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This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, whilst at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.
The Borough Press
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Tamsin Grey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © Tamsin Grey 2018
Excerpt from James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
reprinted by permission of Penguin Books. © Roald Dahl 1961
Excerpts from The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò by Edward Lear
Cover design by Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Cover photographs © Elisabeth Ansley / Trevillion Images (boys), Shutterstock.com (city)
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Source ISBN: 9780008245634
Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008245627
Version: 2018-11-02
Praise for She’s Not There
‘Tamsin Grey is wise about the street, and wise about the heart, especially the hearts of children. Her multi-racial London pulses with Dickensian energy and delight. She has that rare gift of combining in her prose the lyrical with the precise. She’s Not There is a wonderful, artfully addictive novel’
IAN MCEWAN
‘Brilliant and heartbreaking (and funny)’
KIT de WAAL
‘[An] amazing debut, packed with South London atmosphere . . . it has To Kill a Mockingbird written all over it . . . brilliant’
DAILY MAIL
‘Mesmerisingly good’
LISA JEWELL
‘Tamsin Grey’s young narrator inhabits a south London that is diverse, inclusive and very real. She’s Not There is a beautiful, sad, strong story, enticingly told – and an extremely assured debut’
STELLA DUFFY
‘There’s an almost unbearable tenderness to Tamsin Grey’s sad, sweet debut’
PSYCHOLOGIES
‘A gripping read, the voices of the children are pitch perfect and will stay with you long after the last page’
ROSIE BOYCOTT
Dedication
In memory of the artist
Michael Kidner RA
1917 – 2009
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Praise for She’s Not There
Dedication
July 2018
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
July 2013: Monday
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Tuesday
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Wednesday
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Thursday
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Friday
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Saturday
Chapter 75
July 2018
Chapter 76
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Publisher
1
The invitation from Dora Martin caused that shift in Jonah’s belly, like a creature waking up in its dark pit. ‘Do we have to go?’ he murmured, knowing that they did. The trek into London to see the Martins had become a July tradition. He pushed away his cereal bowl, last year’s event flooding his head: the welcoming hugs and exclamations; the long, tense argument about politics; and then the vigil in the back garden, with the scarecrow and the wind chimes and the rabbits.
When the day arrived – a baking hot Friday – it turned out everyone was going to Frank’s for a swim after school. Jonah waited until after band practice to tell his friend he couldn’t make it.
‘That’s mad.’ Frowning, Frank nosed his guitar into its sleeve. It was cool and mellow in the practice room, the blinds drawn down against the sun. Because of his bad hand, Jonah used a harness to help him hold his trumpet. Frank watched him take it off. ‘Lola’s coming!’
His friend’s sly smile made Jonah blush. He turned away and watched Mr Melvin cross the room, open the door and step into the rectangle of blazing light.
‘Who even are the Martins?’ asked Frank.
‘We knew them when we lived in London. Dora and my mum were, like, best friends.’ The blinds flapped in a sudden gust, and Jonah got a flash of the sheets on the Martins’ washing line billowing, the crescendo of wind chimes, and Dora, sprawled in her deckchair, her feet in a bucket of water.
‘Come on, guys.’ The other band members had disappeared and Mr Melvin was waiting to lock the door. Jonah settled his trumpet into its case.
‘Get out of it. Say you’re ill.’ Frank zipped up his guitar, frowning again.
‘I just can’t, really.’ Jonah made a wry face, but now his friend wouldn’t look at him. ‘It’s – a kind of anniversary. They cook roast chicken.’
‘Roast chicken? That’s mad. It’s like 30 degrees centigrade.’ Frank spun away, towards the door.
‘It was our favourite. Well, more my brother’s,’ he explained, but to himself, because Frank was ducking under Mr Melvin’s arm. ‘Roast chicken and roast potatoes.’ He got a sudden flash of Raff, aged six, wolfing down a leg.
2
It had been agreed that Jonah could go to the Martins straight from school, rather than traipsing all the way home to go with the others in the car. The thought of the journey cheered him up. He hadn’t travelled into London alone before. On the train, he put his backpack and his trumpet case in the luggage rack, shrugged off his blazer and sprawled across two seats, luxuriating in his independence. They’d been playing the ‘Summertime’/ ‘Motherless Child’ medley in band practice, and the interweaving tunes played on in his head as he gazed through the fast-moving glass at the slow-drifting clouds. Cumulus humilis. He had been obsessed with clouds that summer, had learnt all their names. He saw the white sheets rising again, Dora’s huge sunglasses, her yellow dress, the straggly hair in her armpits.
Dora Martin. Quite a famous artist these days. She had written the invitation, in her elegant, spiky slant, on a postcard featuring one of her paintings: ‘It’s that time again, and I’m so hoping you’ll join us.’ He noticed that the creature – a kind of trapped emotional density – was awake again, and he shifted himself sideways, resting his head on his bent arm. It would be nice to see Emerald, who’d been in his class and would have updates on Harold and all the other Haredale kids. Sometimes I feel like I’m almost gone. He closed his eyes, letting the sleepy, mournful tune weave with the rhythm of the train.
He dreamed he was high above London, among the cool, silent clouds, looking down at the glittering sprawl. You were our home. He felt a leap of hope and dropped closer, looking for a sign of welcome, but the cranes rose and tilted, like slingsmen, the river shone like a ribbon of foil and, to the west, an acrid plume of grief rose from a blackened finger. He dove down like Superman, circling his old familiars: the Cheese Grater, the Shard, the Knuckleduster. Down further, between the chimney pots, into the grime of the centuries, and then southwards, along arteries and veins. The high street now, their high street: Chicken Cottage, Hollywood Nails, We Buy Gold. Left up Wanless Road, low under the bridge, the car repair yard, that smell from the warehouse. Dropping to the ground, he was his nine-year-old self now: bare feet on the warm pavement, fingers dragging along the fence. Opposite, the four shops, asleep, their metal shutters pulled down. And on the corner, there it was, their house, so familiar, but long forgotten. There was someone looking out of the sitting-room window, someone waiting for him. Mayo?
The train entered an urban canyon, sound waves bouncing off concrete and glass. He sat up straight, wiping the drool from his chin, and leant his forehead against the window. The tall buildings had fallen away, and the clouds were towering. Cumulonimbus. He suddenly remembered the clouds poster, Blu-tacked to his and Raff’s bedroom wall, and the dream flooded him: the cool vapour, the eerie silence, the dizzying drop down; and their old house, right there, the scruffiness of it, every tiny detail. He hadn’t seen it since they’d left; they had never gone that way in the car: but now, he realised, he could go and have a look at it, on his way from the bus stop to the Martins’ house. A very short detour, to travel back five years. The shift again; the creature, wordless and sightless, like a blind baby seal, as his brother Raff’s voice came to him, clear as a bell, down the years. ‘We need a time machine.’ The two of them, in that messy kitchen, trying to work out what to do. Hands on his belly, he noticed his own face in the glass, his two eyes merged together. Then the train slid onto the bridge, and the breath caught in his throat. The million-year-old river, brown and glittering, full of boats, and the towers like giant androids, gazing glassily towards the future.
3
The car repair yard was silent, its gates padlocked, but there was that same oniony whiff from the warehouse. Same weather, of course, and the creature was moving again. Funny how, when it was asleep – and it was mostly asleep these days – he could forget it was there; that it had ever existed. He stopped at the bend in Wanless Road, setting his trumpet case down and wiping his palms on his trousers. Their house was still hidden from view, but he could see, across the road, the four shops. The Green Shop, the Betting Shop, the Knocking Shop, and London Kebabs. London Kebabs and the Betting Shop had their blinds down, and the Green Shop was all boarded up, but the Knocking Shop, on the face of it a hairdresser’s, looked open.
‘Why is it called the Knocking Shop, Mayo?’
‘Because of all Leonie’s visitors.’
‘But they don’t knock, they ring the buzzer, Mayo, so it should be the Buzzing Shop, shouldn’t it?’
She had laughed and kissed him, and he had beamed with pride. He had loved making her laugh. Standing there, looking at Leonie’s shop, he realised that the memory had brought the same grin to his fourteen-year-old face. He used to talk to her in his head when he wasn’t with her, he remembered; tell her jokes and see her laughing face. He picked up the case and walked on.
After five years, it was a huge amount to take in at once. First, there was a new building where the Broken House had been. Scaffolding still, and no windows, just the empty squares for them to go in. Running in front of it, a new fence, higher and more solid than the old one, with proper ‘Keep Out’ signs. A gap, and then the corner house, half on Wanless Road, half on Southway Street, the end of the Southway Street terrace; a strange, wedge-shaped house, which had once been a shop, and had been through many conversions. Their house.
Apart from it wasn’t their house. He stared, his eyes blurring. The same shape, and same size, but it had been all tidied and prettied, with pale blue walls and window boxes full of lavender.
Stupid idiot … He wiped his eyes on his sleeve. The house had sold very quickly, while he was still in hospital. It had been someone else’s house for five years. He walked round into Southway Street and looked at the shiny new front door, wanting to kneel and peer through the letter box. He turned away instead and looked up Wanless Road, towards the flats where his friend Harold had lived, and where he and Raff had had the run-in with the bigger boys. Then he looked back the way he had come. The passionflowers had survived, their gaudy, sulky faces tumbling over the new fence.
‘They look like Bad Granny.’ Raff’s six-year-old voice. He stepped forward and examined one in detail. Passiflora, a South American vine, named after the passion of Jesus Christ. He touched the crown of thorns, very lightly.
‘Jonah?’ A real voice, strident, familiar and – straightaway in his head, Raff again: ‘Let’s run!’ He gathered himself and turned. Her head was sticking out of the doorway. He gave a little wave, and she trailed out onto the pavement like a dilapidated peacock.
‘Hello, Leonie!’
‘Jonah! I knew it was you! Pat, look who’s here!’ She leant back into her shop, then turned, beckoning. He crossed the road and stopped with a bit of distance between them, but she stepped forward and took hold of his elbows, her bulgy eyes staring at him with a child’s frankness. Resisting the old urge to lift his good hand to cover the scarring, he tried to return her raking gaze. ‘Hench’. Raff’s word for her, because of her scary, weightlifter’s body, towering above them. Now, she only came up to his chin. Same brawniness, though; and same breasts, jostling to escape from their blue satin casing. He quickly looked back at her face. ‘Hello, Leonie,’ he repeated, aware of the awkwardness of his smile.
‘Mended good.’ The tang of her breath. Same hairstyle, with the beads on the braids, but fewer braids now and silvery threads in them. Same plastic, sequinned fingernails; she brushed one along the scarring. ‘Adds character. And you grown nice and tall. How long is it? Must be four, five years.’
‘It’s five.’
Leonie nodded. ‘Near enough to the day.’ She looked past him, at their old house. ‘What you doing here? This the first time you been back?’
‘Yes. I mean, I’ve been a few times, to visit friends, but not here …’ They’d never come this way, in the car; they’d always stayed on the main road and taken the turning by the park.
‘Pat!’ She called into the shop again, her ornate hand on the door. ‘She don’t hear me. You by yourself? Where’s your folks?’
‘I’m meeting them at our friends’ house. I came on the train, and they’re coming in the car.’
‘Pat! Where that dumb-arse woman got to.’ She shouldered the door wide open. ‘You better come in.’
He looked at his watch, hearing Raff’s voice echoing through time: ‘No way! She is HENCH and her sweets are RANK!’
‘Just five minutes. Have a cold drink. If she don’t get to see you, my life won’t be worth living.’ She ushered him over the threshold, and there was that same long, thin room with the mirrors, and the whir of the electric fans. Like his own ghost, he drifted behind her, past the three hairdressing chairs, and the one ancient hood-dryer; the desk, with the phone, and the box of tissues. The beaded doorway, the white, squishy sofa, the sweets in a bowl, and – an embarrassing stirring, Raff’s elbow in his ribs – the magazines.
‘Help yourself to a sweet.’
‘RANK!’
‘I’m OK, thanks.’
Leonie slammed the bowl back down, and kicked off her shoes. ‘Pat!’ She padded over to the beaded curtain, her big flat feet leaving damp marks on the polished tiles. ‘Losing her hearing. I keep telling her, but she won’t have it. You better take a seat.’
The fans whirred and whirred. The footprints evaporated, and the beaded strands shimmied to stillness. Above the doorway, the tiny monitor showed the litter-strewn backyard, where Leonie’s visitors waited to be let in. He got a sudden flash of her getting undressed, her blue satin dress dropping in a pile around her feet, and he cringed and tried to clear the thought from his head. He sat down on the sofa, which was as squishy as ever, but he was tall enough now to keep his feet on the ground. The magazines. Oh no. Remembering Raff’s shocked delight, he leant forward. The top one looked respectable enough – one of those TV guides – but the one underneath it … He stared for a moment, then put the TV guide back on top. Suddenly deeply uncomfortable, he looked towards the door. Too rude, though, to just leg it. He leant back, closing his eyes against the electric breeze.
‘The younger one was the looker. This one was always a bit drawn.’ Pat, trim little Pat, tufty-haired, fox-faced, with a jug and some plastic beakers. ‘World on his shoulders.’ She put the cordial and the beakers down, and perched next to him on the sofa. ‘Looks like life treating him better now.’ She grasped the lapel of his blazer and peered at the coat of arms on the breast pocket. ‘See, proper stitching – none of that stick-on.’
‘Private school.’ Leonie sank into the chair by the desk, and clasped her hands over her belly. ‘Folks doing OK, then.’
Jonah opened his mouth, then closed it again. Explaining about the scholarship would sound like boasting.
‘Cordial?’ Pat reached for the jug.
‘I’m OK, thanks.’
Pat looked at Leonie. ‘Must be thirsty, on a day like this?’
Leonie shrugged. ‘Maybe he don’t like cordial. Maybe too sweet for him.’
‘What about his hand?’
Leonie shrugged again. ‘Why you asking me?’
Jonah drew his bad hand out of his pocket, and presented it.
‘Your right one, is it?’ Pat took hold of it, and Leonie tipped forwards to look. ‘You right-handed?’
‘Yes, but it’s fine. I can do most things.’ He waggled his remaining finger and thumb.
‘Hope you don’t get teased for it.’ Pat set his hand down on his lap. ‘Do your school friends know how brave you were, trying to save your little brother?’
‘He don’t want to talk about that,’ snapped Leonie, and Pat clapped her hand over her mouth, chastened.
‘It’s OK,’ said Jonah. ‘Anyway,’ he nodded at the case, ‘I play the trumpet.’
‘The trumpet!’ Pat reached for the case and pulled it onto her lap. She opened it, and the trumpet nestled, gleaming, in the dark blue fur. ‘Play for us!’
Jonah hesitated. ‘I’m not sure if …’
‘Just one quick tune! Or you need a drink first? Will I get him plain water?’ Pat looked at Leonie again.
‘It’s just that the Martins are expecting me.’
‘The Martins. I remember them,’ Leonie was nodding. ‘With the little girl. Same age as you. Yellow tails, each side. So they still live round here? They never come this way. Or if they do, I never seen them.’
‘Her mother was sick,’ said Pat. ‘Must have passed by now.’
‘No, she’s better,’ said Jonah.
‘Better? I heard it was curtains.’ Leonie looked dubious.
‘Dora’s fine. She’s … we’re having roast chicken.’
‘Bit hot for roast chicken,’ said Pat. ‘Better with a salad, on a day like this.’
‘But nice you stayed friends with them,’ said Leonie.
‘What about the dad? Remember, Leonie – with the veg boxes. He still in that business?’
Jonah shook his head. ‘He lives in the country now. In an eco-village.’
‘Eco-village?’ asked Pat.
‘Living off the land,’ explained Leonie. ‘No electricity or nothing. Do their business in the woods.’
Pat shook her head. ‘So he left his sick wife.’
‘No, she was already better,’ said Jonah. ‘And anyway they’re still married. Dora and Em go and stay with him quite a lot.’
‘In the eco-village.’ Leonie nodded thoughtfully, as if she was planning a trip there herself. ‘And does he come back to London? Will he be there now? To see you?’
‘I expect so.’ He tried to remember if Dora’s email had said. Then he stood up, which was an effort, given how far he’d sunk into the sofa, and put his backpack on.
‘You got to go,’ Leonie sighed, and heaved herself up too.
‘Or roast chicken might get cold.’ Pat held out the trumpet case.
‘Yes.’ He suddenly felt how male he was, next to these middle-aged women: how tall, and strong and young. He took the case, and turned towards the door, trying to formulate a suitable goodbye, but was suddenly enveloped by Leonie. Her metal smell, her breasts, her damp armpits … He had to plant his feet firmly in order not to stagger back. She seemed to be crying. Still gripping the handle of his trumpet case, he put his free arm around her waist.
‘Leonie, she still feels so bad.’ Pat’s pointy face had gone soft and slack.
‘Bad? Why?’
‘Here all day, looking out the window, and never saw nothing was wrong.’ She patted Leonie’s shaking shoulder. ‘Enough now, Miss. Young man needs to go and eat roast chicken. And your 6.30 will be here. Need to bubble down.’
‘That 6.30 always late.’ But Leonie released him, and reached for a tissue from the box on the desk. She wiped her eyes, looking old, and Jonah felt a terrible tenderness for her.
‘Don’t feel bad. You were very good to us. Very kind.’ She was so alien, so not of his tribe – and yet so familiar. He patted her other shoulder.
‘Just glad …’ Her voice was shaky, still full of tears. ‘Just glad you doing so well.’
‘Better get going.’ Pat gave him a little push, but Jonah hesitated.