Читать книгу Feather Boy онлайн | страница 29

“Oh creepy, creepy, bye, bye, spooky.” Weasel’s head disappears.

“So you do know?”

“Not really,” says Kate. “Or only as much as everyone knows. That a boy is supposed to have died there. And that it’s never been much of a lucky house since. Keeps changing hands.”

“Who was the boy?”

“I don’t know. It was ages ago, Robert.”

“How many ages?”

“Thirty years. Forty years. I don’t know. Why are you so interested anyway?”

“My Elder, Edith Sorrel. She lived there.”

“Oh right. Why don’t you ask her then?”

“Mm. Maybe I will.”

But of course I won’t. Can you imagine it?

Me: “Oh hello, Miss Sorrel, would you mind telling me about the boy who died in your house? I mean the one that fell out of the top-floor window? The plenty strawberry jam one?”

Her: (giving me that witchy look where she appears to be able to see right through me and out the other side) “No.”

End of conversation. But not end of story. Miss Sorrel picks up silver-topped ebony cane, bangs it three times on floor and kazzam! I’m a frog. That would be the happy ending. The miserable one would be the ending where…

“Robert. Robert!”

The bus has stopped. Almost everyone has got off.

“Robert Nobel, you are a dreamer.” Liz Finch is waving her hands in front of my face. She looks almost animated.

I pick up my bags and follow the others into the lounge of the Mayfield Rest Home. Today Catherine has arrived in advance of us. She has set up trestle tables with paper, paint, pencils, scissors, magazines and glue. The protective newspaper she’s laid on the carpet is already rucked up with the traffic of wheelchairs.

“Hello, hello,” she says. “Come in. Find your Elder, everyone. Sit down.”

There is a hubbub of greetings.

“Afternoon, Mr Root,” says Kate.

“Eh up,” says Albert.

“How you been, Dulcie?” says Weasel.

“What?” says Dulcie.

“Hi,” says Niker, tapping Mavis on the chicken-wing shoulder.

“Please explain,” says Mavis. “Don’t keep me guessing.”

“It’s me,” says Niker. “Me, moi, myself. Niker. Jonathan Niker. Double O one and a half.”