Simon wakes up late, in a foul mood. He’s had that dream again, the one where he’s underground, in some sort of tunnel, and the roof collapses and he’s trapped in the suffocating dark; but this time he’s not alone: someone else is trapped with him, and coming closer. He’s sweating all over, his heart racing.
He’s always had dreams, ever since he was really little, even before his father died. They got worse after that. He’d wake up screaming in the night. Except that he wasn’t properly awake, even though his eyes were wide open; he couldn’t hear or see anything. Not even his mother. ‘It was as if you were somewhere else, somewhere I couldn’t reach you, to call you back,’ she said.
This morning it feels as if he’s doing everything in slow motion: getting washed and dressed, and packing his bag for school. He still hasn’t done any homework. It’s so near the end of term now he can’t be bothered. He slips his knife into the bottom of the bag. It makes him feel safer, just knowing it’s there. Today he’s going to take in the rabbit skin to show Dan and Johnny and Pike. It’s wrapped in some newspaper on his bedroom table. When he picks it up he realizes it’s starting to smell funny. He must’ve done something wrong. It shouldn’t smell at all.
‘Hurry up!’ Nina keeps shouting up the stairs. ‘You’re going to be late.’
‘Don’t forget, will you?’ she says as she leaves for work. ‘You’re collecting Ellie from Rita’s, so I can go straight from work to that meeting with your teacher. Yes?’
He grunts.
He hates going to Rita’s. Rita is Ellie’s childminder. She’s lived in the town ever since she was a child and she knows everyone. She’s kind and Ellie loves her. Nina calls her a godsend. Nina pretends not to like gossip, but Simon reckons she enjoys hearing Rita talking about everyone the way she does.
Simon hates the way she asks you questions. And the way she knows things without you even telling her.
The trapped, suffocating feeling from the dream stays with him all day. He can’t concentrate properly in lessons. No one seems to notice. At lunchtime they lie out on the grass and he shows people the rabbit skin. It looks pathetic, the thin strip of dried skin and fur, and the smell makes everyone retch. He chucks it in the bin. The little kids are playing a game called ‘Deathball’.
‘Everyone want to come back to ours after school?’ Pike asks.
They do. Just in time, Simon remembers about Ellie.
‘All right, Simon?’ Rita asks as she answers the door.
‘Haven’t seen you for a while. How’s school?’
‘OK.’
‘Not long till the holidays, eh?’
Ellie winds herself round Rita’s legs, thumb in her mouth. Rita unwinds her, gives her a quick hug. ‘She’s been telling me about your neighbour. Leah Sweet. She’s going to be the new babysitter, I understand.’ Rita laughs, as if there’s some sort of private joke. ‘Still, that’s nice for Leah. She could do with the money, I bet. And a bit of company. What with her mother and everything, you know? So, what’s Leah doing these days? She’s left school now, I suppose? They leave as soon as they’ve done their exams these days, don’t they? She going to college, then?’
He shrugs. How’s he supposed to know?
‘What time’s Nina back? I’ll give her a ring later.’
He squirms. ‘Dunno,’ he says.
‘Well, what’s she doing? A meeting, she said. Work?’
‘At my school,’ Simon mumbles. ‘With a teacher.’
‘Oh dear! Hope you’re not in trouble!’ Rita chuckles.
Ellie chirps up. ‘No. It’s because he’s good at art –’
‘Shut up, Ellie,’ he growls.
Ellie’s lip quivers. Get away, quick, he thinks, before she starts crying. ‘Come on, Ellie. Piggyback?’
He can be nice when he tries. She is only little, after all. He can remember what it’s like, just. He crouches down so she can climb on to his back and then he straightens up quickly on purpose to make her squeal and hang on really tight.
‘You’re strangling me, Ellie! Hold my shoulders, not my neck!’
He lets her play horses all the way home. He’s the horse, and she has to tell him which way to go and say things like ‘Giddy-up!’ and ‘Whoa there!’ It’s one of the games he can remember playing with his dad.
The girl – Leah – is leaning over her gate. Ellie scrabbles to get down off his back and runs over to her. Simon dawdles, watching them. They’ve obviously been getting to know each other. It’s so easy for Ellie, talking to people. She doesn’t care what they think. But it looks as if Leah likes Ellie; she’s smiling at her as she chatters on. Once or twice she glances towards Simon. He pretends to be looking for his front door key in his bag.
What was Rita going on about just now? It’s not really surprising that she knows Leah. It’s a small enough town when the tourists aren’t around. But what did she mean about her mother?
He hasn’t ever seen Leah’s mother. Not that he can remember. Not that he’s been looking, or anything. But it’s odd when they live just across the road. He knows most of the people in this bit of the road by sight, at least. And he’s seen a man who must be Leah’s father, leaving early in the morning sometimes. He drives a white van.
‘Hi, Simon.’ Leah’s voice teases him. He has to speak now. He can feel the blood race up his neck and into his face. He must look totally stupid.
‘Hi.’ His voice comes out OK this time. He dives through the gate and into the house.
Ellie bounces in after him a few minutes later. ‘Look what Leah gave me!’ She holds out a hairclip in the shape of a butterfly. Pretty. Before he can. stop himself, he’s imagining it in Leah’s hair, the feel of undoing it so the hair sweeps back over her face. He blushes, snaps at Ellie, ‘You shouldn’t take presents off strangers.’
‘She’s not a stranger, silly. She’s Leah. She’s my friend.’
‘No she’s not.’
‘She is. And she’s going to babysit for me.’
‘That doesn’t make her a friend.’
Ellie gives up. ‘What’s for tea?’
‘I don’t know, do I? Get yourself something to eat.’
‘When’s Mummy back?’ Her lip quivers slightly. ‘I want Mummy.’
Simon pours himself a bowl of cereal and takes it into the sitting room in front of the telly. Ellie tags on behind. She’s filled her bowl too full; milk sloshes over the edge on to the carpet. They watch the end of Neighbours, flip to The Weakest Link and then The Simpsons. Ellie’s snivelling. He doesn’t look at her.
A car pulls up outside. Ellie goes to the window; she runs out to fling herself at Nina.
‘Sorry, sweetheart. Didn’t mean to be this late. How was your day?’
Simon shoves the door so it slams shut, cutting off their voices, but Nina opens it again almost immediately.
‘Hello, Si. OK?’
He grunts.
‘Thanks for getting Ellie.’
Grunts again.
‘Don’t you want to know what Mr Davies said?’
‘I’m watching this.’
‘All right. Get the message. Later. I’ll start supper.’
‘What is it?’
‘Don’t know yet.’ She closes the door.
Ellie’s hopping up and down the hallway, making a racket. He turns up the volume. It’s a repeat, of course. He’s seen them all by now. When it’s over he slouches along to the kitchen. Ellie’s already at the table, drawing figures with big heads and things that might be ears, or possibly wings.
‘What’s for supper?’
‘Sausages, chips and peas. All out of the freezer. You could’ve been doing it while you were waiting for me to get back, then it wouldn’t have been so late. Lay the table, will you?’
‘Why me? How come you never ask her to do anything?’
‘Because she’s six and you’re fourteen. You didn’t have to do it when you were six.’
Nina’s voice is clipped. He knows what she’s not saying. When he was six, everything was different. His father was still there. She, Nina, wouldn’t be doing absolutely everything single-handed. And Ellie wasn’t even born.
‘Can’t we eat in front of the telly?’
Nina frowns. ‘But I wanted us to talk. About your drawings. Matt Davies… Oh, all right, then. Get on with you. Take everything in on a tray.’ She spoons peas on to the waiting plates.
Simon grabs the tomato ketchup from the fridge and takes his plate into the front room. Ellie follows. She thrusts her picture at Simon. ‘It’s for you. A present.’
‘What’s it supposed to be?’
‘It’s a picture of Leah, silly.’
He crumples it in one hand. Ellie starts to snivel. Nina sits down next to her on the sofa, puts one arm round her. ‘Don’t take any notice, bunnikins. He’s a crosspatch today.’
Simon flicks the channels, finds some programme called The Tudor War Machine. It shows you how to make saltpetre for gunpowder out of horsedung, black earth and piss. Some bloke in a foundry casts a Tudor-style cannon and they test fire it on Salisbury Plain. It has to be done by remote control in case the whole thing blows up.
Nina keeps interrupting to tell Simon things about the art teacher. ‘You’re lucky being taught by a proper artist,’ she says. ‘He’s passionate about art, isn’t he?’
The replica Tudor cannonball has shot through the wooden target, leaving a jagged hole. In oak, like on a Tudor battleship, the bloke says, those splinters would be deadly.
‘– so he invited me to have a look round.’
‘What?’
‘His studio. You haven’t been listening to anything I’ve been saying, have you?’ Nina slides Ellie off her lap. ‘Come on, sleepyhead. Let’s get you to bed.’ She turns back from the doorway. ‘Oh yes, and he says you’re late with some homework. So turn that off and get on with it.’
He scowls.
The phone rings. And rings. Simon ignores it; it won’t be for him, anyway. He hates talking on the phone.
Nina’s feet clatter down the wooden stairs. She glares at Simon through the half-open door. ‘You could have –’ but she’s picked it up now. ‘Rita!’ she says instead. ‘How are you?’
Simon half listens to Nina’s side of the conversation.
‘Why? What did she say?’
‘Oh!’
‘And the mother?’
‘No wonder. Poor Leah.’
‘Yes, I understand. Thanks, Rita. See you then, bye.’
She stands for a moment in the dark hallway next to the silent phone. Simon watches her, but he says nothing. What does she mean, poor Leah?
Then he wonders why he’s even bothering to think about it. It’s bugging him, the way Leah’s getting everywhere. He tugs his art book out of his school bag and flips through the pages already filled with drawings. Pencil, mostly. He knows they’re good. The sheep’s skull, and the dead bird, and part of an ammonite. There’s a detailed drawing of his Black Widow catapult. He doodles around on one of the blank pages, a sort of arrowhead shape. Then he draws a head and shades in the long hair, so that starts turning into Leah too. He scribbles over it, messing it up. That means he has to rip it out of the book. What was the homework? A still life. That’s what he always draws, isn’t it? Things that aren’t alive. Still lives.
His school bag still stinks of rotting rabbit skin. He sniffs his fingers. They smell too. He goes out to the scullery and washes his hands over and over under a running cold tap. He doesn’t bother to turn the light on.
He can hear muffled sobs coming from Ellie’s room. He tramps upstairs and stands in Ellie’s doorway. Her light’s still on; she has it on till after she’s asleep, and then the door must be left open so the landing light can shine in.
‘Still awake?’
More sobs.
‘Sorry about your drawing,’ he says. ‘Will you do me another one tomorrow?’
Ellie pokes her face out from under the duvet. She nods.
‘Night night, then.’
Nina’s door is shut. She’s still pissed off with him about something. He can’t remember what.
Across the road, Leah watches the pattern of lights in the Piper household. By ten thirty, all the downstairs ones are off. There are two still on upstairs, and one stays on till at least midnight, when she, Leah, eventually falls asleep. She sleeps lightly, wakes when an owl hoots across the dark garden, still half dreaming. Something about a butterfly, and a feeling of being tangled up, caught so she can’t break free. It’s hot in her bedroom; she pads across to the window to open it wide, and sees that the light in Mrs P’s room is still on. The clock says one fifteen.
She lies back down on the bed, kicks the covers off. Where she left a gap in the curtains, the silvery light of a nearly full moon shines in on her naked body, sculpts her limbs in silver shadows. She has that feeling again, of something pressing in, coming closer. The owl hoots again. She’s like someone in a film, she thinks. The heroine, whose life is about to be changed completely as she is woken to love, to life. She smiles, turns over, sleeps again.