She's Not There by Tamsin Grey

Author:Tamsin Grey [Grey, Tamsin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-12-06T05:00:00+00:00

42

He set off in the direction of Southway Street, hoping that Raff had gone home. He walked quickly, excited at the thought of his plan, but as he put the coins back into his pocket, he felt the metal clump of door keys and realised that Raff wouldn’t be able to get into the house, not even the back way, now that the Broken House fence had been mended. He transferred the coins into his other pocket, so that he wasn’t weighed down on one side, and as he did so his dream suddenly came back to him, the one in the Tibetan monastery. A flash of red and a hand opening, showing him something – but then it had gone again. He tried to bring it back, but all he could get was a taste, a trace; then he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a teenager, a skinny white teenager, crossing the road towards him.

It was like his heart had exploded in his chest. He stopped, shaking, knowing he should run, but the force of the shock meant he had no control over his legs. Of course they weren’t going to get away with it: after that kick, the Thin One was always going to track them down. Raff had probably already been caught and was being kept prisoner by Flipflop. It wasn’t until the older boy had stepped onto the kerb and passed him without looking at him that he realised it wasn’t the Thin One at all – he didn’t look anything like him.

He set off again, his heart still thudding, his legs wobbly. He had to find Raffy. He shouldn’t have let him go off on his own. What if the real Thin One had already found him? What if he and his Flipflop friend were torturing him somewhere? An ice-cream van passed him, and the sudden blast of its bright jingly tune made him jump. ‘Lollipops, children! Come and get your lollipops!’ What if the orphanage van had come and scooped up Raffy, when he was all alone? What if he was never going to see him again?

Jonah slowed down, trying to breathe himself calm. There was no such thing as an orphanage van. There was no such thing as the Child Catcher. And the Thin One would have forgotten all about them by now. Raff would be sitting on the doorstep, waiting for him. He kept walking, the dread still with him. The parked cars all looked at him with their wide-apart glass eyes, their mouths full of letters and numbers. Should he look at the letters and numbers more carefully, try and work out what the cars were trying to tell him? Were those gods in their togas looking down and shaking their heads?

On Southway Street, a couple of the squatters were outside their house: Ilaria, in her usual grubby white clothes, and the one with the bald head and the weird earrings who’d been smoking on the doorstep on Monday evening.

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