3. Princess Margaret House, Shoreditch, 1973

She wasn’t like a fairy, she was something else. Her hair was like his, and she was short like a child but she was grown up. Her dress was made of some material that didn’t exist. Sometimes she had paws. She came from Mum’s bed.

He drew her over and over. The ones that were closest, he saved in his cigar box with the 8-ball marbles.

You said Montara to call her, and Cossie when she went away. You had to say it out loud, even if there were people there. To whisper was cheating.

At first she was always nice, but then she started saying evil things. Telling him things to do, which sometimes he couldn’t. That was when he started nicking stuff, all cause Cossie Montara said if he didn’t get the phone on, Mum would ring for help. Then, he’d never even get the phone call, and Mum would die.

Once he told her Cossie Forever Cossie, to get rid of her, but when he saw her again, he decided he didn’t mean it. Plus, it was only his pretend, she couldn’t really hurt him.

She was haunting the upper-story windows, all down Old Street, that day he walked home with Belinda Myers.

Belinda Myers was like his fucking monkey on his back. Her and her soppy notes she left in his schooldesk, the bottles of pop, Jaffa cakes screwed up in a paper napkin. All the girls in his year were daft like that. But he daren’t tell Bel to piss off, cause she was the tenth floor of Princess Margaret House, and if she got the hump, she might start snooping. Then it would be parents, and then the social, and then Ralph would be fucked off to a home, where, he knew it from Uncle James, they was all nonces. So it meant, grit your teeth at old Belinda’s jabber.

It was only ten minutes’ walk from school, but Bel insisted on going some “special” way that made it longer. She kept going on about other boys who’d tried to kiss her. If it was Jimmy, that was a three sick, but Rico was a whole ten sick. Ten was like when the dog eats sick and sicks it up again, in your mouth.

When Ralph said she should keep clear of boys, then, Belinda asked if he was jealous.

As they turned off Old Street, Cossie Montara vanished from the plate glass of the Best Café and reappeared way overhead, watching Ralph from his thirteenth-story window of Princess Margaret House. She put a dark pawpad to the glass.

Then he was scared. He looked up and the sky was gray, it was like when you touch metal after it’s rained. Belinda Myers was chewing her lip.

She said, “You fancy coming down the canal?”

He looked at her, she was winding her blond hair down around her satchel strap. For a second he thought about getting his fishing rod. He could give her one of his cigarettes, they’d go looking for half-empty beer cans on the canal boats. Maybe he would kiss her if she really wanted.

But he forced himself to say: “Can’t. My mum’s not well.”

Bel wrinkled her nose: “Yeah? What’s she got?”

“I don’t know. She’s ill.”

“Is that why you sold your telly to Alan? Cause your mum’s poor?”

“She isn’t poor, she’s ill.”

“But, is it? Cause, my best mate, that’s Ann, she’s Alan’s sister, and she said, you was nicking things for him, but then it was your telly from home. So she said she asked if you’d got a new telly, and you said it wasn’t, it was someone else’s that you’d nicked, but she thought it was never, and when she asked Alan later on, she was right.”

“I think my mum’s going to die,” said Ralph.

He looked for Cossie Montara then, but she was gone. That meant mum was really finally dead, Peter’d killed her: why he took her to France, to get her where the cops and anyone wouldn’t never find out. Mum wasn’t coming back, it was like a sex killing.

Now it was his flat.

He frowned at the skimpy, half-hearted trees the council planted at the front, to make you think you were in fucking Surrey. He hoped they would wither. Then they’d have to dig them all out again, a waste of money.

Bel grabbed Ralph’s collar and kissed him on the lips.

He shoved her away, staggering. When he wiped his mouth, he was fleetingly afraid she would see his hand was bleeding. Only it wasn’t even bleeding, that was daft: he threw his satchel down and swore.

Belinda danced away a few steps and shouted, “That’s because I’m sorry for you with your mum ill.” She stopped with her feet wide apart and tossed her head; belligerent, overjoyed.

Ralph shouted, “I don’t want you sorry for me.”

Then Bel rocked back, all pop-eyed, and screamed, “Well, you’re a cunt, and I don’t care if your whole cunt family dies!”

Ralph crossed his arms. He said in a deep, definite voice, “Now you’ll die instead.”

The little girl ran away.

He waited her out of sight and took the steps up into Princess Margaret House.

Cossie Montara was waiting for him in the lift. He pressed 13 and leaned against the wall, breathing the piss smell in deep. Cossie Montara wanted to comfort him, but he didn’t need that. Even if Mum wasn’t really dead, because he’d known she was, that made him grown up.

Only, when he got in the flat and walked into the cold smell of the front room – he lost his bottle.

The dark flat: like it was looking at him. It had enmity. He turned to Cossie Montara, but it was hard to pretend her when you were frightened. Carefully not looking left or right, he dashed to the mantel. He had two candles stuck already to the top of the gas fire, rooted in a swathe of scar-like wax. He lit a candle praying Hail Mary. Lit the other candle, crouched down to retrieve the neat parcel of the book.

Its faded wrapping paper was worn to silken fineness. The outlines of repeating Santas were eroded; the remaining strips of sellotape dark and brittle.

He lifted the book out carefully, muttering, “Just a second, Montara, just a second.” When he had it placed, he shut his eyes and opened it at random. Then he put both hands down on the cool paper, chanted, “Cossie, cossie cossie,” and looked down at the flickering page.