‘Bad enough,’ I say as she slinks into the space beside me and plonks her head in my lap. I scrunch the soft fur around her neck and she makes little squeaky sounds.
‘You didn’t see him when he found out that Simon’s mother had let you go back in,’ says another voice from behind the sofa. ‘I thought he was going to terminate the female with extreme prejudice.’
‘How many of you are there?’ I ask, as Sugar Niner jumps up onto the back rest. ‘You better not have made a mess.’
‘Real talk, Abi,’ says Sugar Niner. ‘The air went greasy and the Nightingale blew a hole in the pavement. I was bare prang and no mistake.’
‘Believe it, fam,’ says Indigo.
40
Ghost Hunter, Fox Whisperer, Troublemaker
It’s a rainy Wednesday morning in November and I’m standing in front of the house, which is still hidden behind a wooden construction barrier. Above the level of the shield I can see that the scaffolding has been replaced by structural timbers and acrow props. The plastic sheeting, which I’ve learnt is actually called Monarflex, hangs in shreds. It looks untidy, old, derelict.
The rain is spattering on the pink umbrella I borrowed from Great Ormond Street after visiting Paul there. My mum thinks I headed straight home, but I stayed on the 46 all the way up to Hampstead so I could check on the house. Sugar Niner, who’s leading the surveillance team, has climbed up onto my shoulder to get out of the rain. He smells of wet fur and the Chanel No. 5 I think he stole from my bathroom.
‘There’s a lot of shouting and swearing,’ he says around a mouthful of the croissant I’ve brought him. ‘They’ve had to bring in additional structural supports to hold it up, but the one you identified as probably the architect doesn’t think they can save the house.’
‘Charles is vexed,’ I say. ‘He’s bringing it down out of spite. You’re sure no kids have gone in?’
‘Not while we’re watching, although Lucifer warns he can’t justify this operational tempo forever,’ says Sugar Niner.
There’s a crash from inside the house, followed by shouting and swearing.
‘That ain’t going to be a problem for much longer,’ I say.
‘Come look at this,’ says Indigo from down the street.
I prise Sugar Niner off my shoulder and he scuttles off into a nearby front garden. I stroll down to where Indigo is looking at a mark in the pavement.
There is a hole in a paving stone the size of my fist, with cracks zigzagging out all around. The edges of the hole are rounded as if they’ve been worn down or melted, and I can feel the vestigia tick-tocking away like a faraway clock.
‘Your friend the wizard did that,’ says a voice behind me.
I turn and it’s Simon’s mum walking up the road towards me. She has a huge shaggy German shepherd on one of those leads that attaches to a harness around the dog’s chest. She don’t look that comfortable holding the lead, so I’m guessing this is not her dog.
Indigo and the other foxes have booked out so fast you’d think they’d be leaving vortices in the air behind them. Which is probably what the dog is for, but I know right away that neither me or Simon’s mum are going to mention this.
‘How’s Simon?’ I ask, and not just to throw his mum off her balance.
‘Thriving,’ she says, and gives me a funny little nod of acknowledgement. ‘That was a good suggestion. I appreciate it.’
She wants something, I think. Things are looking up.
‘In fact, I was wondering if you might consider doing some consulting for me,’ she says. ‘Not too often – nothing that would interfere with your schoolwork.’
‘Consulting?’
‘There are situations where I think your insight might be useful,’ she says.
I ain’t lying, ’cause if she’s offering what I think she’s offering, I get a little thrill. So we’ll see.
‘What’s in it for me?’ I ask.
‘What you want,’ she said, ‘I can’t give you – nobody can.’
I stay silent. I hate it when people know things they shouldn’t know.
‘But I can pull strings,’ she says. ‘Make sure things go smoothly with the red tape around your family. Plus excitement and adventure and really wild things.’
‘And what do you get?’
‘I get a girl who can go places I can’t go, talk to people who won’t talk to me and see things I don’t even know are there,’ she says. ‘Someone smart and brave who I can trust.’
‘I’m not spying on the Folly for you,’ I say.
‘That goes without saying.’
‘And I want money,’ I say, and she’s so surprised that it actually shows on her face.
When she asks how much, I tell her what I want and that I want it in a secure trust fund in my name that I get to access when I’m seventeen.
‘Why not eighteen?’ she asks.
‘In case I go to uni early.’
She nods and agrees a basic scale, a little bit too speedily . . . making me think I could have gone higher. But I make sure we ain’t talking war zones, reh-teh-teh, and we shake hands. I get a good grip and say –
‘You swear now on Simon’s life and the Union Flag that you’re going to be straight with me. Because I ain’t going to be your side girl – right?’
She hesitates, which is good ’cause I want her deeping what I’m saying.
‘I swear on my oath, my office and my son, I will be straight with you,’ she says.
So that’s how that happened.
And as I walk back over the Heath, Indigo starts humming a tune from some old TV show that I’ve never heard of. She swears that it’s like a classic spy theme, but I reckon I’ve got to get these foxes something up to date in the way of entertainment.
Acknowledgements
It may take a village to raise a child but it takes a medium-sized industrial park to publish a book on four continents. So, starting with the agents,
