“Yeah. But I realized actually it was that day. The day he got killed.”
“The Saturday?”
“Yeah. I saw him on Saturday. In the morning.”
“With his father?” said PC Woods.
“His father?” said the tall one.
“No. Not his da. It was actually a girl. I got it wrong. It was Donna.”
The policemen did a lot of talking with their eyes but I couldn’t get what they were saying. Eventually PC Woods took out his notebook, scribbled something on the page, and showed it to the tall one. I leaned forward to see but he snapped it shut. I hoped it said, “Let’s stop all this talking with our eyes and talk out loud so Chrissie can hear us.”
“Christine,” said the tall one in a stern voice. “You do understand, don’t you, that this is serious. It’s not a game. We’re working hard to find out what happened to Steven. We need to find out what happened to him because we want to keep you and all the other kids in the streets safe. We can’t do that if anyone’s telling lies. Do you understand that?”
“I am safe,” I said. He looked like that wasn’t what he’d expected me to say.
“Well, we’ll make sure you’re all safe,” he said.
“I am safe,” I said again. “And I’m not telling lies.”
“Right. Good. Well, Christine, I think we’re going to come back and have another word with you when your mammy’s better,” he said.
“Better from what?” I asked.
“I thought you said she was ill,” he said.
“Oh,” I said. “Yeah. She is very ill. She’s actually probably dead by now.”
“What?” said PC Woods.
“Has something happened to your mammy, Christine?” asked the tall one.
“Well. No. Obviously. She’s just got gout,” I said. I didn’t know exactly what gout was, but I knew it was a very bad illness because it was what Mrs. Bunty’s husband had and she never stopped talking about how bad it was, except for when she talked about the war or God.
“Are you going to speak to Donna?” I asked.
“We’ll speak to everyone we need to speak to,” said PC Woods. “Don’t you worry yourself.”
I sighed loud enough to be sure they would definitely hear it, because I was getting sick of people thinking I was worrying myself when myself had actually never been less worried. “You should worry yourselves,” I said. “You should worry yourselves about Donna.”
“All right, Christine,” said PC Woods, and he went back down the path to where the short one was waiting by the gate. The two of them started to walk away, but the tall one stayed on the doorstep. He had his notebook in his hand and was flipping through the pages. I tried again to see what was written in it, but he hugged it close to his chest. I wasn’t surprised. I had learned lots of things since Steven had died, and one of them was that what policemen loved more than anything else in the whole world was notebooks.
“Just one more thing, Christine,” he said. “This aunt you go and stay with. What’s her name?”
My tongue grew a bit bigger in my mouth. The tall policeman was watching me, and I tried and tried to remember the name I had heard Da say when the police had asked him about the made-up aunt.
“Um. Abigail,” I said. He looked back down at his notebook, but in a way that made me think he was looking because he wanted me to see him looking, not because he needed to read what was written on the page.
“Hmm,” he said. “Funny that. Your da seemed to think it was Angela.”
“Oh. Yeah. That’s right. Angela,” I said. “It’s Angela. Auntie Angela. I just got—”
“Confused?”
“Yeah. I got confused.”
He snapped his notebook shut and put it back in his pocket.
“All right, Christine,” he said. “See you soon.” Before he went to join the other policemen on the street he said something in eye-talk that even I could hear. He said, “I’m watching you.”
• • •
Talking to the policemen left me twitchy, and when they were out of sight I put on some clothes and went to call for Linda. We walked to the shop and I made her distract Mrs. Bunty by asking her to take down the jar of rosy apples, then the jar of jelly beans, then the jar of raspberry bonbons, each time saying, “No, no, I didn’t mean that one, I meant that one.” When I had taken the bag of toffees and tucked it up my dress I made Linda say, “Actually I don’t want any sweets today. It’s too complicated to choose.”
“Bye, Mrs. Bunty,” I said, waving as I pulled open the door. “Thanks for the sweets.” She looked confused, then cross enough to explode. We ran out of the shop, round the corner, up the hill, toward the alleys.
The blue house had the same moldy smell it had had the last time we were there, with Donna and William, and the downstairs rooms were still carpeted with broken window glass. It sounded like tiny bones breaking under my feet. When we got to the upstairs room we both looked at the patch of floor under the hole in the roof, which was bubbled with damp. Rain had soaked into the wood and sun had heated up the rain and the boards had turned mushy as wet paper. I went toward it slowly, feeling my steps go from stamp to scud, wood to mush. When I got to the place where the floor was darkest, Linda said, “Be careful. You might fall through.” I ignored her. I pushed a toe into the middle of the patch, lifted away a layer of wood, and watched egg-backed wood lice seethe onto my shoe. When I shook them off they scattered, wiggling to the corners of the room, but one got stuck in a dip in the floor. I hooked it out with my
