She’s Not There. Tamsin Grey

How are you?’ he said, through his fingers.

      ‘Fine.’ She said it emphatically, folding her arms tightly. She looked at the boys. ‘How’s your mum? Isn’t it time you were in bed?’

      Jonah nodded.

      ‘Good. Saviour, I was wondering if I could have a word?’

      ‘It’s actually not the greatest time, Ali—’ He pulled out his keys and looked over at his van, which was parked outside the Green Shop.

      ‘It won’t take a minute.’ Alison took Saviour’s arm. ‘Goodnight, boys!’

      Back in the sitting room, they watched Alison and Saviour reaching the van, Alison talking and talking as Saviour put the key in the driver door. He looked over at them, and Alison looked too, so they ducked down and lay on the floor.

      ‘Can she tell that he’s drunk, do you think?’ Jonah whispered.

      ‘Is that what’s up with him!’ Raff got to his knees, and risked another peek. ‘She’s too busy cussing Mayo,’ he said, lying back down. They listened to Saviour’s van drive away, and Alison’s shoes clipping back to her house. Then there was just the tinkly Slingsmen tune again. Jonah gazed at Roland’s aquarium, remembering the bright, flitting fish. Four parrotfish, three angelfish and eight swordtails. The fish food had run out, so they’d fed them cornflakes, and they’d all died.

      Raff sat up. ‘Who’s going to read us a story?’ His voice was very small.

      ‘I’ll read a story,’ said Jonah. ‘What story would you like, Raffy boy?’

       20

      It was very hot upstairs. They went into the bathroom and Jonah stood on the lid of the toilet and pushed the window wide open. The sky was all streaky, and the birds were singing – sweet little chirps in the dusk. A couple of flies had drowned in Lucy’s bathwater, and neither of them wanted to put their hands in and pull out the plug. They brushed their teeth and took off their clothes, and Jonah bundled them all into the laundry basket, but then he took them out again, remembering that there were no clean ones. Raff got a book out of their bedroom, and they went into Lucy’s room with it, because that’s where she read to them sometimes, sitting up in her bed with a boy either side. They got in and pulled the sheet up over their naked bodies. Her smell was coming from the tiny particles of her left behind on the cotton, and in the air. Was that what a ghost was, millions of molecules, hanging together in an invisible swirl? He opened the book. It was one that they’d got out of the library ages ago, but never got round to reading, a proper chapter book, and the words looked very small and close together. Trying to get rid of the idea that Lucy was dead, he focused on the first sentence.

      ‘“Until he was four years old James Henry Trotter had a happy life,”’ he read. But sadness and worry gripped his stomach, and he let the book drop into his lap. Through the window, above the Broken House, he saw that the sky was finally darkening, and as he watched a single star came out.

      ‘Why have you stopped?’ Raff sat up and peered at Jonah’s face. Jonah looked down at the book. Then he shut it and got up and went over to Lucy’s chest of drawers.

      Some of her underwear was spilling out of an open drawer, and he pushed it all back in and pushed the drawer shut. He climbed up, wedging his toes onto the wooden handles, and reached for the wire tray that lived on top of the chest. It was piled high, with letters and other bits of paper, and when he jumped back down with it, most of the papers slid out and fluttered to the floor.

      ‘What are you looking for?’

      ‘Her diary.’ It wasn’t there. He sat down and gathered up the fallen papers, which were mainly printed, and to do with money: lots from Jobcentre Plus, a couple from Smart Energy, a few from something called HSBC. As he gathered them up again, he noticed a postcard from the dentist saying they should come for a check-up, a letter about a clinic appointment, and one about their overdue library books, which made him shake his head. A white, handwritten envelope stood out from all the printed pages, and he stopped piling up the papers to look at it. Their address, of course, in handwriting he recognised; and there was a prison stamp on the back.

      ‘What are you doing?’ Raff sounded like he might start crying again. Jonah pulled the two sheets of letter paper out of the envelope.

       Hello there, Lucy

       Firstly, I want you to know that I don’t blame you for refusing to testify. I don’t really blame you for anything.

      Raff had come to stand next to him. Jonah looked at his brother’s feet, which were big and long-toed, like Lucy’s, and then at the date at the top of the page. The letter was from 2011, the year Roland had got sent to prison. Ages ago. He stood up. ‘I think we should go into our own room,’ he said.

      It was a tiny bit cooler in their room, and not as smelly. They could hear Leonie murmuring to someone, in between big drags on her smoke, and the other person grunting now and then. Raff got into his bed and Jonah sat on the floor, the carpet rough on his bare bottom. Raff said, ‘Read the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.’

      Some of the words in the poem were hard, but he knew it more or less off by heart. He tried to read it like Lucy did, in the same soft, chanting voice.

       On the Coast of Coromandel

       Where the early pumpkins blow,

       In the middle of the woods

       Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.

      As he read, he remembered again the feeling from the evening before, listening to Lucy’s voice: his own mother, unknown, unreachable.

      Two old chairs, and half a candle, –

      One old jug without a handle, –

       These were all his worldly goods:

       In the middle of the woods,

       These were all the worldly goods,

       Of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.

      Such a sad story. Such a strange, lonely man, who loves the Lady Jingly Jones, who is also lonely, with only her hens to talk to. But when he asks her to be his wife, and to share his worldly goods with her, she cries and cries, and twirls her fingers, and says no.

       ‘Mr Jones – (his name is Handel, –

       Handel Jones, Esquire, & Co.)

       Dorking fowls delights to send,

       Mr Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò!

       Keep, oh! keep your chairs and candle,

      And your jug without a handle, –

       I can merely be your friend!

       – Should my Jones more Dorkings send,

       I will give you three, my friend!

       Mr Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò!’

      Raff sighed and rolled over. Jonah paused, staring at the picture: the Lady Jingly Jones, with her huge, feathered hat, weeping. Why had Handel Jones left her there on that heap of stones? And why did he send her hens? And would it really be so wrong of her to get together with Yonghy? Then he wondered if Handel might be in prison, like Roland, and Angry Saturday started flashing in his head. The sexing on the table, and then the peacock, with its terrible cry, and Bad Granny’s hand, reaching for him, like a claw. Although the way Raff was breathing meant he was already asleep, Jonah started reading again.

       ‘Down the slippery slopes of Myrtle,