“I’ve just got to get myself sorted, you know, Chris?” he said. “I’ve just got to get myself together, and then I’ll get you out of here. We’ll go somewhere new. Just the two of us. I’ve just got to get myself sorted.”
“Where will we go?” I asked.
“Wherever you want,” he said.
“Seaside?”
“If you want.”
“What will our house be like?”
I always tried to get him to talk more about what it would be like when he took me away from the streets, but he never wanted to. He just said, “Yeah, yeah, when I get myself together, as soon as I get myself sorted, Chris.” Then he went to the pub. Usually when he was at the pub Mam came downstairs with her hair brushed and makeup on her face.
“Was your da here?” she asked. “I thought I heard your da.”
“He was here,” I said. “He’s gone to the pub now.”
When I said that, Mam’s face slipped away. The makeup was still there, locked in a pretty mask, but there was no one underneath it. Her mouth went straight and her eyes went unsparkly, like plastic pretending to be glass. Then she went back upstairs.
Anyway, that was how I knew being dead wasn’t forever. Not always. People who talked about dying as if it was forever were either lying or stupid, because I knew two people who definitely, definitely came back from being dead. One was Da and the other was Jesus.
• • •
There weren’t many kids playing out as Da and I walked through the streets. I wished there were more, because I wanted everyone to see us together. He stopped to buy me a paper bag of dolly mixtures from the shop, so at least Mrs. Bunty got to see us together. I hugged his arm as he paid and looked her straight in the eye, which made her screw her mouth into an ugly little wrinkle. She dropped Da’s change into his hand without touching him and said, “Forty pence back, sir,” in a voice that told me she didn’t think he was a sir at all, she thought he was just a him.
Inside the Bull’s Head the smell was of smoke and beer, and everything was sticky, and solid men sat in corners talking in grizzled voices. Da lifted me onto a stool and bought me a can of cream soda.
“What you been up to, then?” he asked when he had swallowed half his pint and burped over his shoulder.
“Lots of things. Lots of worksheets,” I said. “Mrs. Bunty’s not giving us enough sweets for the bottles and Donna bit me. And there’s this little boy that’s got dead.”
“What?” said Da.
“Mam says I have to call you Uncle Jim,” I said, because I was having a day off from being the one who had killed Steven and I really wasn’t in the mood to turn it into a day on. Da snorted and drank the rest of his pint in one gulp. I wondered how much more he would drink, and hoped it wouldn’t be so much he started shouting. I had odd ends of memory from the last time he had been alive, and all the odd ends smelled of beer and sounded of shouting. I was just thinking about what other exciting things I could tell him when one of his friends came and clapped a hand on his shoulder, and he turned his back on me to talk to him. They talked for a lot of time and Da drank a lot more beer. I lined my dolly mixtures up in a row on the high strip of table in front of my stool.
After a long time Da wobbled away from his friends, past the tables, and out of the door, and I jumped down to follow him. It was almost like he had forgotten I was there, except obviously he hadn’t. I was the whole point of him coming back alive again. When I caught up with him he held on to my arm, and as we walked he kept stumbling and yanking it so hard I thought it was going to come out of its socket. I didn’t care. If he had torn my arm away from my body and kept it for himself, I wouldn’t have minded. I would have said, “You can have the rest of me too. The other arm, and both my legs, and my belly and face and heart. It’s all there for you, if you want it.”
Mam wasn’t at the house when we got back. We hadn’t been there for long when the door knocked and Da told me to go to my room. I climbed the stairs and lay down on my front on the landing. I heard the man at the door say “Steven” and my stomach whirled. I pushed myself forward as slowly and quietly as I could, until I was lying in the special spot where I could see the person at the door but they couldn’t see me, the same as the special spot on the church hall roof. It was easier to understand what people were saying when I could see their mouths. The man on the doorstep was a policeman.
“I was hoping to talk to . . . Christine? Christine Banks. Is that your daughter, Mr. Banks?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“I’m her uncle.”
“Oh, I see. I’m sorry, I—”
“What you want with Chrissie? She’s eight.”
“We’re speaking to all the kids in the area. It’s part of our investigation into the death of Steven Mitchell.”
“Waste of time, speaking to kids.”
“Is Christine at home, Mr. Banks?
