Rachel looked around. She hadn’t noticed, but Billy’s paintings, which she had always stuck up around the kitchen (sometimes to cover patches of mold), were now arranged in rainbow order, starting with red ones by the door and going through the spectrum to purple by the cooker, and they were in a perfect straight line.
“I didn’t do that,” she said.
“We did do it just now,” said Billy, who had, indeed, been padding around the room.
Nina put Beth down and pulled Billy onto her lap.
“It looks nice,” she said. “Good to see you, mister.” She ruffled his hair, and Rachel could see she was trying not to cry.
“This is my sister, Nina,” Billy said. He was sitting up straight, with wide blank eyes. “She has been staying with our dad because she needed to not get ill. Now I am better, she has come home.”
“Erm, yes, I have,” said Nina. “Who are you introducing me to, Bill?”
“To Delfy.”
“Remember Delfy?” Rachel said. “The imaginary friend. I told you about her on the phone. We are all in favor of Delfy.” She got out the biscuits. Rachel and Al were so poor at the moment that a budget packet of store-brand custard creams was a treat. She shook them onto a plate to make it feel like more of an occasion.
“Sure.” Nina took two. “Thanks. Well, nice to meet you, Delfy.”
Billy was silent for a moment. Then he said: “Delfy says it is nice to meet you, too, Nina. She says you’re good.”
“Thanks. Tell her she is, too?”
Again, Billy was silent, and then he said: “She says thanks.”
Nina turned to Rachel. “So, Mum? So much has happened. Can I bring Louis over to meet you?”
Nina, who was sixteen, had never brought a boy home. She had sounded elated talking about Louis on the phone. Rachel knew that she had not shown enough interest in her daughter’s first boyfriend, when her son had been dying. Now she was going to make up for it.
“Of course!” she said. “We’d love to meet him. You know that. Bring him over anytime. I can’t wait.”
“I will. You’ll really like him. His family is quite posh, but you’d never know it. Mum, I’ve got to do some homework for tomorrow. Can I clear a space on the table and do it here? I don’t want to go away from you all. It’s too nice to be back.”
“Of course,” Rachel said, and she was perfectly content. When Al came home from work, she would have her whole family right here. Billy was getting better fast, and she knew that the old banal worries would start to creep back in soon. She was supposed to be going back to work, after her extended, unpaid maternity leave. They had no money, so she had to go back full-time, however much she didn’t want to. Her mother was going to look after Beth while Rachel was at work, and that in itself was a minor worry.
And if Nina’s boyfriend was “quite posh,” she supposed that when he came round, she would have to make a big effort. She would clear all the junk from the kitchen table and cook something that would somehow be impressive and yet cheap.
She savored these worries. These were the ordinary things she had thought she was going to lose forever. These were the things that made life real. She relished them.
FOUR
On Saturday Nina woke up thinking about Beth; her brain seemed to have made a plan while her body slept. She had a quick shower, dressed in jeans and a jumper, and went down the stairs two at a time.
“Hi!” She stood in the kitchen doorway and looked at the clutter, the homeyness of it all. Mum was drinking coffee and looking exhausted. Beth was sitting on the floor, bashing a saucepan with a wooden spoon. Al was frowning at a piece of paper on which he seemed to be making a shopping list. Next to everything on it was a number, and Nina could see that they were budgeting hard.
Mum beamed at her, and Al said: “Oh, Nina. I can’t tell you how great it is to have you back.”
Beth looked up and clapped her hands.
“Can I take Beth out?” Nina said. “I’ve missed her. And Billy, too, but I know he can’t go out yet. I want to take Bethie to a coffee shop or something and let her get some fresh air. Would you like that, Bethie? And would it be OK with you?”
“Suits me,” said Al. “I was about to take her to the SupaSava to try to do history’s most frugal family shop. She’d have much more fun with you. She missed you, too, and she didn’t get out much over the past six weeks. Your mum didn’t get out at all.”
Mum laughed. “I stood in the backyard sometimes. I didn’t want to go farther than that.”
“Are you sure?” Nina was talking to Al. “I know you don’t see her so much in the week.”
“Very sure. Take her out and have fun.”
Nina had money in her pocket from Dad, and although she knew he paid Mum maintenance for her and Billy, she also knew it wasn’t much. She decided she would use her allowance from Dad to get some extra bits for the household while she was out.
“Yes,” said Mum. “You girls have a nice walk. Wrap her up as warm as you can, and get some fresh air into her. Well. Not exactly fresh. But outdoor air anyway. Air. Stay away from . . . Oh, you know. Just stay away from bad stuff.”
* * *
• • •
Nina enjoyed guiding the pushchair through the streets of South London. She felt like a young mother and tried to imagine herself in a completely different life. Girls at school got pregnant sometimes. Imagine getting pregnant at fifteen and having your very own baby in a pushchair at sixteen, like this. Not just to play with Beth, but to be responsible for keeping her alive, day and night. Nina was sure she would never be ready for such a thing. She was training to go to space, and that would be impossible to combine with motherhood. Besides, she didn’t think the world (or the galaxy) needed any more people.
Although she had been born at a bad time for the world in general, Nina felt she was here at exactly the right moment for herself. There was no other point in history when a sixteen-year-old girl could have had a real chance of spending her adult life in a different part of the universe. Her mission was to play a part in moving the human race across galaxies. There was the technology for it now (though its details were a closely guarded secret), and there was also a huge need to escape from this place, to try again, to do it better.
Meanwhile, there was human shit on the pavement, and the wind was blowing so hard that she had to stop and unwind a burger wrapper from Beth’s feet. They passed an apartment block that was boarded up and cordoned off, ready for demolition. A couple of streets later, a terrace of little houses had bright purple ACQUIRED BY STARCOM boards on them, and Nina wanted to rip the signs down. That was what she wanted to escape. The Starcom case had been on in the background for ages, and she hadn’t taken much notice of it until Ben Alford won. She hated it when the bad guys won. Why, she wondered, would this man, who no doubt lives in luxury in a castle somewhere, want to buy up normal people’s houses and say they can only live in them if they work for him for vouchers? The injustice of it burned inside her.