The boy says do you want some breakfast then, he sits down again and pushes his fingers through his hair. The tall girl says no I’m not hungry, my stomach feels a bit, and she hesitates and thinks and says beside the point and she smiles a pale smile. The short girl with the painted nails says I want a chocolate doughnut, let’s go and buy some chocolate doughnuts, we can sit on the wall outside and eat them, is that tea for me she says.

The door crashes open and the boy with the pierced eyebrow comes in and says those fucking kids I’m going to twat one of them soon. Everyone looks at him. Is this tea for me he says, and he sits down and pulls one of the mugs across the table towards him, and for a moment the tall girl’s head is pulled sideways as if by a string as she follows the sight of the spiralling steam. He puts a paper bag down in the middle of the table.

He says I just got hit in the back of the fucking head by their ball, I swear down it was deliberate, little shits, and as he says shits he slaps the

palm of one hand with the back of the other. He is talking loudly and quickly, he says they woke me up with water pistols through my window this morning, monkeys, I got them back though, I gave them a soaking, and then he stops and takes a breath and the others look at him and the quietness settles back into the room the way it does once a train has passed.

The boy with the white shirt remembers the bearded man throwing a glass of water in his face, he remembers the crisp and angry way he called him bastard, and he says what did you say what did you do?

The boy with the pierced eyebrow says I got them back, I emptied water over them from upstairs, and as he says it a moment of realisation passes gradually across the other boy’s face.

The boy with the pierced eyebrow says oh, I forgot, I bought some chocolate doughnuts.

Outside, balancing on the garden wall of number fifteen, the sister of the twins is talking to the daughter of the man with hurting hands, she says do you know what I can see angels, just like that, as if she was saying I had fishfingers for tea, and she takes the yellow ribbon from her hair and winds it around her finger like a yellow bandage. The younger girl looks up at her and says where? but it only comes out as a whisper.

The girl with the ribbon says well it depends, sometimes they come to my room and sit around my bed, they come in through my window if my mum leaves it open. They’re really small she says, and she begins to unwind the ribbon from her finger. What do they do asks the younger girl, and her voice is still faint and breathy, they shine says the older girl, like bright bright lights with faces she says, and sometimes they sing, like imams only with girls’ voices and the younger girl giggles, claps her small clean hand to her mouth and ducks her head and giggles.

And sometimes says the older girl, they fly around and around like this, and she whirls her ribbon through the air like a majorette, the tail of it spinning and twirling and drawing circle shapes around her head and the young girl giggles but the older girl is not smiling. Ssh she says, and she holds a finger to her lips, can you hear them now she says and the young girl looks up and around and her mouth falls open. Where? she says, where are they? and she looks all around her. They’re really hard to see says the older girl, they’re really small and anyway it’s probably too sunny they’re harder to see in the daytime.

She whisks her head round as if watching a passing car, she says there did you see, there was one, it was really fast, did you see, and the younger girl shakes her head.

The older girl keeps talking, she says I think it’s gone now, sometimes they stay still but they have to be careful because they can’t hardly touch the ground because if they do they die but they can only talk to you if they are touching the ground so what they do is they do this.

She holds out her arms, the ribbon trailing from one hand like a kite-tail, and she lifts up her left leg, leaning forward slightly and holding it out behind her, trying to rise up onto her toes, each wobble sending ripples down the yellow ribbon.

She says and then they’re safe because they’re not really touching the ground but they are enough to talk to you, and then she wobbles too far and falls back to earth. The younger girl is pulling a frowning face and she says what do they say?

Just things says the girl, winding her ribbon around her finger again, they tell me things about people, things they can see. They tell me what it’s like to be an angel she says, it sounds really nice she says I think I might be one one day.

She says and when they talk they only whisper in your ear to make sure no one can hear them and their mouths feel wet on your ears like warm icecream. She says they told me you mustn’t stand on the cracks or you’ll fall down and be stuck inside the ground forever.

She says do you know what if someone dies all the angels go to their house at night and shine over the roof, loads of them, and they get so bright that the birds start singing because they think it’s the daytime but they only stay for a little while, right in the middle of the night so that no one can see them they don’t like to be seen, they said I was lucky to see them.

The younger girl doesn’t say anything, she keeps looking around her, looking up and down the street, looking for lights hurtling up and down the concrete and touching the ground with only the tips of their toes.

She can see trees, and sky, and houses, and boys playing cricket.

Chapter 23

My mother is Scottish, my dad is not, and I’ve always assumed that this makes me half Scottish, but I don’t feel it.

I’ve got no trace of an accent, I’ve never eaten porridge, I’ve never trampled glumly through wet heather whilst my mother told me about her childhood.

My grandmother’s funeral was the only time I’ve ever been to Scotland, the only time I’ve caught sight of the wilder landscape and the broader sky.

I don’t remember my mother talking about these things, or suggesting that we go to these places, and I don’t remember her ever having an accent.

Occasionally, when she was very angry, I would hear echoes of it, a naughty that rhymed with dotty, a rolling of the R in girl, a growl over the K in put away your books, but mostly her voice was plain and carefully flavourless.

Her Scottishness, and the portion of it handed to me, was a secret, something to be concealed and denied, and I have never understood why this was.

I asked her once, and she pretended not to understand me.

She changed the subject, asked me if I had a boyfriend yet, and we had an argument and I forgot what I’d asked her.

She was clever, in that way.

And so I wonder if the mathematics of genealogy will make my child three-quarters Scottish, and I can’t see how that would make sense.

Tags: Jon McGregor Mystery
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