On the rare occasions that didn’t work, he’d tell the kids that the café was giving out free ice creams. Once all the children had scrambled eagerly down the rope ladder, he’d draw it up quickly, so none of them could come up again, then turn deaf when they begged him to let them up. And he’d keep ignoring them until they drifted off.
‘Ignoring children is something you’re really good at,’ I’d tease him, and for a second, he’d stare at me warily, then flash those ratty teeth, and give a short, sharp laugh of surprise.
Like Sea View on a rainy day, conversations with Scanlon needed to be navigated extremely carefully. I quickly learnt which topics of conversation he preferred, and which to steer away from.
Talking about his home, or where he lived, wasn’t an area he seemed that comfortable with. (‘We move around a lot, depending on Dad’s work,’ he’d explained curtly.)
What did his dad do? (‘Collector,’ he’d said, then abruptly announced it was time for him to leave.)
Once he did tell me how old he was. (‘I turned twelve a month ago.’) But when I’d replied excitedly, ‘Me too! Well, nearly. We’re practically the same age! We should have a joint birthday party!’, he’d just stared at me impassively. Then he said: ‘Your concept has flaws.’
He was closed up about his mum. (‘She died when I was six. No, I don’t have any brothers or sisters.’)
He wouldn’t be drawn on what Crawler wanted him to find at Sea View Cottage. (‘I don’t want to talk about it. Anyway, he’s not going to find it. Not if I have anything to do with it.’)
He wasn’t much good at small talk either. If I asked if he’d had a good day, he’d shrug and mutter something unhelpful like: ‘Define “good”.’
When I asked if he had any hobbies, he’d snorted and said witheringly, ‘Oh, absolutely, I sail in the summer and ski in the winter.’ And that had been that.
So yeah, not asking him anything too personal was a good rule of thumb. But I’m not saying he was bad company. Not at all. Some things he was much happier to chat about. He was obsessed with schools. He couldn’t get over the fact that when I’d been alive, every child in Great Britain had been able to go to school for free. ‘Education has changed completely since you were alive, Frankie. There aren’t any state schools any more. They’ve all been closed since the government decided to spend the money on World War Three instead.’
‘What?’
‘Sorry. World War Four. Now, most kids, unless they’re mega-rich, just use Skool Tools at home – it’s like a plug-in? And if there’s anything we want insta-cog for, we ask Coddle and then you normally get an instant load. If you have the tech credits, of course, which I usually don’t.’
He loved sharing what he’d been able to learn from his plug-in schooling, whatever that was.
That was how I finally learnt what tent udders meant.
‘People don’t say things are “good” or “bad” much these days. Most adjectives have been replaced by … numerical grading,’ Scanlon explained. ‘In your century – or what we call the User Experience Age – people got asked so often to rate their experiences on the internet that it changed language permanently. That’s what Skool Tool Module Twelve says anyway.’
After puzzling over this for some time, I worked out that words like ‘brilliant’ became, over time, replaced by the phrase ‘ten out of ten’. Which, over time, changed into ‘ten outer’. Which changed to ‘tent udder’ and sometimes just ‘tent’.
And he said that people smelt of mushroom soup because loads of clothes were made out of mushrooms in the twenty-second century. Something to do with cotton not being sustainable, or something. The last thing he shed light on was the whole pyjamas-during-the-day trend. He said that people in his century wore sleepwear fashion in the same way that people in my century wore sportswear fashion: ‘As a bit of a lie. Like, a lot of people in your century wore sportswear and never did any sports at all, right? But they did it to look healthier than they actually were.’
Basically, people in the future didn’t get much sleep but tried to pretend they did through wearing pyjamas during the day to give the illusion they were more well rested than they really were. And then, looking more enthusiastic than usual, Scanlon started using words he’d learnt from Skool Tools. Words like ‘status indicators’ and ‘sartorial power statements’, until I asked him to stop because my brain ached. At which point he’d laughed shyly, and asked, ‘Is this how brothers and sisters talk to each other?’
But above and beyond all of those topics, there was one thing he loved to talk about the most: my family. Although, really, it was me that did the talking. He just liked to listen.
USUALLY, HE’D TURN up with very specific questions about the life we’d had at home, and then settle back against the trunk of the tree with a satisfied sigh, like I was his favourite box set. Questions like: ‘What does “tuck you in” mean and is it fun?’ or ‘Did anyone ever make you a cake for your birthday, and what was it like?’
At first, it was hard to answer him. Not only was it painful, but my memories had grown rusty.
‘There are holograms down in the garden for that sort of thing,’ I snapped, the first time he asked me about the past, one afternoon in the tree house. ‘Why don’t you ask them?’
Warm, fat raindrops began to fall. The edge of the boards shone in the light.
‘I’d rather hear it
