I know wizards, real wizards, who do real magic, and they’ve been teaching me to recognise magic when it happens in front of me. They call the sensations vestigia because they’re old-fashioned and put Latin on everything. You have to know what you’re looking for if you want to spot it.
So behind the lip smacking and coughing and growling, I can sense that off meat smell that tinned cat food has. Sense because it’s not a real smell, it’s just something that manifests itself in your mind as a smell.
The first cat arrives quickly, a battered black and white tom with a missing ear. It slinks up to the old lady and starts stroking itself against her foot. She ignores it and carries on making her noises. Two more cats arrive from different directions, a ginger and a tortoiseshell, then a fluffy white thing that looks far too clean to be sleeping rough. Then a tiger-striped moggie, followed by a very small Siamese which is limping on its left front leg.
The Cat Lady reaches into her shopping trolley and brings out a stack of plastic food containers and rips the tops off. I get a real whiff of cat food this time and wonder if I was wrong about the vestigia. That’s the problem with magic, it takes practice to separate it from the everyday noise inside your head.
And my head can get pretty noisy sometimes.
The cats are falling upon the food, as they do, and the Cat Lady reaches out and grabs the big tom by the scruff of its neck and lifts it in front of her face. She peers at it, turning it this way and that, still making her weird noises.
The cat hangs limply and – although I can’t really see from where I am and, of course, it’s a cat – it looks bored. As if it’s willing to hang a bit for some free food.
The Cat Lady puts the tom down, which cuffs one of its fellow felines out of the way and claims a food container to itself. The Cat Lady reaches down and picks up the tortoiseshell one. This one is hissing and clawing – I see a scratch appear on the sleeve of the lady’s coat and another, red and glistening, on her hand. She doesn’t flinch but keeps peering short-sightedly at the cat squirming in her grasp.
Then she is putting down the tortoiseshell and picking up the next cat – the Siamese with the limp. This one is different because the Cat Lady is reaching out with her other hand to touch the injured leg. The cat mewls and twists as she grasps its paw and manipulates it like my dad buying mangoes in Ridley Road.
The Cat Lady is nodding to herself and smacking her lips as she drops the little Siamese into the open neck of her shopping trolley.
I’m tensing because I don’t like the look of this. I’m not in love with cats but I don’t hold with unnecessary animal cruelty. One part of me is thinking that she’s an old lady and it wouldn’t be hard to liberate the cat, but another part of me, the part that knows magic is real, is thinking that some olds aren’t really what they look like. You don’t want to start a beef with something until you know what it is – that’s just common sense, isn’t it?
So I hold off and a few minutes later the old lady opens the cardboard box on the bench beside her and pulls out a scruffy black and white cat with a bandage around its hind leg. She holds it up by the scruff and checks the leg – which gets her a grumpy look and a whine. She gently places it in amongst its fellow cats who, still nomming up the cat food, pay it no attention.
‘She feeds them,’ says Simon as we walk back down the viaduct path. We’re not jogging but that’s probably only because there was an ice cream van at Whitestone Pond and we each got a 99. ‘And she takes the sick ones to cat hospital.’
Simon says he’s been watching the Cat Lady all summer but hasn’t told anybody until he told me.
‘Mum says that feeding stray cats should be against the law,’ says Simon.
‘Only if it constitutes a public nuisance,’ I say, which I don’t know if that’s actually true but for some reason I want to sound clever in front of Simon.
‘Should we tell the police?’ he asks.
‘Nah,’ I say. ‘Feds got better things to do.’
4
Feds at the Gate
And, speak of the devil, there’s Feds waiting for us at the Parliament Hill Road gate, although actually they don’t know they’re waiting for us and we ain’t about to tell them. There’s two of them, a man and a woman, both white, both sweaty and red-faced in their uniforms. I don’t want to be unfair, but the man really wanted to let his stab vest out a bit around the middle because he didn’t look comfortable at all. They’re both wearing the same professionally friendly smiles that Feds have when they do school visits.
The female Fed is writing something on a clipboard but the male Fed is tracking us like he was a radar.
‘Hello,’ he says, and waves at us.
I try to keep walking but the man strides over to stand in our way.
‘I wonder if I might ask you a few questions,’ he says.
‘Are we in trouble?’ asks Simon.
‘No, not at all,’ says the female Fed as she joins us. ‘We just want to ask you a few questions.’
‘What about?’ I ask, and both the Feds narrow their eyes at me.
‘Have you heard about the missing girls?’ asks the male Fed.
‘The ones in the village?’ asks Simon.
The Feds are looking puzzled, so I help them out because I’m public-spirited that way.
‘Rushpool,’ I say.
Which is where Peter is, and not here running interference for me like he should be.
‘Local girls,’ says the male Fed, and me and Simon solemnly shake our heads even though I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Confirmed when the female Fed flips some pages on her clipboard and shows me a picture of Natali.
I shake my head again and she flips the page to show another white girl, about my age, with blonde hair and a pointy nose and chin.
‘Jessica,’ says Simon.
The female Fed is all interest now.
‘Do you know her?’ she asks.
Simon says nothing, but tilts his head to the side as if thinking about it.
The male Fed opens his mouth to speak, but Simon says, ‘No, not really.’
But that never works with the Feds, which is why I said nothing. If you admit to anything they’ve always got more questions like, ‘When did you last see her?’ Which is what they ask him.
‘Yesterday,’ says Simon, and that leads to where and when, and what were you doing, and are you sure that was the last time you saw her, and was she your girlfriend? That last question makes Simon blush so hard he goes bright pink – I’ve never seen a real person go that colour before.
The Feds are not happy with his answers which consist of, ‘here’, ‘yesterday’, ‘playing’, and ‘definitely because I went home for tea’ and ‘No!’ But this is a canvass, what they call door-to-door, and they can’t get intense with kids without making it formal and that means getting an appropriate adult. They ask our names and addresses – they always ask for them.
I give him the surname of a different Abigail that I know is my age, goes to La Sainte Union and lives off Chetwynd Road. The female Fed nods and writes it down on her clipboard. Simon says his surname is Fletcher and gives an address in Belsize Park. Then, because Simon doesn’t seem to be planning to leave, I grab his hand and lead him away down Parliament Hill.
‘Is that really your surname?’ asks Simon as we leave the Feds behind.
I tell him it isn’t and he wants to know why I lied.
I explain about how when they get back to the cop shop the Feds are going to enter our names and our statements into a big computer program called HOLMES 2, where we will become nominals and stay there forever or until the case is closed. It’s a magical thing, I tell him, but once the Feds have your name they start to attach random facts to it and those facts link up and the next thing you know, nice Mr Fed is knocking on your door and asking to see your mother because of someth
ing that happened ages ago and in any case the car was barely damaged at all and you shouldn’t be driving a 4 × 4 around in central London anyway.
I leave out the bit about the Toyota Land Cruiser with the potentially child-killing bull bars and just how a wasps’ nest managed to establish itself in the boot. And it wasn’t like it was my idea in the first place – a ghost told me to do it.
We only go ten metres down the road when Simon pulls me into a gap between two houses which turns out to be an alleyway. He’s very strong and I’m not sure I could break his grip – I’m seriously considering drastic measures when we emerge onto another road and he lets go of my arm.
‘Would you like to come home for tea?’ asks Simon.
‘Where do you live?’
He points to a big semi-detached house further up the road. Belsize Park, where he told the Feds he lived, is way to the south.
‘You lied to the Feds,’ I say.
He shrugs but says nothing, just stands there and waits for me to answer the question.
‘Yeah all right,’ I say. ‘Tea.’
He smiles and he’s got this peng2 smile which lights up his whole face and shows perfect white teeth. You can’t fight a smile like that. You can only hope that its owner has sworn an oath to only use it for good.
2 According to my great-niece – ‘Handsome, good-looking, you know – attractive!’
5
Ginger Beer
Simon stops me before we reach his house.
‘Wait two minutes and ring,’ he says, and takes off around the side of the house where there’s a side passage to the garden, blocked with a green wooden door. Simon trots to the door and, without breaking stride, jumps up, pulls himself up and over.
Since I’m waiting I check out the house, which is five storeys if you count the basement and the attic conversion. It’s built out of tan brick with what Peter calls orthogonal bay windows on the bottom two floors. Looks Victorian to me but I’ve been wrong before.
I’ve gone to birthday parties in houses like this, where everything inside is either expensive or old and the mothers stand around with fake smiles ’cause they’re scared you’re going to steal the furniture or something.
And they always skimp on the take-home cake, too. Which is just wrong. You should always have more cake than you’ll think you need. Last time I had a birthday party, half the cake was left over and we ended up feeding it to the old dears that live on the estate.
Because my mum has to stay at home with Paul all day she knows all the old dears, and their care workers, by name. They liked the cake, which Dad bought in the big Sainsbury’s down Camden.
I check my fake Swatch and see that it’s been two minutes and I walk up the steep steps to the front door. It’s got a brass knocker and posh-looking doorbell – which I push. It rings. A little bit later I can hear shuffling from behind the door, then a grunt and then it opens.
A grown-up is standing in front of me, a Filipino woman in a blue polyester dustcoat who’s so short that she can only stare down her nose at me because the top step I’m standing on is lower than the level of the ground floor.
‘Yes?’ she says.
I ask if Simon is in.
‘Simon?’ she says and frowns.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Simon.’
‘Oh, Simon,’ she says, and suddenly she smiles. ‘You’d better come in.’
She turns and walks to the bottom of the stairs and shouts Simon’s name.
‘There is a girl here to see you!’ she calls.
She has left the door open so I cautiously step inside. The interior is what I expected, wood flooring, an antique coat-and-boot stand, walls painted light brown and with pictures nailed to it at carefully spaced intervals.
The woman calls Simon again and I leave the door open behind me – just in case.
There is a rapid thumping from above – someone is running down the stairs.
‘Coming!’ yells Simon.
He arrives – running down the final flight and jumping the last five steps to land in front of the woman. He turns to me and flashes the peng smile again.
‘Hello, Abigail,’ he says, and turns the smile on the woman. ‘This is Abigail – she’s come for tea.’ Then to me. ‘This is Angelica who does.’
The words ‘Does what?’ come out of my mouth before I can stop them.
‘Housekeeper,’ says Angelica.
There is a big kitchen at the back with expensive granite counters and cupboards that aren’t made from laminated chipboard. From a huge American fridge Angelica, after asking if I have any allergies, doles out a bottle of ginger beer and a plate of sandwiches with cling film stretched across the top. From a pair of biscuit tins come one pile of custard creams and another of chocolate Bourbons. I get to carry the bottle and the glasses while Simon is entrusted with the plates. He takes them with a solemn expression and leads me up the stairs.
Simon’s room is all the way at the top of the house, and is basically the whole attic conversion with stairs that come up through the floor. I freeze when I get to the top because I can’t believe how much stuff he has. Beside the cupboard and the wardrobe, there are shelves of books and board games and piles of boxes and toys in the corners or leaning precariously against the walls. He has an elevated bed with a desk and computer tucked underneath, with a separate shelf for all his schoolbooks. He has so much stuff that if you moved it to my room you wouldn’t be able to get in the door.
Simon carefully puts his tray on the red lid of a storage box. Through the box’s translucent sides I can see it is filled to the brim with Lego. He crosses over and opens the front-facing windows. I notice that the rear-facing window is already open. I put my tray down next to his and walk over to look out.
The back garden isn’t all that, rectangular lawn and flower beds looking small from this height. It’s dominated by a big tree whose branches reach all the way to the attic. But beyond the garden is the green swell of Kite Hill – Simon has the whole of the Heath as his back garden.
We have a balcony at home but mostly we use that to store stuff.
I get a strange feeling like I want to bite something, but I don’t know what I should bite, so I shake it off and think instead about the way Simon made me wait before ringing the bell. I look down the length of the tree and see where a rope ladder leads up into the lower branches. From there you could climb up the branches until you were level with the window and . . .
I see a scuff mark on the tiles just to the right of the open window. It’s only a metre jump from the nearest branch to the roof, but there’s nothing to catch you if you fall. I look back at Simon, who is sitting cross-legged beside the Lego box and pouring himself a glass of ginger beer.
‘Did you climb in through the window?’ I ask.
Simon nods and slurps his ginger beer.
I wait for more but he just takes another slurp.
‘Why?’
‘I’m not supposed to go out on my own,’ he says.
‘But you do anyway?’
He nods again.
I look out at the gap between the roof and the branch and the ten-metre drop to multiple injuries – if you’re lucky. The only way I’d make that jump was if the house was on fire.
‘Every day?’
He shrugs and slurps.
‘I wanted to meet Jessica,’ he says.
I sit down opposite him, open my backpack and take out my notebook.
‘What’s that?’ he asks.
‘I like to write things down.’
‘Why?
‘So I don’t forget them,’ I say, and he nods as if this makes total sense to him.
I drink some ginger beer, find my place in my notes and ask if Simon sneaked out to see Jessica today. He says he did and when I ask him when he’d last seen Jessica he says yest
erday, so I ask him how.
‘She rang the doorbell,’ he says, and tells me that Jessica, a girl he’d met once in the playground when he was young, said she was looking for people to come to a happening on the Heath.
6
Simon’s Mum
We are playing Risk on a board so old that it has wooden pieces and the box it comes in is held together with sellotape. It’s the fourth board game we’ve played, not counting Mouse Trap, which really isn’t a game but more an excuse to build that mousetrap and the only one Simon has come close to beating me at. He can read providing he sounds out the words and he can do maths on paper and fingers – but he does everything slowly. I’ve checked out his bookshelves where there are rows of books like Seraphina and Harry Potter and Huckleberry Finn, none of which, judging by the spines, have even been opened. I guessed the books he actually reads are the ones scattered around his bed and on the windowsills. Those were Roald Dahls, How to Train Your Dragon and every single Diary of a Wimpy Kid ever written – all with cracked spines, drink stains and folded-over pages. Obviously he likes to read – he just isn’t very good at it.
On his desk are the same GCSE Latin textbooks that I use. Mine are second-hand but his are as clean and as untouched as the copy of Oliver Twist that sits next to them or the neat pad of lined A4 next to that.
He’s good at Risk, though, and he knows about the Australia gambit even if it doesn’t work that well. We need a couple of other players so we can gang up on them.
So we’re playing Risk when Simon’s mum comes home, stomps up the stairs and gives me the eye. She’s wearing an expensive black pinstripe skirt suit, the jacket undone to reveal a blue collarless blouse. There is a thin gold chain around her neck and a matching slimline watch on her left wrist. The suit is slightly rumpled and she is breathing hard and sweating from running up the stairs.
‘Hello,’ she says. ‘Who are you?’
Simon leaps up and hugs his mum and she’s hugging back while still giving me the eye because she’s wondering, Who’s this strange black girl and what’s she doing in my son’s room?
What Abigail Did That Summer Page 2