Earl Hart simply retrieved his chair, sat down again, and began to eat steamed jam pudding with custard. Globs of gloopy yellow clung to his stubbly chin as methodically he chewed and swallowed. And afterwards, he poured tea from his cup into a saucer and noisily slurped it down.
One of them must have lifted me onto the sofa, because I woke to the sound of Gardener’s World. Tears burned my eyes, the left one so swollen that the sight was temporarily lost. The salty taste of blood trickled down my throat, along with the sensation my head was enlarging on one side, the pressure causing a dull, sickly ache.
“You mustn’t speak to him when he gets like that, love,” said Grandma Hart when she tucked me up later. “It’s only when he’s been to t’ pub. He’s all right most o’ t’ time.”
How was it possible to survive this? When would Mum and Dad come back? How could they have left me here? How could they? Did they know what my grandad was like when he’d been to the pub?
Choking back the sobs, the pillow wet with tears, Lenka’s glittering world pulled me down once more, and willingly I dropped into it, longing for the story to resume. If this was madness, it was preferable to reality. And perhaps insanity would have won out had life continued like that with Earl and Maud, but have you ever noticed how something or someone turns up during the darkest of days? That even during the unhappiest of times, there is a chink of light – just enough to keep you going? Perhaps there is a God? That would depend on who orchestrates the whole, and what do we know?
For me, anyway, that someone was Nicky. She got me through.
Nicky Dixon was the girl who lived next door but one. The same age as me, she was walking up the street with a satchel slung over her shoulder when I first spied her. Her head was down, shoulders stooped.
I was kneeling on the storage chest in the hall, watching the kids walk home from school.
“She looks sad,” I said.
“The dark girl? The others call her names; I’ve heard them,” said Grandma Hart.
“Why?”
“Because she’s different, I suppose. You know what kids are like.”
“Yeah, but why? It’s mean.”
She stroked my hair, one of the few soft gestures she ever made. “I don’t rightly know, love. It’s just how it is wi’ kids. They can be ’orrible sometimes.”
As she spoke, Nicky Dixon looked up and saw me. I suppose she must have spotted the ghost girl in the landing window a few times and wondered who she was. I thought she’d glare angrily or hurry away… But she didn’t. The little girl with the ripped blazer and the cut lip raised her hand and waved. And, like a sunbeam striking with iridescence the spray above a waterfall, smiled.
That smile brought with it an explosion of complex emotion – feelings without words, a timeless moment.
We know each other.
I lifted my hand, and her smile widened to one of joy.
“Can I go out and say hello?”
“Aye, go on, then, but mind you don’t go further than Mrs Dixon’s. I want you back here at five sharp for tea! It’s oxtail tonight.”
Nicky stood waiting on the street corner. “Don’t you go to school, then?” she asked as I approached.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, it’s not for long.”
“I’m Nicky. Do you want to come and play at our house?”
“Yes, please. I’m Eva Hart.”
“Aye, I know. You’re the one that stabbed Maxine Street, aren’t you? They say you’re a Nazi and possessed by the devil.”
“I’m not a Nazi; I were born ’ere like you. Anyhow, what happened to you? Your lip’s bleeding.”
She swiped away the blood. “It happens all t’ time. You get used to it.”
“Well, you shouldn’t get used to it.”
“I’ll tell you what,” she said as we walked to her house. “If I say I’m with Earl Hart’s granddaughter, they won’t dare touch me.”
I wasn’t sure if it was a compliment to have a grandad known as the local hard case or to be thought of as possessed by the devil; all I knew was that I loved her instantly.
“What shall we play?”
Nicky had another go at licking her fingers and wiping away traces of blood before she opened the back door and we went inside her house. “Me mum’s gonna kill me with this ripped blazer.”
“It weren’t your fault.”
“Aye, I know, but you don’t know me mum.”
Her mother’s anger was all show, though. She had a laugh inside her that was always bursting to come out, even as she shrieked at the sight of another ruined school blazer. She’d had her back to us when we walked into the kitchen, busy cooking. The whole house was filled with the aroma of exotic spices, several pans bubbling on the hob with chicken and sauces and what looked like green bananas.
She caught me staring.
“Mum, this is my new friend. She’s the one that stabbed Maxine Street!”
Mrs Dixon threw back her head and laughed a great belly laugh. “Well, what an introduction. Are you staying for tea, love?”
God, how I wanted to. “What is it?”
Mrs Dixon laughed again. “Oh, so it all depends on what’s cooking, does it?” She looked me up and down. “Who’s your little friend, Nicky? She’s got no meat on ’er.”
“Eva. She’s Earl Hart’s granddaughter, the one that—”
“That’s enough talk, Nicky.” She bent down so her warm brown eyes were level with mine. “What’s your name, sweet thing?”
“Eva Hart.”
“And you don’t go to school, that right?”
I nodded. “I’ve been poorly.”
“Well, Eva, we’re having chicken and plantain in Cajun sauce. I’ll ask Maud if you can stay and eat with us. It’s nice for you two girls to have a friend each, Lord knows.”
Grandma Hart made a bit of a fuss. We watched the two women through Nicky’s bedroom window, their arms folded in the street, both still in aprons and slippers.
“Bet you she says yes, though,” said Nicky.
“She won’t. I’ll be forced to eat rats’ tails, you’ll see.”
“Rats’ tails?”
“Dark brown soup with rubbery bits in it.”
She screwed up her face for a minute, then the sunshine broke through the clouds and she, like her mother, threw back her head to laugh. “Oh, you mean oxtail soup?”
“Aye, that’s it.”
Turned out my gran did agree. I knew why, too – because I hadn’t eaten a thing save a couple of toast fingers with black treacle on them for nearly a week. Two-day-old kidneys were never going to go down my throat in a month of Sundays, and nor was warmed-up tapioca or sliced tongue. The sound of their eating had become increasingly disgusting with every meal. From the never-ending tinkle of tea stirring, the monotonous ticking of the clock, and the succession of slurps and gulps and swallows, it was going to send me stark staring mad. One day I’d run round the room smashing everything in sight, and then it would be the funny farm for sure – from where there was no release. Everyone knew that. The doctors wore white coats and stuck a needle in you, and that was you done.
Instead, Nicky saved my sanity. And Mrs Dixon put meat on my noodle bones.
It was so different at their house – with constant music and chitchat – and the food was a delight. That first evening, it was white chicken breast pieces in a spicy tomato sauce. We had the strange banana thing, and then Mrs Dixon put records on. Up to then I’d only heard what was on the radio at Mum and Dad’s – The Carpenters, Gilbert O’Sullivan, Cat Stevens – and Grandad Hart only played military band music. But after tea at Nicky’s, her mother got up and danced. She was a big woman, but her hips swivelled, and the beat was infectious. Initially I sat there, flummoxed and red-faced, stomach swollen with chicken and rice and bananas… but then, well, once you’ve discovered Tamla Motown, ‘Needle in a Haystack’, ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’, ‘Can I Get a Witness’, and the rest, you find what Lenka called Lebensfreude – the joy of life. And I never wanted to go back to my grandparents’ house ever again. If only it were possible to just move in and stay with the Dixons forever.