‘Are we going to drill?’ he asks, once Eden and Sarah leave for the day.
‘We can,’ I say, ‘but it’s not going to be the same. I don’t think I’ll be high-kicking again for a good six months.’
‘That’s okay,’ he says. ‘You can still do squats and stuff.’
‘I can’t run.’
‘Not at all?’
‘I did, a couple of weeks ago. I thought my stomach was literally going to bounce off.’
‘You’ve got soft.’
I poke his midriff and it gives under my fingers. ‘You don’t have an excuse, like me,’ I tell him.
‘Romy?’
‘Yes?’
‘Is she still angry?’
‘I don’t think she ever was, honestly.’
‘I sometimes get the feeling she is angry.’
‘Not about you, Ilo.’
‘What about?’
‘Her life. Our grandparents. Her husband. Marie Spence.’
‘Her husband? I didn’t even know she had one.’
‘Ilo, you need to start asking questions.’
‘I thought it was rude, to ask questions.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘In the home.’
‘Oh. That’s different.’
‘Different how?’
‘If you want Cairngorm, Ilo, you need to make friends with Sarah. I told you.’
‘Friends?’
‘Yes.’
He thinks for a long time. ‘How do you make friends?’
‘You ask questions, and you listen to the answers.’
‘Oh. How do you know that?’
‘I had a friend called Spencer in Weston,’ I tell him. ‘He told me.’
‘Spencer? What happened to him?’
‘He fell off the wagon.’
‘Ouch. Badly? Was he hurt?’
‘He died,’ I say, and I feel a bit sad. I kick Ilo’s feet out from under him.
On the grass of our grandparents’ lawn, he lands with an ‘oof’, raises himself up on his elbows and looks at me with his piercing eyes. ‘But Aunt Sarah ... she’s never going to just hand me over.’
I give him a hand up and all the stretched muscles in my abdomen pull so hard I have to stay bent and clap my hands to my sides until the cramps pass. ‘That’s up to you,’ I say. ‘She can come too, but that’s up to you.’
‘And how can we take Eden to Cairngorm?’ he asks. ‘We can’t just leave her here all by herself. She’d never survive.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I say, and I massage my intercostals. ‘She’ll be safe. But we have things to do first.’
‘It’s in here,’ Ilo says, and lifts the garage door.
‘Oh, my,’ I say.
It’s a boxy car, all corners and straight lines. Dark blue, tweed seats. Not a scrap of damage or rust, though it must have been sitting here unused for two years and it’s clearly a lot older than Aunt Sarah’s silver runabout with the scratch on the wing mirror and the dent in the door. Much older. But it’s a car, and a car is what I need, if Uri wants me to go around the country at his behest.
‘Don’t you think she’ll notice?’
‘I’ve not seen her come in here since we arrived. Not once.’
‘But she’ll notice when we come in and out.’
‘Not if we do it when she’s at work. We can park it round the corner if we don’t know if she’s there or not.’
Sounds reasonable.
I take the key. The lock is slightly stiff and the door creaks as it opens. I settle into the driver’s seat. My grandfather was clearly taller than I am. I have to stretch to reach the pedals. I put my key in the ignition and turn it. Nothing happens.
‘It’s dead.’
‘What sort of dead?’
‘You heard it. Dead dead.’ I knew my luck wouldn’t last. It would just be too damn simple.
‘Mmmm.’ He ducks in around my knees again and pulls a lever that pops the bonnet. I might have known he’d know how to do these things. He was always engine-mad, hanging around the Farmers in the hope of getting a drive of the tractor, hanging around the Engineers doing things with fulcrums. ‘Hold on.’
While he’s out of sight I check my reflection in the mirror. My nose has shrunk back down to its normal size, which is good. I’ll be attracting less attention in the suburbs, anyway. I’ve still got the black eyes, but there’s less blood in them now. I’m getting old. I used to heal from a bruise in no time.
‘Try again,’ he calls.
I turn the key and the engine springs to life. He slams the bonnet and gets in beside me, grinning with self-congratulation. ‘Someone unplugged the battery,’ he says. ‘They do that sometimes, if a car’s going to be sitting a while.’
‘Told you I needed you,’ I tell him.
He grins. ‘Some of us paid attention when we did the Engineer apprenticeship.’
‘Whatever,’ I say. He wouldn’t know wolfsbane from hogwort if you shoved them under his nose.
We are in the car turning the engine over to build up the battery when Uri calls. ‘Where are you now?’ he asks.
‘Finbrough,’ I say.
‘Oh, right,’ he says. ‘Closer, then. Jaivyn is in Bristol, you’ll be glad to hear.’
Bristol. I remember that. That jumble of houses, warehouses, blocks of flats that went for miles below the motorway with the glittering sea beyond.
‘How do you know?’
‘Same way I knew you were in Hounslow,’ he replies. ‘He’s started using his card. I guess he must be running low on other sources. Or maybe he thinks that now Vita’s dead it’s just free money sitting around. He’s taken £300 out every day this week. So he’s either eating off gold plates and bathing in asses’ milk or he’s saving up to make a run for it. You’d better get down there sooner rather than later.’
I look at my little brother, and nod at him. His mouth drops open, just a little bit.
‘Bristol’s a bit of a vague destination,’ I say. ‘I went past it once. It’s huge.’
‘The Old Red Lion, Strickland Road, St Paul’s,’ he says.
‘What, now?’
‘It’s a pub. He’s been withdrawing cash in a pub. Been using ATMs all over the place, but he gets a couple of hundred out there a couple of times a week, too. Either that or he’s drinking enough to do your job for you.’
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘What do you want me to do? Hang around the pub till he turns up?’
‘Yes,’ he says.
Yes, that’ll work. A pregnant woman with a faceful of cuts and bruises will never attract attention in a pub. My lower lip is still so swollen it sticks a full half-inch out from my face.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ I say.
‘Don’t see about it,’ he says, ‘do it.’