They were moving a family with two mothers. Both looked upwards of forty: the dark-haired one had lines in her face that might have been chipped from granite.
Kebby struggled out to the van with a cello under one arm, and an artist’s easel under the other. ‘Now I have seen it all,’ he said.
The whole downstairs of the house was boxes. The family had built a city of them, different sizes, streets and mazes in the carpeted lounge. It was a house that smelled of herbal tea and rosemary; it looked like they never threw anything out.
‘Shall we start with the heavy stuff?’ The dark-haired mother chose a big box, and started out towards the van.
Kebby, uncharacteristically, made no attempt to stop her. He just watched, staring at her hips and arms as she went out of the door. ‘Let me know if either of you ever want a job,’ he said.
Samhain was next after her, with a box of books. It weighed more than the centre of a black hole – and he marvelled, again, that people didn’t clear their things out before moving. Some families packed all sorts of rubbish up in boxes to take to their new places, things they never used or looked at. This lot seemed to be that type, the sort who lived amongst dusty things. Things that had belonged to long-dead uncles and grandparents, a collection of old-timey, useless junk, as though they wanted to live in a museum of the self.
‘We usually do the upstairs first,’ Samhain commented, shoving his box onto the tailgate with a grunt.
‘You don’t want to go up there.’ One mother carefully placed a side-lamp in between the boxes. ‘I don’t think they’ve even finished packing yet – have they?’
‘No, and they never will. Arthur keeps putting toys in his box, then getting distracted and taking them out again to play with them. At this rate, it could take him months.’ The other mother put witchy hands over tired eyes, and breathed deeply. ‘I do rather think finishing the children’s rooms may be a professional’s job.’
‘No trouble.’ Kebby pulled a stack of flat boxes from the driver’s cab. ‘Shall we get started?’
‘Please,’ said the younger of the two: she took them upstairs.
In the tiny back bedroom, a boy with dark hair sat amongst a detritus of lego and foam aeroplanes, adding stickers to a book. He looked about six years old.
‘Arthur,’ sighed his mum. She turned to Samhain: ‘I’m sorry. He’s packed everything and then unpacked it again.’
Her partner appeared, sliding an arm around her waist. ‘That reminds me of somebody else I know.’
Samhain started making up a new box. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Soon have you sorted.’ Every new box they made was an extra £8 on top of the bill, and they were supposed to make a new one every time they came across a box packed by the owner whose lid wouldn’t close, or every time they had to put a pile of unpacked things into a box: Peter made a lot of money that way. ‘Here you are, Mrs Gable-Lloyd,’ he said. ‘Quicker we get it all sorted, quicker it’s done.’
The family were moving to another part of the village, to a place less than four miles away. It was on the other edge of town, a larger place, the leafier part of the village, closer to the school.
In the van, they listened to Kebby’s old band. ‘Listen to this,’ he said. ‘A friend who knows something about computers put them onto CD for me. You hear that drum sound? They don’t make snare cracks like that anymore.’
‘Sounds like Motown,’ Samhain said.
‘Yes. We were trying for that – we thought we could be the West Yorkshire version of Stevie Wonder. I don’t know if we managed it.’ Kebby grinned. ‘It’s not too bad though, right? It gained a bit of noise in the transfer, but you can still hear it pretty well. Oh now shh, listen. This is where Eloise comes in.’
Past a church. Samhain gazed out of the window at a sign drooping on the railings. There were lights on in the church hall, and a woman was working her way along the floor with a mop.
‘Hear that voice?’
Melody, pleading and strident. The girl sang as though she was angry, yet there was this beautiful, blues drawl to it.
‘I don’t know why she never managed to do anything as a singer,’ Kebby said. ‘You hear that voice? Gorgeous. She was almost as good as Aretha, that girl. Could have been famous. I don’t know what happened.’
‘Maybe she didn’t want to be famous.’
‘Maybe.’ Kebby paused for a moment, indicating at a roundabout. ‘It’s a shame about your band, Sam.’
‘Yeah, well.’ Samhain shrugged. ‘Had to end sometime.’
‘Let me tell you.’ Kebby pulled around the roundabout, through two lanes, and up across onto the hill. ‘With your little girl? You won’t miss it. You are in for the adventure of a lifetime.’
‘She’s two now. Mart showed me a picture.’
‘Two! So she’ll be talking now. Just you wait. My God, the questions. “Daddy, why is the sky blue?” “Daddy, what is a different kind of bird for?” “Daddy, why doesn’t my brain stop thinking in time for me to go to sleep?” “Daddy, can I have some chocolate buttons?” “Daddy, will you draw me a picture of a dog and a pig together on the same hill?”’
They were behind a builder’s merchant van, its back loaded with timber.
‘When you meet her, you probably won’t believe it – the love you have for your children. It’s so fierce, like you never knew you could feel anything like it. You would kill anybody if they tried to hurt your baby – throttle them with your bare hands. When Ayesha was a baby, we used to spend hours just watching her as she slept. Her skin. Her tiny little hands. She was so beautiful, we couldn’t believe she was ours. That we had made a whole human being! Imagine!’
Shifting down a gear, Kebby chugged the van slowly uphill. ‘The only thing was, when she got to the age of walking around and asking questions, she would sometimes ask things from the second she woke up, until the moment she went to sleep. She wanted to know everything, Samhain, and she thought I would have the answers. She asked about every single thing, questions you would never even think of asking yourself. Sometimes I wanted to say, For God’s sake, just for a minute, can’t you stop with the questions?’ He took a hand off the gearstick. ‘But that was only sometimes. Most of the time, you don’t mind. Not really. You’ll see.’
‘What kind of toys do you think I should get?’ Samhain asked. ‘For when she comes to stay at my place?’
Greenery and tree-lined avenues, planes and falling sycamore seeds, detached houses with blackened fronts. ‘Oh, everything!’ Kebby said. ‘You should get her everything. If you can think of it, you should get it. All sorts. Books, bricks, dolls, toy trucks, musical instruments are good, crayons and paper and paint – my Ayesha used to love drawing. They never get tired of exploring and playing and trying new things, until they start school. That’s when they find out what they’re really interested in, what they’re really good at. They play so much, they’ll play with anything and everything.’ He said: ‘Can’t you find out from her mum what she likes already?’
‘I’ll get Mart to ask her.’
‘Do that.’ Kebby let out a low whistle. ‘Man, look at this place.’
They pulled up a curved driveway under the gentle brushing of overhanging trees, to a stone house with bay windows either side of the front door. One was the kitchen, the other a living room. Broad stone steps led to a solid wooden door.
‘Looks like something out of a horror film,’ Samhain said.
Kebby wheezed with laughter. ‘“No, that huge place isn’t for me, mister. Give me a tiny place any day. Because I’m a little mouse, and I want to live in a mouse’s house.”’
‘That’s not what I said.’
‘I heard it in your voice.’
A large blue Volvo pulled up into the driveway behind them, with both mothers in the front seats.
‘Anyway,’ Kebby went on, ‘when the time comes, I’ll help you move. No–’ he said, stopping Samhain’s protests with a hand in the air: ‘It’s settled. I’ll get Peter to let us use one of the work vans.’
He was out of the cab before Samhain could even tell him there wasn’t a van’s worth of stuff to move.