“I heard,” said Linda’s mammy.
“Awful, isn’t it?” said Robert’s mammy. “Really chilling. I’ve felt chilled to my bones since I heard.” She didn’t look very chilled to her bones. She looked how kids look when they come to school on their birthday wearing a birthday badge—puffed up and pink. Linda was at the other end of the church, tidying the box of Sunday school things, so she couldn’t hear the mammies, but I was right behind them, crouched between two pews. I hunched down low so they wouldn’t see me.
“Of course, you’ve got to wonder . . .” said Robert’s mammy.
“Not got to,” said Linda’s mammy. She was sweeping over the same patch she’d been sweeping for a while, though it was clean now.
“You’ve got to wonder,” said Robert’s mammy. “I’ve been racking my brains, but I don’t know the older kids. I don’t have an older one like your Linda—and it must have been an older one, mustn’t it?”
I had taken off my cardigan before we had started tidying the knee cushions. It was hanging over the back of the pew closest to Linda’s mammy. She picked it up, shook it out, and held it in front of her.
“Do you have any ideas?” asked Robert’s mammy. Linda’s mammy folded my cardigan in half and dropped it back onto the pew. She went to the cupboard to put the broom away.
“Linda,” she called. “Come on. We’re going.” Linda trotted to meet her, and I followed them out of the church and down the road. Linda’s mammy was holding on to Linda’s wrist and walking fast. When we got to the top of Marner Street she turned around to look at me.
“Go on. Away with you,” she said.
“But I want to play with Linda,” I said.
“Linda’s coming home with me.”
“I’ll come home too, then.”
“No, Chrissie,” she said. “You’ll not come. It’s not your home.”
She pulled Linda down the street. I watched them get smaller and smaller until they went up the path to their house. By that time they were so far away I couldn’t see if Linda turned to look at me or not. When I had been crouched between the pews in the church her mammy had swept clouds of dust over me, and I could feel it then, settled on my lungs in a powdery film.
• • •
There were lots of hours to fill when I was trying not to be at the house for too much time. When it was light I played out, with Linda and William and Donna and now with Ruthie. The others went home at teatime but I stayed out. I stayed out until it was dark and my eyes were heavy, and then I snuck into the house, up the stairs, and into bed with the covers over my head.
On Saturday I was sitting on the grass in the yard of the Bull’s Head by myself, because it was teatime and everyone else had gone home. A man came out to smoke, and I looked up and saw it was Da.
“Da?” I said. He had to squint his eyes to see me.
“Chris?” he said.
“I thought you were still dead,” I said. His hands were being lazy and he couldn’t get his smoke to light, so I went and held it still for him. The flame licked the end and glowed it orange.
“Cheers,” he said. He sucked it for a long time. “Just came back, didn’t I?”
“When?”
“Just now. Last week, week before maybe.”
“Why didn’t you come and see me?”
“You know. Sorting stuff. I was going to come and see you now. Today. Just popped in for a quick drink.” He sat down on the step and I sat in front of him. Da always told me the first thing he did whenever he stopped being dead was come and see me. He didn’t even stop to put his bag down anywhere, he just came straight to see me. That was how much he missed me when we weren’t together.
“Why didn’t you come and see me straightaway?” I asked.
“Jesus, Chris. Give me a break. I’m seeing you now, aren’t I?” I dug my chin hard into my chest. If he had been there sooner I wouldn’t have got sick from the Smarties because he would have been there to protect me.
“How’re you keeping?” he asked. “What you been up to?”
I lifted my chin, stuck it out toward him, and looked at his eyes. “I’ve been in the hospital,” I said.
“What?” he said.
“Mam gave me tablets in a Smarties tube. She told me to eat them all up. I nearly died.”
His hand went to his chin. Rub, rub, rub. Scratch, scratch, scratch. He put his smoke back in his mouth, then he took it out and ground it under his shoe. When both his hands were free he put them in his hair and clenched and unclenched his fingers so the skin on his forehead tightened and sagged.
“I had to be in the hospital for days and days,” I said. “They had to suck all the stuff out of my belly. If they hadn’t done it quick enough I would have died.”
“Don’t tell me this, Chris,” he said. He stood up, and his hair stood up too, in sharp spikes. “Please. Please don’t tell me.”
“But you can help me,” I said. “You’re alive now. I can keep you safe so you don’t get dead again and you can take me away.”
“No I can’t,” he said. His voice sounded like a window with a crack that was letting in rain. “I can’t.”
“But you said you would. You said next time you saw me you would. You said.”
“I’m sorry, Chris,” he said. He turned to go back into the pub and I tried to follow him, but he pushed me away. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I can’t,” he said.
“Are
