Joanne beamed again and climbed up onto Jake’s bed. He moved his legs to make room for her, and she sat happily in the warm space he made.
“Fiss!” she yelped suddenly, spotting the aquarium. “Oh! Fiss!” She opened her hand into a star and flapped it in the direction of the fish. Then she looked at her other hand, in a fist, and opened it too.
It wasn’t just the fish tank. Jake’s room was full of fish. Posters of freshwater and sea fish of Ireland. Posters of fish of the world. And one whole wall was covered in drawings and paintings that Jake had done of fish, practicing for when he grew up. He didn’t think they were much good, but everyone has to start somewhere was his attitude.
“One fiss, two fiss, wed fiss, boo fiss,” Joanne chanted happily, and flapped her starry little hand again at the fish. Then she flapped the other one. Then she flapped them both together.
“She’s … she’s…” said Jake.
“Yeah,” said Stella. “She is, isn’t she?”
CHAPTER
23
Daisy was sleeping through the night. At least, that’s what Jake’s mother said. That meant she went to bed at two o’clock in the morning and didn’t wake until six.
Big deal, thought Jake. But he kept his mouth shut.
“She belongs to both of you,” he said one day, watching how his mum and dad looked adoringly at the baby. “You’re the perfect little family, aren’t you?”
His dad looked at his mum, and his mum looked at his dad, and nobody said anything. The silence was like a wall behind which Jake had trapped himself.
After a while, his mother said, “She belongs to you too, Jake, and you belong to us. We all belong together.”
Corny, or what? Anyway, that wasn’t what he had meant.
He went out and phoned Finn and arranged to meet him in the park for football. He wasn’t going to bed that afternoon, he’d decided. And just let his mother try making him.
He wasn’t sick, and he wasn’t a hero. He was going back to being just Jake, right now.
CHAPTER
24
“My dad’s not really my father,” Jake announced to Stella. His heart was flipping madly against the inside of his chest. He’d never told a soul before. It was like a secret that he’d carried around all his life, and took out sometimes when he was alone to examine and have a think about.
They were sitting on the garden wall, picking cherries off the old cherry tree in Stella’s back garden and putting them in an enamel bowl.
Stella’s mother was going to make a tart. Someone had given her a cherry stoner for Christmas and she wanted to see if it worked, and you could only justify stoning cherries, she said, if you were going to put them in a tart. So she was. Jake thought this was a funny reason to make a tart. A better reason was that there were so many cherries.
“Hmm?” said Stella. She put a really dark-red cherry to her mouth and bit into it. “Mmm,” she said. “Delicious.” Juice dribbled down the side of her mouth when she spoke. She looked like a vampire, very pale, with blood dripping down her chin.
“So?” Jake asked anxiously.
“I’m just thinking about it, Jake,” Stella said. “It’s…”—she swallowed—“interesting.”
“I mean, he is my dad of course; I’ve always called him that. But not my father. My real father disappeared years ago. I never knew him. He just left. My mother says he didn’t like babies. That was me, the baby, only there was only one of me, of course, but one was one too many. It was nothing personal, my mum says. Just babies in general drove him mad.”
“Oh, I see. OK.”
Stella spat out the cherry stone and bit into another cherry. Jake stared at her, willing her to say something more.
“That explains why you don’t look remotely like him, I suppose, your dad,” she said eventually, sticking her tongue out as far as it would go to lick up the juice from around her mouth. “Not that I ever thought about it before, but now you mention it, you don’t. Look like him, I mean.”
Jake’s heart wasn’t flipping so wildly now, but it was still going faster than usual. It seemed to fill his chest cavity.
“Well, of course I don’t. I’ve just told you. He’s not my father.”
“Of course you don’t,” Stella repeated dutifully. “How could you? Unless it’s like dogs and their owners. But it’s not, is it?”
“So that’s it, then?” Jake said. “That’s all you’ve got to say?” He didn’t know what he’d expected, but he’d thought there’d be more of a reaction than this.
Stella spat out the second cherry stone.
She squinched up her face, in that way she had, and said nothing for a moment. Jake guessed she was thinking.
“Well,” she said at last, “I suppose you get to have two fathers, so.”
That had never occurred to Jake before. Two fathers. One more than most people. Two more than some people.
Was this necessarily a good thing?
“I suppose,” he said.
“Good for you,” said Stella, and put another cherry in her mouth.
Well …
OK then. Good for him.
Yeah.
“And how old were you, you know, when your new dad came along?”
“Oh, I was only a baby. I don’t know. Six months?”
“Well then,” said Stella.
“Well then, what?”
“Well then, that hardly counts, does it?”
“What?”
“I mean, he might as well be your father, mightn’t he, if he’s been there all along, you know? So it hardly counts, does it, that he isn’t?”
Jake sighed. She didn’t get it.
He gave up trying to explain himself and bit into a cherry.
CHAPTER
25
Shuffle, stomp.
Shuffle, stomp.
It was an unmistakable sound.
“Here comes the walrus,” sang Stella softly. She indicated with her head toward the next-door garden.
Jake laughed, and turned around gingerly. He had the bowl of cherries on his lap and he didn’t want to topple them.
“Hello, Mrs. Kennedy!” he called over his shoulder.
Shuffle, stomp.
“It’s Mrs. Peacock,” Stella muttered, standing up on the wall. “Remember, she murders daisies.”
“No, she doesn’t. She’s only the daisy murderer’s mother. Don’t be mean about her. I think she’s cool.”
“Ah, Jake!” said the old lady with arthritis, looking up through the cherry foliage. “How do you know my name?”
“Worked it out. Maybe I’ll be a detective when I grow up.”
“Instead of a fish painter?”
“Well, if times get bad and I can’t sell my paintings. Thanks for the card.”
She smiled. “Ah, you worked that out too, did you?”
“Couldn’t be anyone else,” he said.
“Is what’s-her-name there?”
“Stella?”
“I’m here!” Stella called. She was actually in the cherry tree now, with one foot on each of two boughs, reaching out for the very darkest, juiciest cherries, from the topmost branches.
“Well, will you come in for some tea, the pair of you?” Mrs. Kennedy asked.
“We will,” said Stella’s voice from up in the tree. “We’ll be in in five minutes. Will we come over the wall?”
“No, ring the doorbell. There’s nobody here, only me. They’re all away on holidays, I’m minding the house. It’ll take me five minutes to get to the door anyway, so there’s no rush. And check with your mother first, Stella. I don’t want to be accused of stealing you.”
“We’re not worth stealing,” Stella called as she climbed down the cherry tree. “But I’ll tell Mum we’re dropping in to you. See you in five!”
“Make it fifteen, actually,” said Mrs. Kennedy. “I have to get things ready, and I’m slow.”
CHAPTER
26
“I love your dancing
pumps, Stella,” was the first thing Mrs. Kennedy said when she opened the door.
Stella grinned and did her pointy thing with her foot in the air. There were pink satin ribbons that went halfway up to her knees and tied in a bow at the side.
“But I hope you weren’t climbing trees in them, you’ll ruin them.” She seemed to worry a lot about things getting ruined.
“No,” said Stella. “I changed into them. Specially.”
“Well, I’m flattered, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Kennedy. She didn’t mention the cherry juice on Stella’s white T-shirt, which she hadn’t bothered to change.
“We brought you some cherries,” said Jake, offering her a small bowl.
“Ah, what life is not a bowl of,” said Mrs. Kennedy. “Thank you.”
“Excuse me?” said Jake.
“Life is not a bowl of cherries, Jake,” said Mrs. Kennedy gravely.
“Oh, I see,” said Jake. “I knew that, actually.”
“Will you carry them for me, Jake? I can’t manage my stick and a bowl of cherries. Come in, come in, children.”
The house was unbelievably tidy and clean and beautiful and very, very still. It reminded Jake of a painting, only you couldn’t be actually in a painting. There were carpets on the floor—not just one carpet, like in a normal house, but lots of rugs, some of them overlapping, and even Mrs. Kennedy’s characteristic shuffle-stomping was muffled.
A huge portrait of a very beautiful young girl in an old-fashioned dress and carrying a candle in a candlestick hung on the landing, and looked right down the stairs at everyone who came in the front door. She stared rather sadly at them as they shuffled, stomped, wriggled and jiggled through the hall and into the drawing room.
That’s what Mrs. Kennedy called it, but there were no drawing things in there, only more overlapping red rugs with flowers and designs on them, low, cream-colored sofas and chairs, with large red tasseled cushions flung and heaped in the corners. The air felt thick, warm, and there was a smell of roses. Jake looked around for a vase of roses, but there weren’t any that he could see, though there was an embroidered vase of deep-red roses on a funny sort of framed picture that stood in front of the fireplace. It had feet, so it could stand on the hearth and didn’t need to be hung or propped up. There was a long stool in front of the fireplace, covered in a deep-red fabric. At least three people could sit on it, side by side. It was nearly as big as a sofa, only without a back. Best of all, the walls were lined with pictures. Paintings, drawings, watercolors, portraits, landscapes, coloredy blobs—all sorts of things. They weren’t just in rows, they completely covered the walls.
Stella looked around her, awestruck.
“I can’t believe this house is next door to ours,” she said. “You should see our living room, Mrs. Kennedy. There’s no carpet, because you can’t tricycle on carpet; we took it up long ago, and my dad made the mistake of painting the floor a sort of apple green—it’s pretty revolting. There’s hardly any furniture either.”
“That’d be because of the tricycling too, I suppose,” said Mrs. Kennedy.
“Partly,” said Stella, “but I think it just got broken, bit by bit, and got thrown out. We have a very large, square coffee table, and a lot of beanbags. We sit on the coffee table if we don’t want to sit in the beanbags, though we’re not supposed to.”
“I don’t think I’ll come to tea if you invite me back,” said Mrs. Kennedy. “I couldn’t sit in a beanbag—or even on a coffee table. And what about you, Jake?”
“Oh, I can sit on a coffee table,” said Jake. He’d just located the source of the rose smell. It was a large blue-and-white bowl, big enough to bathe a baby in, half-filled with dried rose petals.
“No, I mean, what’s your house like?”
“Ordinary,” said Jake. “It has, you know, furniture. It’s not as bad as Stella’s, but it’s not as good as this.”
“Ah, the golden mean,” said Mrs. Kennedy, nodding.
“Are the pictures yours?” Jake asked.
“Most of them,” she said.
“And they let you hang them up?” said Stella.
“They’re lucky to have them,” said Mrs. Kennedy with a sniff. “I used to live in my own apartment, but my son thinks I can’t look after myself, so he moved me in here—and then he went off on his holidays! I like it here, I’m not complaining, but I’m not used to stairs. I have a terrible job remembering to bring everything down in the mornings, so I won’t have to go back up again later in the day, but I always forget, so I do have to go back up. Which reminds me, Jake. Would you run up and get my handbag for me? It’s on the chair in the back bedroom. It has my artificial sweetener in it, and I can’t take tea without it.”
“Could you not just take sugar?” asked Stella.
“Not allowed,” said Mrs. Kennedy. “Diabetic.”
“Oh!” said Stella. “I thought you were just slimming.”
Mrs. Kennedy laughed. “Old people have different problems from the young,” she said.
Jake took the stairs two by two. The beautiful young girl watched him all the way, and he watched her. The stair wall was covered in paintings as well, but he didn’t stop to examine them. He was too interested in the girl with the candlestick.
“I know someone with diabetes and she’s only seven,” Stella was saying when he returned with the handbag.
“Different kind,” said Mrs. Kennedy.
Women! Jake thought. Always discussing illnesses.
“Now, I did ask you to tea, but you’ll have to make it yourselves. I need to just sit here for a little while and recover. The kettle’s boiled, the tray’s set, it’s all in the kitchen. And the tea is in a caddy by the tray. Indian, I take it?”
“What?” asked Jake.
“Indian tea,” said Mrs. Kennedy. “I imagine that’s what you like. Children don’t seem to like China.”
“I’ve got nothing against China,” said Jake, puzzled. “But I’m sure whatever tea you have is fine.”
“And there’s cake, of course,” said Mrs Kennedy. “Two kinds. Battenberg and porter.”
Jake shrugged. Stella was yanking her head furiously at him, encouraging him to come on—she was obviously dying to see the kitchen.
“Battenberg and porter,” giggled Stella as they went down the hall to the kitchen. “It sounds like the army or something. The captain and his manservant. ‘Bring me my gaiters, Porter!’ Would you think she was in the army? Gaiters is a nice word, I think, but it’s not beautiful enough for the wall of honor.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Jake. “There were no women in the army in her day.”
“Were there not? How do you know?”
“I know a lot, I keep telling you. I read stuff.”
“Look at this!” said Stella excitedly, pointing at an extraordinary wooden construction, heavily carved. “It’s Indian. Where the tea comes from, though I’d say that’s a coincidence. There’s one for sale in the Oxfam shop, but it costs a fortune. It’s the only thing in the whole Oxfam shop that costs a fortune. Isn’t it beautiful? There’s a pearly bit here, look.”
“Mother-of-pearl,” Jake said.
“Is that a swear word?” asked Stella.
“No, it’s what you call that pearly bit. It’s the lining of oyster shells.”
Jake looked behind the screen, which stood in front of the space under the stairs. Behind it were coats and umbrellas and the kinds of things you expect to find under the stairs, but they were obviously a bit too untidy for the Kennedys so they’d put this wooden screen up to conceal them.
“Come on,” he said. “She’ll be wondering what’s keeping us.”
He opened the door into the kitchen, and an extraordinary smell hit his nostrils. Fruit and spices and toffee and butter and olives and sugar and wine and marzipan and lemon and tea.
He breathed in. “Smells glorious,” he said to Stella, who was behind him. She rested her chin on his shoulder and took a deep breath of the kitchen aroma.
“Oh!” she said. “Maple syrup, roses, mmm, apples.” She sniffed again. “Rum, cinnamon, raisins, nutmeg. Our kitchen always smells of onions and raw meat.”
Jake didn’t say anything to that, because it was roughly true. Though sometimes it smelled of worse things.
Even in the kitchen there was a rug, but only one, in the center of the flagged floor. A huge scrubbed table stood on the rug, and the chairs around it had deep seats that seemed to be upholstered in a sort of carpet, with thick brass studs. There were pictures here too, in frames, but they were all drawings and cartoons.
“It’s King Arthur’s kitchen,” said Stella, pointing at a big deer’s head looming out of the wall, as if the deer had stuck his great antlered head in for a look.
“His table was round,” said Jake.
“Oh, that was just his business table. His kitchen table was probably rectangular. Though it might be the table of the High King of Ireland at … where was it?”
“Tara,” Jake said. “Ta-ra-ra boom-dee-yay, I am the king today!”
He switched on the kettle to bring it back to the boil.
“Oh, look, that’s Battenberg cake, isn’t it,” he said, pointing at a plate of colored slices, “the one with the harlequin squares?”
“Oh yes, and the marzipan icing. It’s the brightest yellow I ever saw in a food. I bet it’s full of food dye. Yippee! We’re going to have a feast! Hi-cockalorum, cockalee!”
“Egg yolks are that color,” said Jake. “I like her.”
“I like her too,” said Stella.
“No, I mean, I really like her,” said Jake. “She’s special.”
“Yeah,” said Stella. “Sure.”
“Were you in India yourself?” Stella asked, when they got back up to the drawing room with the tea tray.
“No,” said Mrs. Kennedy. “I’ve never been farther east than Hull. Except for two weekends in Paris. And once I went on a day trip to Amsterdam. Can you imagine? Eighteen hours in Holland.”
“Hull? That sounds terribly … dull!” said Stella with a sudden screech of laughter at her rhyme. “Maybe I will be a poet after all, Jake,” she added.
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