blue of her eyes are, which is kind of scary, so I try not to look.
‘Do you think your mum and dad are dead?’ I ask her, without even knowing I was going to.
This is against the rules. Nobody says so.
Elizabeth burns and burns her biscuit. The smoke of it gets up my nose. She could be waxwork.
‘They are dead,’ she says.
The ask was my fault: my bad idea. So it’s my job right away to make her feel better. I say, ‘When my mum comes back from the mainland, the worst thing will be telling her about Granny, and the cousins. And my aunts and uncles. It’s going to be terrible. I’ll be glad to see her, but it’ll be terrible all the same.’
Elizabeth says nothing. So I try again: ‘My school book last year said three new babies are born for every two people dying. So at the gates of heaven it’s: hullo, hullo, hullo. Goodbye, goodbye. That’s the rule.’
Elizabeth just stares at her singed biscuit.
‘Don’t know where my mum and dad are,’ Alex says, licking his biscuit. ‘The last time I saw Mum, she was just away for a minute. Wish they’d come home.’
‘Our dad’s away on his boat,’ Duncan says, before Calum Ian can stop him. ‘He was gone away to bring food back from the mainland. That’s why we can’t be staying with you lot. We were told to wait at home. Sorry, but he ordered us there.’
‘Always do as we’re told,’ Calum Ian says.
This makes the MacNeil brothers remember about leaving. They want to get back before it’s dark. I ask Elizabeth if I should follow them and get back our food, but she tells me just to forget about it.
Our house is the shape of a loaf tin. It’s good because it doesn’t have any wrong smell. Also, there are three beds in one room, so we can sleep together. Also, it has a gas stove (Calum Ian changes the cylinders) and thick walls and a roof with flat bits for collecting rainwater.
Also, it’s not any of our old homes. This helps us to become a fresh family. Which is especially good for Elizabeth, who has no family of her own.
Before bed it’s tick-check time, then we do the routine with the radios.
Same static-noise as always.
We unpick the cereal boxes from the skylight, and lie heads together under the window. I forgot that in the summer stars don’t exist. In wintertime you can even see them going to school in the morning.
Now Elizabeth tries to remember all the things her dad said about the stars, and the sky. It doesn’t last very long. Usually if I’ve run out of memories I make stuff up, but she has a rule for herself against that.
‘The past is precious,’ she says. ‘It has to be correct.’
It’s when she starts remembering about planets going around the sun, and moons going around the planets, that I remember – the riddle that Mum told me. And because it’s a true memory, I want to tell it.
It must be a good one, a good riddle, because it gets them quiet. I know the answer but I won’t tell them.
‘You could give us a clue,’ grumbles Alex.
‘OK, here.’
For one clue only, I hold up my drawing of the Queen.
When Elizabeth puts on the night light I promise to tell them the next day if they still haven’t guessed.
It’s not a very good day for seeing far out to sea. I sometimes forget to keep watching.
This morning the rain was marching adults in my dream. Mum used to call that sort of thing ‘wishful thinking’. She never said if wishing worked.
Then there are other things: things you didn’t wish for. Like the Gaelic weather sticker at the end of my bed. It said, ‘Tha i grianach’. I had to tear it, right through the happy face of the sun underneath.
All around
