“Okay.”
I put my hand on her parting, over the bright white line. I thought of Mam doing it: her palm on my head, the whispered prayer. “Father, protect me. God, keep me safe.” It was what she had said before she had tried to have me adopted, and again whenever she had tried to get rid of me after that. I hadn’t taken much notice of the words. They were prayer words, Jesus words, thrown in a corner with the vicar’s droning and Mrs. Bunty’s nagging. I thought about them as Molly’s scalp heated my hand. Mam had asked God to protect her. She could have asked him to protect me, or both of us, in the same number of words. She never had.
Chrissie
The police came back to my door the next day. They rang the bell early in the morning, when I was still in my nightie. I had got back late the night before, because I had spent so long lying by the handstand wall waiting for Mam to come and find me. She hadn’t come, but she had wedged the front door open so I wouldn’t have to climb through the kitchen window, which was actually almost better, if you thought about it.
The policeman was the same one who had spoken to Da, but this time he had a friend with him, a shorter one with shinier shoes. My belly danced when I opened the door and saw their silver buttons. I felt like I had been standing in the middle of a dark stage and someone had just turned on the spotlight. They asked whether Mam was home and I told them she was asleep upstairs, which might have been true or not true. They asked if I could wake her and I said I couldn’t because she was sick, which was definitely not true. The taller policeman sighed and started to leave. I wanted them to stay. I wanted the same sherbet feeling I had had in the library corner. My days were hanging long and loose, and I had nothing better to do.
“You’re looking for who killed Steven, aren’t you?” I said, leaning against the doorframe. The taller policeman turned back around. “I saw him,” I said. “The day he died. I just remembered. I saw him with Donna. They were going toward the alleys.”
The policemen looked at each other and the shorter one got out his notebook, flicked through, and showed the taller one something written on a page. I thought it might be the notes PC Woods had made when they had talked to me at school, but then I remembered that those notes had gone in the bin. These policemen didn’t know anyone had ever spoken to me before. People kept forgetting me. It wasn’t good enough.
“Donna Nevison?” the tall one asked.
“Yes. She’s in my class,” I said. “She lives on Conway Road. She’s got a green front door.”
“Where did you see them?” he asked.
“Walking up Steven’s road,” I said. “They were near the end. Where it goes to the alleys.”
“You’re sure it was her?” he asked.
“I think it was. It was a girl with yellow hair.” I thought if I said that, they might go after Betty when they found out it wasn’t Donna, because she had yellow hair too and I didn’t much like her either. I wondered whether they might find out that it really was Donna who had killed Steven, and whether they would take her straight to prison, and then I remembered. This time it was a balloon end, pulled taut and then punctured, so the air hissed out in a sigh. For the first time ever I sort of wished it was Donna who had killed him and not me at all. It was getting harder and harder to have days off from it; whenever I tried, the remembering snuck across me, like drizzle or a shadow. It was really tiring without days off.
The policemen were looking at each other and seemed to be speaking with their eyes. I didn’t know what they were saying. The tall one went down the path and out of the gate, but the short one stayed on the front step, tucking his notebook into his inside pocket.
“Do you go to stay with your aunt a lot, Christine?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Where does she live?” he asked.
“Don’t know,” I said.
“Is it close?”
“No,” I said. “It’s by the sea somewhere.”
“Do you sometimes miss school when you’re staying with her?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Were you at school when some of our officers visited?” he asked.
“What’s officers?” I asked. I sort of knew the answer, but I wanted to keep him there for as long as possible.
He smiled. “Officers are policemen. Like us,” he said.
“Oh,” I said. “No. I don’t think I was there.”
He nodded and went down the path. As he got to the gate a third policeman came round the corner, shaking his head and tapping his hand with his notebook. I remembered him from school—PC Woods. The tall policeman asked the short policeman something, and the short policeman said, “No, she wasn’t there at the school visits. Must have been with the aunt.” PC Woods looked at me and said, “Yes she was. We spoke to her.” Then they all looked at me. I was surprised they couldn’t hear me fizzing from all the way down the path.
When they had muttered for a bit the tall policeman and PC Woods came back up the path. “So, Christine, PC Woods thinks—” the tall one started to say.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “I was there. I remember now. I just got confused before. That’s all.”
“You were a bit confused when you spoke to us at school, weren’t you?” said PC Woods. “I seem to remember you thought you’d seen Steven the day . . . on that day, but then it turned
