‘Mind out!’ I was at the top of the street balancing on the kerb, and trying not to step on the cracks. I stopped on one leg, but I wasn’t sure she was talking to me. It was the old lady who watched everything from her doorstep, and spoke to people as they went past. She caught you off balance, leaning out with her arms folded. My mum didn’t like her and said she was common. In the summer she sat out on a chair in slippers, and always wore thick stockings on her legs and a scarf on her head, knotted at the back with stringy grey hair hanging down the sides. She used to work in a factory and still had the apron on under a cardigan with its sleeves rolled up so she could fold her arms up under her chest. She kept her arms up and just moved from her elbow to touch her scarf into place, or lift her hair back over her ear. Mostly she talked to the other women, but when she wanted to find out something she got you over with crisps and started, ‘The woman down there – red door – your mother – Irish girl – with the black fella. What’s that about?’
I kept away from her part of the pavement because even when she wasn’t there you felt she was, leaning out on her arms, or looking up from her chair and catching your eye as she chatted to someone with the cats on her lap. She had cats everywhere, on her windowsill and on the sills of her first-floor windows, round her feet and over her shoulders, coming in and out her house. They moved about looking mean and ugly and brown-striped and black and sometimes grey round their mouths. When they reached up and scratched her legs she’d slap them away, and when she wouldn’t they’d get interested, their eyes would go scary and they’d start to make a racket until she got up and grumbled about having to feed them. I was scared of her and kept away but Busola didn’t – she said the lady had brown stuff dripping off her teeth and wasn’t always nice about people. Busola made me go up close and look. I only did because I was trying to see in her house where she lived on her own and never let anybody in – through the door it looked like a black cave.
‘What’s that about? Such a lovely girl. How’s he treating her? Is he staying? You never see that in my day. Black fellas coming over. Getting everyone in trouble. Does he beat her? If he does, you come to me. I’ll listen to ya.’
That’s how I thought she was a ghost and she wasn’t really seeing us, because why would she talk to us about our mum and dad like that and not think we’d run home and tell?
‘Well, she’s not a ghost,’ my mum said. ‘She’s old. We have to look after the old. And she’s very old. Go down now and keep an eye open and see is she all right.’
‘Mind out!’ I was stood behind Busola, balancing one foot on the kerb, listening but keeping out the way. ‘They bite.’ Busola was feeding a crisp to one of the cats trying to claw it off her. ‘Where’s your mum been? I was gonna get flowers. Tell people he’d done away with her.’ My mum had been lying in the hospital, and Busola had been saying you could catch things off people there. But she was home now getting some rest. ‘Men, they wear you out. Don’t worry, I been watching him. Looks after you, though? All clean clothes.’
‘She’s been in hospital,’ Busola said, and pulled her hand back because the cat’s claw caught on her finger. It drew blood and she had to put it in her mouth to stop it bleeding.
‘Told ya. End up eating me, they will. Always hungry.’ And she gave the cat a kick with her slipper, ‘Get off, yer!’ It spun round and hissed at her with its teeth and slunk off. I didn’t like it and wanted to go, pulling Busola by the sleeve. ‘Wanna plaster? I can go in and get you one?’
Busola shook her head and shook me off her arm. ‘I don’t wanna catch what you got. You got too many cats,’ she said to the lady, ‘and you’re not nice.’
The lady shrugged like she didn’t care what Busola said, ‘I don’t know what’s gonna happen to ’em when I’m gone. They’ll be the last ones living here when they’ve cleared us all out. Outlive me. No one’ll feed ’em.’
‘Let’s go,’ I said.
‘Is he your brother?’
Busola shook her head. I didn’t know what was going on with them pretending they didn’t know who I was. She knew who Busola was. Maybe she couldn’t tell me apart from Manus and Connor. But then I felt she could hear me because she lifted up her hair over her ear and said, ‘Yeah he is, I can see it in his face. Bet you can’t tell my cats apart, can ya?’ And she laughed, ‘Wanna feed ’em a crisp?’
I stepped back off the kerb on to the road and shook my head. They were teasing me. ‘She is my sister,’ I said.
‘Come here and talk to me. Know how old I am?’ I shook my head again. ‘See ’em land on the moon?’ I nodded. ‘Not in my day. I was here before the war. Knew everyone. Now look at it. All the black people moving in.’
‘Who lived in our house?’ Busola said.
‘Down your end, those people would still be here if it wasn’t for the war. Lotta people didn’t make it. Come out the shelter, it’s a flying bomb, they’re all dead in the park, it’s all burning.’
‘She don’t know,’ Busola said.
‘Oh, no – I know. You’ve had fire trouble, ain’t ya? It’s not the first time. There was Madge lived there. Lost her husband, hadn’t she? Didn’t wanna go down the shelter. Too smoky. All those rough old men feeling yer. I told her, you had to. House up on the corner got hit. Come out the shelter, walls bombed flat. Her house on fire. Don’t know they ever found ’em. Be nice they were still alive. Her and her daughter, her Susan was lovely. All the fire engines. Couldn’t walk down the road for rubble. See an ’and sticking up there was people had the ring off it. Not like it used to be.’
She went on about how she went deaf and got cut when another bomb exploded the windows. But I wasn’t listening properly because I saw Busola go stiff when she said about Susan and I wasn’t sure they weren’t still teasing me.
‘... Irish fella stood here, digging out the road, wanted water – couldn’t understand him – what’s he saying? – sounded like grunts to me. Shook my head, said I can’t speak Irish. Didn’t mind though, let him use my tap.’ She leaned forward and laughed with her shoulders bouncing, ‘No one else to.’
Busola was walking away.
‘You’re not frightened of me, are ya?’ The lady was looking at me in the road and ignoring Busola, so I shook my head and ran. ‘Your friend, Susan ... Is she a ghost?’ Busola looked up at me, and turned over and didn’t answer. Manus and Connor were still at my aunt’s, so it was me and Busola on our own. I was in Connor’s bed and she was in the bottom bunk in the dark. My mum and dad were sleeping in the front room because he moved up while she was in hospital to be near us and she didn’t want him to change back till she was strong enough to sort out their bedroom and help him do the wallpaper that was falling off. There was a strip of moonlight in our room coming down over the edge of the curtain where it sagged and another smaller one on Busola’s side lighting the floor where the curtain caught on the ladder and didn’t fold back properly. It wasn’t completely dark, but I didn’t want to move because it was me lying on my own and I didn’t want anything to come and get me. I didn’t want to be on my own. I wanted someone to talk to. ‘You know she’s not real.’
Only I wasn’t sure. What if it was the Susan who burnt in the fire? I bit my finger to tell myself it wasn’t true, but I had to pull away because my teeth were sharp and I suddenly wasn’t sure it was me. I couldn’t sleep any more because I’d have to close my eyes and I had to keep them open in case anything moved. What if the handle turned and the door opened? I was straining my eyes in the dark.
‘Susan’s gone,’ Busola said.
I looked but she was still facing away from me to the wall.
‘She’s not coming back.’
That’s all she said. Even when I asked her, Why not? She wasn’t answering. I lifted up on my elbow to see what she was doing. She wasn’t moving. It was just me and her in the dark. There was scratching going on, but that was mice. I looked up at the crack in the curtain and got the moon in one eye. It was high and white and blinding.
I lay back in the bed and blinked so there was the ghost of it on the inside of the curtain. I tried to imagine it was Susan’s face, but I couldn’t see that it was, I didn’t know what Susan looked like. I blinked some more and it faded. It was pale and it was going and the old lady came. I tried to blink her away, but she was standing up by her front door, looking at me and lifting her grey hair over her ear. I shut my eyes and she was still there, waiting for me, so I had to look. I looked at her eyes. They weren’t doing what I heard her saying, they were bright and lonely, telling me they weren’t in the same place as I was but they could see me.
I opened my eyes up and she wasn’t there any more. There was a flash in my mind. Now Susan was gone, the house wasn’t going to burn down. It was her doing the fires. She was gone and she wasn’t coming back. The lady was looking and telling me.
‘I was watching the smoke because I thought it was a witch coming under the door.’ It was Busola, I lifted up and looked across at the bunk bed – she was on her back looking up at me. ‘But the door opened and the man came in to rescue me.’
‘What?’
‘I was worried about the smoke of the witch coming under the door. But the man across the road came and lifted me out the bed. I thought he was saving me from the witch, I didn’t know what else he was doing there.’
‘What witch?’
‘It wasn’t, it was smoke. He wrapped me up in the blanket and I could see downstairs everything was smoke because he jumped over the banister and the stairs were burning. I felt the fire, but I didn’t think it was happening to me, I thought it was happening to Susan.’
‘They threw you out the window,’ I said, because it didn’t make sense what she was saying and that’s what I remembered.
‘You’re talking about the other fire,’ she said, and turned over to face me. ‘I’m talking about the one with Susan where she told me not to breathe. It wasn’t her it was happening to, it was me. I don’t want her no more. I want to breathe.’
I didn’t like the way it was going or the way Busola looked in the dark, in shadow at the bottom of the bunk bed. I wanted my mum to come in and turn on the light. So I said, ‘Where was Mummy?’
‘I don’t know, in hospital.’
It sounded like Busola again, like she was thinking about it. I looked across to see if there was anything coming under the door but the light was off on the landing and I couldn’t tell. I didn’t want Busola to leave me. ‘Where was I?’
‘You were outside.’
‘What was Susan doing?’ I was trying to keep hold of Busola in the dark. ‘Were you haunted?’
Busola lifted up on her arm and looked at me like I didn’t know what I was talking about. ‘Can you keep a secret?’
I nodded.
‘Mummy told me not to tell you. It’s not me who’s haunted. You know who it is, don’t ya?’
I shook my head.
‘What if it’s you?’
She watched me from the shadow.
‘It was you lighting fires,’ I said, ‘you and Susan.’
I wasn’t sure any more who I was talking to, because she didn’t answer until her head moved towards me and said, ‘You tell me how then.’
I couldn’t. I was trying to imagine myself lighting matches, or dropping them like Manus into the dome of the paraffin heater so it lit up with different colours, or being the one who poured water on to damp it down, so it rose up in a big orange flame to the ceiling and spread out down the walls to set light to the curtains, but I couldn’t. I only saw me watching and jumping up to run outside.
‘See, can’t, can yer?’
I could tell her about Manus but she’d get him in trouble. Wasn’t she there in the room with us? Why did I think she was the one doing it? ‘You went funny when that lady said about Susan,’ I said.
Busola didn’t move. I couldn’t make out her face properly, I had to imagine it. She just kept still.
‘She was real, wasn’t she?’
‘Susan’s gone now,’ she said. ‘So we’re all right, aren’t we?’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘Remember, you started it,’ and she rolled over on to her back.
I wasn’t sure what I started, but we listened to our mum come out the front room and go down to the toilet, and after a while our dad come out on the landing to look for her. They whispered on the stairs. Then came back up the steps slowly. The door opened and they looked in on us. We both pretended we were asleep.
The doors closed behind them. Busola turned over, ‘Mummy’s ill,’ she said, ‘I think she’s going to die.’
I sat up in bed with my back stiff and my eyes open wide.