it out to him, aware that Christine was still watching them. ‘Come on, let’s go home. If she’s still not there, we can get in through the back.’
They crossed the crossing and walked down the hill again, Raff dragging his school bag along the ground.
‘Raff!’
It was Tameron. He was squatting on the kerb over the fox, with Tyreese from Jonah’s class, and their elder brother Theodore, who went to secondary school. Tyreese was poking at the fox with a stick and the others were watching.
‘They shouldn’t just leave it like that, man,’ said Theodore.
‘Look at its eye!’ cried Tameron. ‘You lookin’ at me, Mr Foxy?’
‘Should we burn it?’ suggested Tyreese. He looked at Jonah. ‘You know, like the Hindus.’ Theodore shrugged and pulled out a lighter.
‘Come on, Raff,’ said Jonah.
‘Wait! I want to see it burning!’ said Raff. Jonah stepped forward and peered over their heads. Theodore wasn’t holding the lighter near enough, and anyway the flame was tiny. He looked at the fox’s face. Its eye was open, and for a tiny moment it was like it was alive, alive and wanting his attention.
‘Let me try, bro,’ said Tyreese. Theodore passed him the lighter, and Tyreese managed to slightly singe the fox’s fur before burning his thumb and dropping the lighter to the ground.
Theodore picked up the lighter and put it back in his pocket. ‘Not gonna burn with just that little thing.’
‘We need petrol!’ said Tyreese.
‘Petrol!’ cried Raff. ‘We got petrol!’
The brothers looked at him, interested, and he looked back at Jonah. Jonah shook his head.
‘Why not!’ said Raff.
‘I don’t think we should,’ said Jonah. ‘And anyway, we might not be able to get in.’
‘Why not?’ asked Tameron.
‘Our mum might not be back.’
‘I need to wash my hands, man!’ Theodore got to his feet. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
‘Can you get the petrol tomorrow?’ Tyreese asked Jonah.
‘Fox gone by tomorrow, Tyreese, roadsweeper take it away.’ Theodore pushed his brother forward, and the three of them walked away down the hill.
They tried knocking on the front door again, but not for long.
‘What, then?’ said Raff.
‘It’s fine,’ said Jonah. ‘The back door is definitely open. We can go through the Broken House.’
Around the corner, he trailed his fingers along the splintery fence, as he had that morning, but Raff kept to the kerb because he was scared of the passionflowers. Just as they reached the loose board, they heard a shout from across the road. It was Leonie, leaning out of her doorway.
‘Where’s your ma?’ she shouted.
‘Let’s run, fam!’ whispered Raff.
‘At the shops!’ Jonah called back.
Leonie shook her head, tutting and muttering, and came out onto the pavement, tossing her hair and clip-clopping in her high-heeled mules. She stood with her feet apart and her hands on her hips.
Raff snorted. ‘Hench!’ he whispered.
‘You’re not going in there, it’s too dangerous, you hear me,’ she shouted. The Kebab Shop Man came to lean in his own doorway, and she turned to him. ‘Some child is going to get themselves killed in there!’
The Kebab Shop Man nodded, and lit a smoke.
‘Come here!’ Leonie shouted, beckoning them. Ignoring Raff’s mutterings, Jonah took hold of his hand, looked right and left, and crossed them over. Leonie’s bosoms were straining out of her pink lace dress. Her fingernails were pink too, pink and incredibly long, and her black braids tumbled out of the top of her head like a waterfall.
‘I know you two boys got your heads screwed on,’ she said. ‘So I’m surprised at you, even thinking of going in that place. It’s dirty in there, you hear me?’ Like Miss Swan, she had beads of sweat in the groove between her upper lip and her nose. ‘There’s nasty things, poison, make you really sick.’
They both nodded.
‘Or, failing that, the place will topple over, smash them little bodies of yours into a pulp.’
Jonah nodded again, squeezing Raff’s hand. He looked over at the Kebab Shop Man, who shook his head, flicked his smoke away and disappeared back inside.
‘OK, come,’ said Leonie. ‘You can sit with me and Pat until your ma pulls her head out the clouds and remembers her responsibilities.’
‘No way,’ whispered Raff, as she clopped back in. ‘She is hench, and her sweets are rank.’
‘You coming or what?’ Leonie was holding open the door for them. Jonah took a firmer hold of Raff’s hand.
It was lovely and cool inside, from the many electric fans. The lady from the betting shop was having her hair done. She was a tiny little woman, very old and very white, and she was so low in the hairdresser’s chair she could only just see into the mirror. Pat was standing behind her, putting bright blue curlers in her thin white hair. In the mirror, the old woman’s broken-egg eyes slid to meet Jonah’s. She used to let Roland bring him and Raff into her shop on Saturdays, but she didn’t seem to recognise him. He reckoned she must be over a hundred years old.
‘Look who I found,’ said Leonie.
‘The young gentlemen! Such a nice afternoon, why ain’t they playing football in the park?’
‘That dumb-arse mother of theirs gone off to the shops, left them to fend for themselves in the street, can you believe it? No disrespect, boys,’ said Leonie.
She led them to the back of the shop, her pink lace bottom swinging, and sat them on the squishy white sofa. In front of them, on the glass coffee table, stood a bowl of sweets and a pile of magazines.
‘Someone needs to phone the council to come and mend that fence, before a child dies in there,’ said Leonie, lowering herself into the swivel chair behind the desk.
‘Go on, then,’ said Pat.
Leonie sucked her teeth. ‘And be hanging on the phone all afternoon and night. Got better things to do with my time. Help yourselves to sweets, boys.’
Jonah said, ‘Thank you,’ but he didn’t like Leonie’s sweets either. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a tall, pink shape
