seen before. A toy? One of his and Raff’s old cars? His fingers closed around it. Not a car. Not a toy, even. He pulled it out, and something caught in his throat, because it was a mobile phone, just like Lucy’s, a snap-shut Nokia. It probably was Lucy’s. But why would Lucy bury her phone in a flowerpot? His heart banging again, he wiped it on his boxers, but it left a dirty mark, so he shook it to get the rest of the dirt off it, and it came apart. The back of it and the battery plopped back into the soil. He retrieved them and carried the three parts of the phone back into the house. He laid them out on the table, and fetched a tea towel to wipe them properly clean, before clicking them back together.
It was her phone. It had to be. No one else had those Nokias any more. He pressed the ‘On’ button. There was a bleep, and the screen lit up. It was showing a very low battery, but it seemed to be working fine. After a few seconds there was another bleep, and a missed call popped upon the screen. DORA. So she had phoned, and maybe she had come round with the wine. The last time they’d been to the Martins’ must be the afternoon they’d taken Dylan round to mate with Elsie. Weeks ago. The phone bleeped again, and died. He weighed it in his hand, wondering where the charger might be, and remembering that chilly afternoon in the Martins’ garden, watching the rabbits.
The charger wasn’t in any of the wall sockets in the kitchen, and it wasn’t in the socket in the hall. In the hall he looked at Lucy’s clogs again. They were wooden clogs, very old, kind of chewed looking, but so comfortable, Lucy said. They were the only shoes she’d worn for weeks. He put his own feet into them, remembering seeing her red toenails through the water. His feet would be as big as hers soon. DORA. The word danced in his head. Maybe they would go round to the Martins’ after school. It would be nice to see the rabbits. And Saviour. He saw Saviour’s warm brown eyes, and heard his friendly, cockney voice. Fancy giving me a hand with the cooking?
He stepped out of the clogs and went upstairs. The charger wasn’t in the socket on the landing. Back in Lucy’s room, it was still quite dark and, instead of continuing his search, he found himself getting back into her bed, half expecting her to be there after all. She wasn’t. Where have you gone, silly Mayo? No, silly Lucy. He closed his eyes, and saw Dora, lying by the pool at the French holiday house, while Lucy, in just her bikini bottoms, walked up and down with her net. ‘Nice to get away from it all!’ Dora’s cheerful voice, her sunglasses, her long, thin body covered against the sun. ‘Nice to get away from it all!’ She’d kept saying it, all the way through the holiday, as if … As if what? He rolled onto his side, seeing Lucy’s net full of wet insects, her bosoms and her concentrating face as she tipped them out onto the paving stones; and got that weird feeling again, the one he got when she was reading the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò poem. That she was separate from him, different, a stranger; and it wasn’t just her grown-upness, or her femaleness, or her Africanness, which came and went with her mood. He pictured the three tiny pyramids on the kitchen table; and then the single, glinting disc on the Raggedy Man’s palm; the stepladder, the red umbrella, the scribble Violet’s paws made in the filth on the white van: and then he must have fallen asleep, because the next thing that happened was the ringing of the Tibetan bells.
The bells were a lovely sound. Jonah listened with his eyes closed, imagining the monks in their monastery in the misty mountains. Then Raff came running in, like a tornado.
‘There’s some guy swearing his head off in the street! You got to hear him, fam!’
Jonah opened his eyes and watched his little brother scamper around the bed, holding up his pyjama bottoms, which had lost their elastic. He realised he was still clutching the red phone, and put it down next to the lipsticky wine glass.
‘What’s that? Where’s Mayo? Why have you got her phone?’ One of Raff’s cornrows had started to come out. ‘Anyway, come on, you got to hurry. You seriously got to hear this!’
Jonah switched off the bells and followed his brother into their bedroom, where he was already leaning too far out of the window. ‘Be careful, Raff!’ He squashed in beside him, putting an arm around his waist. His skin felt very warm and dry.
‘Oh my days! It’s the bloomin’ Raggedy Man!’ Raff leaned even further, and Jonah tightened his hold. ‘But he never talks!’ said Raff. ‘Why is he saying those things?’
Jonah looked down, and saw that the Raggedy Man had moved from outside the squatters’ house and was on the pavement directly below. ‘I don’t know.’
‘He got issues, man! Who is he talking to? Oi! You talking to us?’ Jonah tried to clap his hand over Raff’s mouth, but Raff wriggled out of his hold. He pranced, making signs with his fingers. ‘Don’t call me snake tongue, you fuckin’ rat, you crazy fuckin’ vampire bat!’ he hissed, his cute face all mean.
‘Don’t say fuck, Raff.’
‘Why? He said it!’ Raff yanked up his pyjama bottoms. ‘And you just said it, you fuckin’ giraffe neck!’
‘Anyway. It’s time to get dressed.’ Their school uniforms would be downstairs, among the dirty washing on the kitchen floor. Out in the street, the Green Shop door opened, and the Raggedy Man fell silent. The Green Shop Man came out, holding the stick with the hook on the end that he used to push up his metal blinds. Raff aimed an imaginary catapult at him, pulling back the stone in the sling, then letting go, his fingers exploding into a star, his lips blowing a kind of raspberry. ‘Phwoof! Right in the head!’ His pyjama bottoms fell to his ankles. He reached down to pull them back up. ‘Is it Haredale’s Got Talent this week?’
‘Yes. Thursday.’
‘Yesss!’ Raff went spinning off, doing his dance again. ‘Is Mayo writing her diary in the garden, like yesterday?’
‘No.’
‘Oh my days! It’s Sports Day on Thursday too!’
‘Yes.’ It would be a bit of a scramble, Mr Mann had said, but he didn’t want to deprive the athletes of their moments of glory; and parents who were already planning to come to the talent show could come early and kill two birds with one stone.
‘Is she still better, or is she back to being ill?’ Raff had stopped dancing.
‘Better.’ Brighter. The squiggly words on the fluttering page.
‘Where is she, anyway?’ Raff was suddenly very still, his tortoiseshell eyes fixed on Jonah.
‘I’m not sure. Probably gone to the park.’
The Green Shop Man pushed at his stick. The huge noise of the metal blinds going up filled the air.
The pint of milk on the doorstep had already gone warm. It had a note under it from the milkman – a bill probably. Jonah carried the milk and the note into the kitchen. The mango and the bottle of wine were still there, and the ants were still crawling up and down the jug to their deaths. Raff sat down, and Jonah got the Weetabix out of the cupboard. The only clean bowls he could find were a wooden salad bowl and a white mixing bowl. Raff looked at the bowls and snorted.
‘Or we could do some washing up,’ Jonah
