The bitter thoughts were like a balloon that got bigger and bigger but didn’t burst. Pepper dwelled on them, picked at them, turned them over and over.
She went outside and looked at the bird. Something had dragged it down the grass to the edge of the field. One eye was open. Still the rich colours. It seemed to her that the bird was just the same as it had been before the cat had caught it. She crouched down and touched it. It was stiff as old twine. The feathers rumpled in the wind, which was raw and turned her fingers as stiff as the bird.
‘I’m surprised nothing’s taken that yet,’ the old woman said. Pepper hadn’t even heard her coming.
‘The cat killed it,’ Pepper said. She sucked at the welts on her hand, itchy and sore from Captain’s claws.
‘What did you expect? All cats are bastards like that.’
Pepper smoothed down one of the bird’s tufting feathers. ‘He wasn’t meant to be,’ she said. He was supposed to be her cat. She had tried to stroke him, and whisper things in his ear, and she’d filled his bowl so full it had spilled over.
The woman studied the bird. ‘A buzzard will carry it off.’
‘A buzzard?’ Pepper said. ‘A buzzard?’ Her eyes and nose streamed in the raw cold. ‘A buzzard?’ she said one more time, and let out a harsh, barky laugh that startled even herself.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ the woman said. She took a step forward and frost chipped off her boots. She looked windswept and messy and a wet tissue fell out of her sleeve and blew away into the river.
Pepper didn’t answer. She picked the bird up in two hands and held it.
‘For Chrissakes,’ the woman said. ‘If you’re going to be like that you’ll probably have to bury it.’
Pepper held the bird carefully. It was very cold. ‘I think you’re right,’ she said. She went over to the barn, found a spade and dragged it back. It was heavy and the metal was freezing and banged against her heels.
‘I wouldn’t bother if I were you,’ the woman said.
Pepper lifted the spade and tried to dig it into the ground. But the ground was hard and cold and full of stones. She scraped at the surface but couldn’t get the spade to bite into it. ‘It’s bloody impossible,’ she said.
‘Put your foot on it and push,’ the woman said. The cold air had turned her hair into a silvery web and there were droplets on her eyebrows.
‘That’s what I am doing,’ Pepper said. Her fingers were red and purple. She scraped some more and it sounded like grinding teeth. She lifted and dug down, felt a sharp jolt in her shoulder, lifted and dug down again and pushed at it with her foot, but her foot slipped off and she cracked her knee against the spade. The spade fell on the ground.
For a moment she just stood and looked at it.
‘It would be a good meal for the buzzard, feed it up for winter,’ the woman said. ‘And they’ll be more thrushes in the spring – they nest in that hedge.’
‘I won’t be here in the spring,’ Pepper said as she stomped away, leaving the muddy spade and the bird on the grass.
And every day the house got worse. Ice inside the windows like bumpy glass. Books curled and smelled like wet towels, doors swelled up and didn’t shut properly.
Someone came to fix the leak in the hall but the next day it leaked in a different place.
The power chuntered. The radiators screeched and were only hot halfway up. And the worst thing: something went wrong with the cooker so that it wouldn’t light.
‘Why is this happening?’ Pepper said. She had started wearing two jumpers and a hat indoors, which made her skin itch. She scratched her arms until they bled. She looked at the tins of beans and soup on the shelf, tried not to imagine eating them cold.
‘There’s gas left in the bottles,’ her mother said, tipping them to one side. ‘I can hear it.’ There were tired circles under her eyes. When a door creaked in the draught she spun round as if she expected to see someone there.
Pepper ate slice after slice of bread until her stomach bloated and gurgled. She was supposed to stay by the fire but instead she stirred the saucepan of leaked water until it spilled, picked at rust on pipes, pushed her fingers into spongy plaster. The new paint wouldn’t dry properly and when she leaned against walls it left smears down her back.
Judy came over and looked at the cooker. She touched the top of Pepper’s head and her hands smelled like medicine because of the cream she rubbed in – to stop her skin cracking, she said. Pepper thought about the silver necklace in her mother’s bedroom; she’d seen the other half in a drawer in Judy’s house.
She sat on the kitchen floor, opened a cupboard and took out the little spice bottles. Something she used to do a lot. She opened each one and breathed in the familiar smells, dusty and exotic: the orange one like powdery sand, the spicy one that smelled of biscuits.
Her mother and Judy clanged the gas bottles and laughed quietly. Her mother said that people kept telling her Pepper should be in school. Her voice sounded different with Judy, something lighter in it, not so tired.
Pepper tipped out the balls of nutmeg and rolled them around her hand. Dug into her palm with the sharp black cloves.
On Saturday morning there was a soft knock at the door and it was Petey. Dressed in a blue and purple sweatshirt, a scarf covered with snowmen. A smart wool coat that hung off his shoulders and down past his knees. ‘I thought I should invite you to play,’ he said. He pushed his glasses up his nose with one finger.
Pepper stood behind the door and made it swing open and shut. ‘Why?’ she said.
Petey blinked and looked up at her from the bottom step, his body a dense, rigid square. ‘I thought I better invite you,’ he said.
Pepper stopped swinging the door. ‘What would we do?’ She could hear her mother doing something with the radiators, the metal pranging, the sound of air gushing out of them. Looked out at the freezing mist and frost – nothing but bare, spidery trees; the river; wet, wet grass.
Petey frowned and then turned and gestured into the distance. ‘The usual things,’ he said. ‘The usual things people do.’ He hunched his shoulders and started to walk back up the drive.
Pepper had no idea what those things were. She watched him for a second, then called into the house: ‘I’m going outside.’ Heard her mother say don’t go too far, as she pushed the door closed and ran to catch up with Petey.
They walked along the road, staying on the verge. The grass was very long and there were lots of tall, brittle stalks sticking up. There was a clump of blackberries with furry mould all over them and a fat spider with gold stripes. Sometimes Petey would stop and crouch down and poke at something in the grass and sometimes he would find something in the hedge and put it in his pocket.
‘What are you doing?’ Pepper said.
‘Collecting,’ Petey said. He picked something up and put it in his pocket but didn’t show Pepper what it was.
She picked at the dry skin around her mouth. ‘Why are you?’ she said.
Petey put his hand deeper in his pocket. Pepper followed behind, stopping when he stopped. She watched him carefully, the red marks his glasses made behind his ears, the clean nails on his fingers. He smelled like onions and soap. He was wearing grey school trousers and school shoes, which made her feel sick. She tried to see what he’d found. Her glove caught on a sharp twig and it ripped a hole. She clenched her hands. ‘I won’t be here much longer,’ she said.
Petey turned up a lane with grass down the middle. He sniffed.
‘It’s not what I expected,’ Pepper said. Her voice sounded very loud in the cold air.
Up ahead the road widened and there was a group of small houses that all looked the same, with patches of muddy grass and cars parked outside. Satellite dishes, aerials, washing drooping out on the lines. At the front, there was a set of rusty swings and a seesaw. Petey sniffed again. ‘What did you expect?’ he said. He chose a swing and sat on it but didn’t swing.
Pepper sat on the swing next to him. She pushed herself high up into the air. Higher and higher, so that the frame creaked. ‘What did I expect?’ she said. But she just carried on swinging and couldn’t answer.
It looked like there were bits of grit and glass stuck all over the houses. One of the doors opened and a man came out, whistling. He looked over at them and then called out: ‘Alright kid. How’s it going down at the house?’ It was Ray, the man who had come over to see if he wanted to buy it.
Pepper slowed down on the swing. Her mouth felt dry, her hands clammy on the chains. ‘People keep saying they want to have a holiday there,’ she said. That’s what Howard had told her Ray wanted it for.
‘Really?’ Ray said.
‘Yes,’ Pepper told him. ‘You would be silly not to buy it probably.’
‘Is that right?’ Ray said. He got into his car and music blared out. He started the engine and pulled out onto the road.
Petey sat very still and upright on his swing. ‘It would be a good place for a holiday,’ he said.
‘That’s what I told him,’ Pepper said. She could smell the swing’s sharp, rusty metal.
‘I would like to go there on holiday,’ Petey said. ‘Right down by the river.’ He looked up at the window of the closest house and there was Clapper. They nodded to one another. Clapper was holding a mug of tea and sipping, the TV flickering behind him.
‘You live here anyway,’ Pepper said.
But Petey was looking dreamily upwards. ‘Right by the water,’ he said. ‘Then I could look out of the window and see fish whenever I wanted.’
Pepper skidded her foot on the gravel so that she stopped swinging. She leaned in close to Petey. ‘Have you ever had a pet?’ she said.
Petey shook his head. ‘I want one.’
‘Yes,’ Pepper said. ‘But you get a thing and you think it will sit on your lap, or come and find you, or not kill anything, or stop you feeling lonely. But it doesn’t.’
‘I know it,’ Petey said.
Pepper sighed and tipped herself backwards on the swing. Five was too young to understand.
‘I got a fishing rod,’ Petey said. ‘And it was meant to be the best one and it was my birthday present and my Christmas present and it broke first time. And another time I had a clown at a party and he was meant to sing songs and be funny but all he did was eat all the food and steal my grandpa’s watch. And they said a night-light would help me but it keeps me awake even more.’
They both sat in silence for a while. The swing’s chains rattled.
‘I hate clowns,’ Pepper said.
Petey nodded. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of wrappers and bottle tops. Rubbish that he’d picked up off the verge. The swing creaked as he got up and put the rubbish in the bin. He went over to the seesaw and sat on it and Pepper sat on the other seat. He was heavy and she got stuck in the air. Petey got off carefully. He pushed his glasses up his nose. He started to lift his end of the seesaw so that Pepper could go up and down. ‘You are very light,’ he said.
There was the sound of a car and Ray drove back in. He grinned and saluted Pepper and she gripped the seat and closed her eyes and felt, in her stomach, the world lurch up and down.