“I told you that this McKenzie would only bring trouble,” TillyTilly had said finally, before emptying the room of herself, the candles, and, last of all, the tall, inexplicably reproving board.
“Jess, do you know what happened to my tea lights?” her mother asked, now, at the breakfast table.
Jess shook her head and eyed her father as he rose and wandered out of the kitchen. He looked at TillyTilly, who had come back again, as she sat waiting on the staircase. He looked straight at her, as if he saw her but didn’t fully register what he saw, and Jess saw TillyTilly shrink up small against the wall as if something in his gaze frightened her. But neither Jess’s father nor TillyTilly said anything, and after that split-second pause, Daniel padded into the sitting room.
“It’s really quite strange because I had three packs of them: all gone.” Her mother seemed about to continue, but was interrupted by the trilling of the telephone, which she rose to answer. After a second, “Jess, the bell tolls for thee,” she announced from the hallway, beckoning Jess.
It was Siobhan, who was reminding her that she was coming over at five to spend the night.
“Oi,” Shivs said, lowering her voice to a static crackle, “my dad doesn’t really want me to come. He thinks. . I dunno.”
(I don’t want you to come either, Shivs, but I do, but I don’t.)
Jess had no time to force her voice over the drowning of her heart, because Shivs quickly filled in. “But then my mum told him not to worry, and that you’re this really nice girl and properly brought up, and you’re really good for me because you’re all intelligent and stuff. So I’m still coming!”
“Oh,” Jess managed to say.
“I dunno. I just thought I’d tell you. Um.” The turn of Shivs’s voice was tinted with remorse. “All right, see you then, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Jess croaked, ignoring TillyTilly, who was stretched out over the ceiling like a grinning sheet.
Shivs shouted “BYE!” at the top of her voice and swiftly hung up.
Perturbed, Jess went and sat back down in the kitchen while her mum washed up and muttered aloud a brief list of things that needed to be fetched. She supposed that she shouldn’t be surprised that TillyTilly knew how to use the phone: she knew how to do everything.
“I want to go to Nigeria for my birthday,” she announced to her mother, who cheered her decision. It didn’t matter if her grandfather did know the truth about what had happened to her father — though he hadn’t mentioned her “thief friend” again — Jess had a feeling that he would also know how to make TillyTilly stop.
“We might have to leave your father behind in England, though,” her mother told her.
“Want me to tell a ghost story?” Shivs said in a loud whisper, turning her torchlight into Jess’s face.
Jess blinked furiously and only just managed not to fall out of the bed. It was a slightly uncomfortable squeeze with both of them on the single bed under two sets of covers, but she’d ignored the blow-up mattress that her mum had set up on the floor and insisted that they both sleep on her bed. She’d also reopened the bedroom door after Shivs had kicked it shut in her customary way, because she wasn’t taking any risks whatsoever.
“No. . no ghost stories,” Jess told her, trying not to sneeze as a strand of Siobhan’s hair encountered her cheek.
Shivs twisted restlessly around for a little while, then scratched her head.
“Why can’t I sleep on the floor, anyway? You got mice or something?”
“Ewwww, no. I just. . don’t want you to pull my leg or anything in the night. I get scared.”
“Awww, I won’t, though! Let me sleep on the floor, please please please! I need room! I put my arms out and everything— I’d make you fall out!”
“No!”
“Awwww but I’m sleepy, Jess,” Shivs complained. “And you won’t even let me tell a ghost story to keep myself awake.”
“If you complain any more,” Jess said quietly, in a spooky voice, “I’m going to make you go downstairs and eat some more of those spicy prawns — I know there’s some left. .”
“Aargh,” Shivs said, “shabby.” She hadn’t liked the spicy prawns at all, and Jess giggled aloud just thinking about Shivs’s pop-eyed expression when she’d shovelled a forkful of prawns, mushrooms and rice in her mouth in defiance of Sarah’s warning to “go slowly.”
“Hah, you can’t take your pepper,” Jess’s mum had said, shaking her head while Shivs jogged silently around the room gasping for air until she was taken upstairs to brush her teeth and tongue with Aquafresh. She’d had to have a burger and chips instead.
Shivs stopped wriggling and turned over so that her face was jammed into the pillow.
“G’night, then,” she murmured. “S’not my fault if you end up on the floor.”
Jess sat up a little bit and watched, grinning, as Shivs snuggled down farther, slipping her thumb into her mouth. It was OK, it would be OK. She only had to make sure that she watched Shivs all night. She couldn’t sleep at all, she wouldn’t sleep, she would fight TillyTilly to the last about this—
But, of course, she did eventually fall asleep, with her arm flung protectively over Siobhan’s shoulder.
“Pssst! Wake up, Siobhan!”
Jess was calling her, she had to get up, and she had to go somewhere, didn’t she? Yes, and quietly. Or was that the dream? Siobhan stretched, cracked her eyes open and peered about her. Jess was nowhere to be seen; she had been calling from outside the room, but now she had gone.
“Siobhan, wake up!”
“Uhhhh—” Shivs wondered who had groaned, then realised that it was her. It was cold, her hands were cold; she didn’t want to get out of bed, she wanted to go back to sleep, but she was worried about Jess, who wanted her to go somewhere. She half climbed, half fell out of bed, not feeling the roughness of the rug under her bare, numbed feet, and stumbled out of the bedroom door. There were no lights on anywhere, and her squinted eyes were taking an incredibly long time to become accustomed to the darkness.
“Jess?” she called softly, then waited. From somewhere downstairs, Jess giggled. Were they playing hide-and-seek? Shivs blinked and shook her head, feeling more wide awake. She started down the stairs, deciding not to call out any longer. Two could be cunning. Hesitating halfway down, she peered into the dark and tried to decide whether Jess would be in the sitting room or the kitchen. The sitting room — she would be hiding behind a chair. Putting a hand over her mouth so that she didn’t laugh aloud, she began to tiptoe into the sitting room. Shivs was a little bit frightened in there, almost not quite daring to crawl around the sofa to find Jess. Jess wasn’t there; the room was dark and felt like an open mouth — some sort of mist was moving through it, a pervading warmth, and the carpet seemed to ripple slightly under Shivs’s feet, like a tongue.
All right, so now she was being silly, she told herself.
Her eyes had still not adjusted, and the shoulder of her loose nightie was slipping down her arm. Nervously, she tugged it up again.
“Shivs—” It was Jess again, and her voice was louder and more urgent. Now it sounded as if it was coming from upstairs.
How would she have done that, got upstairs again already?
Backing out of the sitting room, Shivs looked up the stairs to see Jess standing at the top, framed by a faintly incandescent brightness against the pitch black. It was strange, the way she looked, her features sharp and beautiful, as if there were a lantern burning under her skin. But she wasn’t holding anything — no torch, no candle, nothing. This was a dream, it must be.