Abi thought that now they had moved into a bigger house, they might have a pet. She mentioned it when they were in the kitchen, unpacking saucepans and china.
‘A dog?’ she asked. She had wanted a dog so much when she was little that she had given herself an invisible one. Roly. For two or three years, invisible Roly had slept on her bed, walked beside her to the park, shared her beanbag while she read her books. Granny Grace and Theo got used to stepping round him, and on journeys and trips out they asked now and then, ‘Will Roly be coming with us?’
There had never been a real Roly, though. ‘In this little flat?’ Granny Grace had said. ‘Not possible.’
There hadn’t been a dog, there couldn’t be a cat because of the traffic. There had been a hamster. A school friend had got tired of him, and Abi, despite Granny Grace’s horror of small creatures like hamsters, had smuggled him home. After a good deal of fuss she had been allowed to keep him – ‘But you can’t hug a hamster,’ said Abi, and, ‘Could we have a dog or a cat?’ she asked now.
Max and Louis both stopped what they were doing to listen to the answer.
‘Sorry,’ said Theo. ‘It’s a “no pets” lease. We can’t have anything like that.’
‘How would anyone know?’
‘We’re just not going to risk it,’ said Theo. ‘We’ve signed a contract that says we won’t, and we’ve paid a thousand pounds deposit . . .’
‘A THOUSAND POUNDS!’ repeated Louis, stunned. ‘A thousand pounds, which we can’t afford to lose. That’s one thing. The other is, it’s only a six-month lease . . .’
‘Does that mean,’ demanded Max, staring around at the chaotic kitchen, ‘that in six months’ time we might have to shove this all back into boxes and move house again?’
‘Not if the owners renew the lease,’ said Polly soothingly. ‘Which we are sure . . .’
‘Almost sure,’ said Theo.
‘. . . almost sure they will. If there are no problems.’ ‘So, that’s it, Abi,’ said Theo. ‘No smuggled-in surprises! We just can’t take the risk.’
‘No, we can’t,’ Max agreed. ‘Don’t forget my fifty pounds! Half my saved-up hundred pounds!’ He glanced at Abi so distrustfully that she lost her temper.
‘It’s my home too!’ she cried. ‘This time, it’s my home just as much as yours! I don’t want to lose it either. And stop going on about your fifty pounds! You can get another fifty pounds, but I can’t ever get another signed Harry Potter book.’
Bang! went the door as she marched out of the kitchen, and they were left with a horrible silence.
‘Good for Abi!’ said Polly.
‘I think you should be on Max’s side,’ remarked Louis.
‘Oh, do you?’ said Polly crossly.
‘Yes, ’n’ Theo on Abi’s side.’
‘And what about you?’ asked Theo.
‘He can be on Mrs Puddock’s side,’ said Max, and Louis flew at him in fury.
Louis did not like Mrs Puddock.
It was Polly who had introduced her to the family. ‘We’ve got a neighbour,’ she said, running into the kitchen to call people. ‘I found her on the path. I think she was waiting to meet us. Come and say hello to Mrs Puddock!’
‘Hello, Mrs P.,’ said Theo amiably. He was so tall he had to bend to look at her properly. ‘Keeping an eye on us all?’
Mrs Puddock crossed little starfish hands on her stomach, and looked around at them with bright, glinting eyes. She had a nice smile, huge, stretching in a wavering, rueful line from invisible ear to invisible ear. She dipped her head a little and shuffled.
‘Hello, Mrs Puddock,’ said Abi, but Louis edged away.
Mrs Puddock’s voice was hesitant, and a little creaky, and her movements were slow. ‘She looks ancient,’ said Max when they met her again, a day or two later. ‘Like a dead thing come alive.’
Louis stared at him in fear.
‘I’m going to make friends with her,’ said Abi, causing Max to roll his eyes and Louis to beg urgently, ‘Don’t!’
‘Why shouldn’t I?’
‘Because it will start Louis off on one of his stupid fusses,’ said Max. ‘Just leave her alone, can’t you?’
Abi was not used to being told what to do, except by Granny Grace. Nor had she forgotten ‘Don’t forget my fifty pounds!’ and Max’s distrustful glance. After that she kept an extra watch out for Mrs Puddock, and met her quite often, mostly in the evenings, always close to the house. She seemed to like the shadows and the damp little path by the hedge, but the lighted windows clearly fascinated her. She would pause on her journeys to gaze.
‘Do you think she notices what we do?’ said Louis, and Polly said yes, of course she did, and Theo and Max should bring their bikes in properly, instead of leaving them slumped by the wall, and people should remember to take their shoes off at the door and the bins should be put out on time.
Louis looked at Polly carefully, checking that she was joking.
‘Mrs Puddock,’ said Theo, ‘is a flipping nuisance.’
‘Mrs Puddock,’ said Max, ‘is a really stupid joke.’
‘I saw her eat a beetle,’ said Louis.
‘You’re a good one to talk about beetles,’ said Max, looking meaningfully at Louis’ head, which had recently once again become home to uninvited wildlife, and he turned Louis upside down and held him by his ankles. He said he was shaking the beetles out of his hair.
‘Louis’ beetles are long gone,’ said Theo, turning him the right way up again. ‘I’ve checked. Right, I’m off to work. I’ll see you all later. Don’t drive each other nuts! Be happy.’
It wasn’t very hard to be happy in those first weeks. It was the school summer holidays. The days were bright. Sunlight chased Mrs Puddock away, polished the ivy leaves and found its way into the rooms, dappling them with greenish light. The last boxes were unpacked, and the rooms gradually organized, the kitchen first, then the bedrooms, and then they ran out of furniture. They didn’t care, because they had space. Where they had lived before they’d had so little space that everyone always knew where everyone else was to be found. Now they had room to lose track of each other.
‘Cuts down on the bickering,’ said Theo to Polly, and she groaned and nodded and asked, ‘Will they ever get on?’
Max spent a lot of time with his friend Danny, partly because they jointly owned a bike-repair and car-cleaning business, which was based at Danny’s house, and partly because Danny had taken a dislike to the ivy house the first time he’d visited.
‘Spooky,’ Danny had said. It was best that the bike-repair and car-cleaning business was at his house anyway, because he had four big brothers with broken bikes, as well as several kind neighbours with dirty cars. Some days the business actually earned money, or would have done if its owners hadn’t immediately rushed out and spent it on bike-repair and car-cleaning equipment. They told each other this was reinvesting, but really they enjoyed spending. It made them feel optimistic. Their conversations often began with, ‘When we get rich . . .’
Louis did not even go as far as the graveyard. He stayed at home. Those first warm nights, with his bed pushed under his window, he stretched his bare feet out into the thousand shining green leaves, and felt magic running through him like bright sap through the veins of a leaf. He had begun to know the ivy, its depth, its mysterious blue reflections, its iron smell of green and ancient botany, its sound of rain on turning pages, its strength and brittleness, and its flavour of cress and stone.
It was the first wildwood of his life, and it satisfied him all summer.
While Max was busy and Louis was studying ivy, Abi was exploring. She found a tunnel in the yew hedge, wriggled through and discovered the old graveyard. Theo wriggled after her, much to her dismay.
‘Can’t I have one private place?’ she demanded.
‘Yes,’ said Theo, ‘so long as you have it with me. I won’t tell Polly and I won’t tell the boys, but every time you come here, you’ve got to let me know.’
‘Why?
‘Because I’m your dad and it’s my job to look out for you. Come on, Abi, promise!’
Abi promised, and so the graveyard became their secret. Over the years it had become a wild place, a patch of countryside in the middle of a city. Abi discovered hoverflies and insects amongst the long purple-headed grasses, slow-worms under the hedge, strange gold lichens painting weather-worn angels – best of all, a fox family, their cubs at dawn, light feet amongst ancient stones. Abi bought puppy biscuits and scattered them on an old table-top grave, warm in the sunshine.
MARIAN HEPPLE, 1802, AGED 9. A LOVING HEART FOR ALL GOD’S CREATURES, read the inscription.
The cubs crunched, their eyes half closed with pleasure. Abi thought Marian would be pleased. She wrote and told Granny Grace about them, and about the ivy and Mrs Puddock, and the Narnia lamp and the books she had found in her room, and the way that Polly was not as annoying as she had been at first, though Max was just as bad, and Louis even worse.
Foxes have germs, wrote back Granny Grace (ignoring Abi’s grumbling as she always did):
You make sure you wash your hands. I send you a pink hibiscus flower from the bush beside my door. Tell your father that I said to be careful on his bike. Remind him that he rode into our neighbour when he was nine years old, and the dustcart when he was eleven.
Now, my very dearest Abigail, study some schoolwork so you start off well next term, and write back soon to your loving Granny Grace.
So much ivy, so much news! What a time of green magic!
Green magic, thought Abi, and nodded, because the words seemed right.