… is drawing a city. Everyone has been asked to draw a city. Just the middle part, not the suburbs with houses, but the middle part of offices and shops where there was a lot of damage. Many of those buildings would have to be demolished, which was a bit sad, but the good part was that now, Mrs Ngatai said, they could build an even better city. The city council wanted everyone to tell them what they thought would make it the best city in the world.
Cities needed all kinds of things. She wrote a list on the board as everyone called out what cities needed: shops, parks, roads, ‘Toilets,’ said Poppy, which made everyone laugh, but Mrs Ngatai said it was true. That was very important. Cities needed proper toilets and a sewerage system, instead of horrible spider-webby smelly portaloos.
‘And now,’ she said, ‘you can add whatever you like. Imagine your ideal city! Imagine something new and exciting!’ It was very important that the city council heard from children because the ideal city would be their future.
Poppy sits in the sun at the kitchen table with her felt tips and a piece of paper to design the future.
It’s quite hard to think about an ideal city when you can still remember bits of the old one. Mrs Ngatai had said they could change the streets if they liked. It was a blank canvas. So Poppy draws a circle. A round city would be cool, maybe with water all around it, like an island. Everyone would go into the city across bridges or on boats. The water could be a giant swimming pool, with beaches where people could have picnics and there would be kayaks and pedal boats. She draws blue waves around the city.
She likes drawing. It is quiet when she draws. She puts on her headphones and listens to an audiobook as the line emerges from the tip of the pen. No one and nothing can reach her, here inside the voices of the book, the line on the page. Beside her on the table is the yellow plastic basket containing the Novaks’ laundry, dried and neatly folded by her mother because they are old and don’t have a washing machine any more and it’s no trouble, not in the least.
The Novaks’ washing is disgusting. Big grey knickers and funny old underpants and saggy singlets and faded nighties, all smelling, despite the detergent, of age: that horrible fishy smell of old dry skin and thin hair and yellow teeth and some sweet cloying soapy perfume …
She no longer believes that Mrs Novak is a witch. Her mother told her to grow up when she admitted that that was why she avoided going to the portaloo. She hated that dark figure seated by the window overlooking the street, or walking with infinite slowness across the road to put out milk for Zitto. Zitto had run away on the day of the quake, but still she put out milk and meat at their old house, just in case he came back. Mr Novak said they had the best-fed rats and hedgehogs for miles around, but still he went with her every day, holding her arm to steady her across the potholes.
The thought of seeing Mrs Novak at the window, or encountering her unexpectedly as she walked to find her cat, unnerved Poppy. It was a worse thought than the spiders, worse than the thought that someone might come along and tip over the portaloo while she was still inside.
‘Don’t be such a baby,’ her mother said. ‘There’s no such thing as witches. Mrs Novak is just an old lady who isn’t well and wants to stay near her home as long as possible and we must be kind to her and to Mr Novak.’ But still that smell lingers, that dank ancient buried smell …
Poppy is supposed to deliver the washing to the sleepout and she is putting it off as long as possible. She is hiding inside the book where Stacey, the girl detective, is figuring out what happened to the diamond ring, while she tries to think about what to draw next. What should go at the centre of the ideal city? A row of shops? But when she tries to draw that, all she can see is the row of shops that were always there with the sushi place they went to on Friday nights, or the store where they had the Christmas windows every year, with the wolf who sat up in Grandmama’s nightcap, his stiff grey mouth opening and shutting while a voice told the story. She is not supposed to draw these things. She is supposed to be imagining something new and exciting. Maybe she could draw shops with gardens on their roofs because why shouldn’t people walk along the roofs, rather than on the street all the time? There could be a path all the way along for skateboards and scooters …
‘Poppy!’ The headphones are lifted away. ‘How many times do I have to …’
She picks up the basket. Usually when she delivers something to the sleepout she runs up the steps, knocks at the door then runs away again, before the Novaks can answer. But today the door is wide open and Mrs Novak calls out as she climbs the stairs and she has no option — we must be kind — but to go inside.
The old-person smell is thick and rank. The room is crammed with bags and suitcases and cardboard boxes and Mrs Novak sits on an armchair among the clutter, in her hand a tin can, the lid bent back with a jagged edge.
‘Ah, Poppy,’ she says. ‘Che fortuna! Stan is at supermarket and I am not feeling flash. You put the dinner for Zitto, please?’ Not waiting for her to say yes or no, simply handing over the can and a milk carton, so there is no option but to take it — the catfood is stinky fish — to cross Savage Street, let herself through the gate into the garden where the Novaks’ house sits knock-kneed and naked without its bricks, though Stan still mows the lawn, trims the edges.
And there, sitting on the front step as if he had been there all along, is Zitto, skinnier than before, his fur matted but calmly licking his white paws. He bows as she comes toward him, and wraps his skinny body round her bare legs. He allows himself to be picked up and carried, purring, across the road and up the stairs into the sleepout.
‘Zitto! Zitto!’ says Mrs Novak. ‘Oh, Poppy! You bring him back! I knew you are good luck!”
And she reaches out and takes the cat in her arms and sits stroking him, smiling and not looking in the least like a witch, as Poppy sets out milk in a saucer, and catfood. Then they sit watching Zitto as he gulps down his dinner, and Mrs Novak asks her what she is doing so Poppy tells her about drawing the ideal city. ‘Ah,’ says Mrs Novak. ‘The ideal city … So, it must always have a square at its heart, always — a big square where anyone might go, with beautiful buildings all around, not high, like here used to be, but low so there is light and sunshine, and a fountain and a place serving the most delicious ice cream and …’
Zitto’s neat pink tongue laps at the milk, and Poppy and Mrs Novak imagine the ideal …