LITMIR.BIZ

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      The house was really smelly now, much smellier than the Broken House, and there were lots of fat, black flies. Jonah propped the back door open and opened up the windows, so that fresh air would come in. Then he went to the bin and opened it. The stench hit him full in the face, and he quickly closed it again.

      ‘I’m thirsty,’ said Raff. Jonah picked a glass up off the draining board, rinsed it and filled it, water splashing on the dirty plates piled up in the sink. He passed it to Raff, and then opened the drawer that Lucy kept the incense sticks in. He took two sticks out of the open packet and the box of matches. Raff glugged the water down and put the glass back on the side. ‘I’m hungry.’

      Jonah opened the fridge. He saw a mustard jar, a lime pickle jar, a tomato ketchup bottle and a bunch of slimy spring onions. They really needed to go shopping. Jonah felt cross with her for a moment. Then he remembered his certificate, and pulled it out of his school bag. ‘Look.’

      ‘I saw you get it in Assembly, dumbhead.’

      Jonah found a space for it on the fridge door, amongst the photographs and postcards and all the previous certificates.

      WELL DONE, JONAH!

      In recognition of your excellent work

      on your local history project.

      He stood back, and ran his eyes over the photos. They went back to when he was a baby, and even before. There was the one of Lucy in a bikini, which he didn’t like, though at least she had her bikini top on. It had been taken long before he was born, and she was thinner, and her bosoms – no, boobs – looked even bigger, and she was thrusting them out, with her hands on her hips. Her lips were blowing a kiss to the photographer, who was presumably Roland, but it was difficult imagining her being like that with Roland.

      ‘What special dinner are the Martins having, anyway?’

      ‘Roast chicken.’ Jonah stared at young Lucy’s face, trying to imagine her being in love with Roland. They had met on a yoga holiday in Egypt. The photo might even be from that holiday, although Lucy had been ill for most of it. Roland had heard her in the night, in the bathroom, moaning, and he’d looked after her. He skimmed all the photos again, looking for Roland. There was one of him when he was maybe a teenager, with his arm around Rusty, his dog. Rusty was looking at the camera, and Roland was looking at Rusty, so it was his profile you could see, with his long knobbly nose and his quiff.

      The only other photo with him in it was the one of their wedding day. The two of them, standing on some steps, Roland in a suit, and Lucy in a strange blue dress with a white collar. He was smiling, but she looked serious. She was slightly turned away from him, even though they were holding hands, and you could see her bump, in which a little tadpole Jonah had been swimming around. About a third of the photo had been torn off. Presumably because it showed Bad Granny.

      The photo next to it was of Raffy, Baby Raffy, only just born, his stripy monkey toy in his tiny fist. Jonah had given him that monkey, in the hospital. Lucy had been sitting up in her big bed, and someone had lifted him onto her lap, and put the bundle that was Raff on his lap, and Raff’s fierce little face had gazed up at him. Everyone had been amazed at the way he held the toy. ‘What a strong baby! What a strong little baby!’ Jonah got a match out and lit both incense sticks.

      ‘Maybe there’s some sweets left.’ Raff was looking at the Advent calendar, which was high up on the fridge door, fastened with four magnets at each corner. They’d made it together last year, with pieces of red and green felt. It had twenty-four pockets sewn onto it, and the word ‘Christmas’ across the top. When Christmas was over, Lucy had said she was so proud of the calendar she couldn’t bear to take it down.

      Jonah and Raff stepped forward together and dipped their fingers into the pockets. No sweets any more, they’d gobbled them all up, but Lucy’s fountain pen was in pocket number 17.

      ‘That’s what she was writing with. In the garden,’ said Raff, snatching it from him. Jonah nodded. It had been a present from Dora, along with the heavy, thick-paged book.

       Brighter today.

      ‘Where’s her diary?’ He turned, his eyes scanning the messy room.

      ‘Here’s her keys.’ Raff used the pen to fish them out from between two piles of dirty plates. Jonah took the keys and looked at her elephant key ring. She was always forgetting her keys. The elephant reminded him of his painting of Ganesha, and the little wise eye. The sweet smell of the incense was filling the air. He put the keys down on the table and noticed the calendar, and the changes he’d made that morning. The first two weeks still so clean and bare, but now, with his dark blue additions, the third and fourth row were looking untidy. He squinted at the word beginning with C, and tried to think what PED might stand for. Then he flicked back to June. Vrischikasana, or Scorpion. A very difficult pose, a kind of handstand, but with your toes coming down to meet your head, like a scorpion’s tail.

      June had been busier. Lots of her loopy scrawls. He ran his finger along the rows of numbers, going backwards through time. Dentist. They hadn’t bothered going in the end. He couldn’t remember why. Martins with D. Oh yes, the day they took Dylan round, so he could mate with Elsie. They’d sat on a blanket in the garden, watching the rabbits ignoring each other. Saviour had brought out tea and cake. Rhubarb cake. It had been quite cold.

      ‘I wish we had a time machine,’ said Raff. He had taken the pen to bits and was examining the little tube inside.

      Jonah kept looking at the calendar. Time, a whole month, one circling of the moon, turned into thirty squares on a page. ‘What for?’ he said.

      ‘To take us to when she comes home. Then we wouldn’t have to keep on waiting.’

      ‘Or it could take us back to this morning. Before she went out.’ Jonah flicked the calendar back to July. ‘Then we could stop her from going.’ He put his finger under the word beginning with C. It might be Clink. Or maybe …

      ‘You can’t actually do that.’

      ‘Do what? Don’t do that, Raff. The ink will come out and go everywhere.’

      ‘Change things that have already happened.’ Raff kept squeezing. There wasn’t any ink in it anyway. ‘Otherwise everything would explode. There’s no point in going back. Only forward.’

      ‘But if you go forward you lose some of your life.’ Jonah thought for a moment. ‘Well, not if you came back again.’

      Raff nodded. ‘You could go forward, see what’s going to happen, like who gets a certificate in Assembly, and then come back and make a bet on it.’

      ‘Well, you could bet on a horse race,’ Jonah pointed out. ‘You could put all your money on it, sell your car and your house, because you’d absolutely know which horse was going to win.’

      ‘Daddy would like that!’

      Jonah frowned, looking at the photograph of Roland and Rusty. Rusty had died, ages ago, before the Egyptian yoga holiday. He was buried in Bad Granny’s garden. There was a gravestone, with his name. ‘I don’t think he would. He would think it was cheating. Which it is.’ He looked back at the calendar. PED. On the last day of term. Perfect End Day? ‘And anyway. Once you’ve gone forward, coming back again, you’re actually going into the past. So putting the bet on in the past would make everything explode.’

      ‘No, because you’d put the bet on in the new time, that came after you went into the future. The bit that nothing’s happened in yet.’

      PED. Jonah frowned at the letters, thinking about time travel. ‘But when you’re in the future, watching the horse race, then it’s actually the present, isn’t it? And the time leading up to the horse race must have actually happened, otherwise …’ He closed his eyes, seeing the strange blankness of unwritten time. ‘I think what must happen is that you split into two.’ He opened his eyes. Raff was fiddling with the bits of pen again. ‘So your old self just keeps going, and not putting on the bet, and then

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