PART TWO Chapters 5-6

CHAPTER FIVE

The machinery arm contains the machine’s motor and electronics as well as the large concrete counterweights.

The only nice thing about Spring Term is its name. Actually it’s got nothing to do with Spring, it’s just winter, grey and wet and cold and miserable on and on and on. BORING. I hate February. The only nice thing ever happened in February was about three years before we came to Birmingham when Granny arrived out of the blue. ‘Only my mother would be mad enough to make such a long canal trip in WINTER,’ my mother said.

I rather liked the idea of granny being mad. I thought my mother was much madder, not to say boring, for being sensible all the time. Bringing Mnemosyne our way in winter was much more like fun.

That was the first time I got to know granny. I’d only seen her a few times before, and only for a short time. She made up for now. She let me stay overnight on Mnemosyne, in her little spare bunk - I loved the way the boat rocked gently all night. And not long after she took me for a three day trip up the canal towards Birmingham.

‘Bring your bike,’ Granny said. She kept it for me on top of the cabin, alongside the jumble of ropes, boxes, plant pots with flowers in them. Sometimes I sat there too watching the towpath roll past. Sometimes I sat alongside Granny in the stern while Border sat on the roof, watching in her way, unmoving, like a cat. Sometimes I rode my bike along the towpath besides the narrow boat, Border running after - we went much faster than the boat and had to stop to let Granny catch us up. Other times, best of all, Granny let me take the tiller and showed me how to steer and turn without hitting the bank (the hard thing is you have to push the tiller the opposite way to what you’d expect.) She taught me how to open the lock gates with the special metal tool, called a key, though it doesn’t look like one, to swing them open, so that she could steer Mnemosyne into the lock. I enjoyed working the locks.

Once, when another narrowboat owner was there to work the bottom gate I’d got back on to Mnemosyne with Granny. But I didn’t much like the boat going down and the dark damp-streaming walls of the lock getting higher and higher round us. When the gates opened again and we went out onto the open canal it felt like being let out of prison. Suppose the gates don’t open? I’d thought, for a moment. Suppose we never managed to get out?

Now I come to think of it this so called ‘Spring’ Term in Birmingham feels a bit the same. Some dark damp place from which I’ll never get out. Only worse, especially after what happens to Rahilah.

*******

For several days after I’ve talked to Rahilah I don’t go to school; I’ve got a bad cold, a bit like flu. with a temperature. That’s another of the bad thing about the Spring Term, everyone gets ill; the classroom is full of people coughing and sneezing.

I don’t mind being ill for once; it’s nice having mum fuss round me. It’s nice not having to listen to this teacher or that complaining about my work. It’s nice not having to wait for the bus in the rain, morning and afternoon, and being turfed out into a cold damp windy playground during break and at lunchtime. It’s nice not having to think about Frankie and his lot.

I creep out of bed every day though to check my email. I send a few with those down-turned mouth not smileys to show I’m ill to Jay and Rashid -. I don’t get any back, but I’m feeling too bad to mind much. I don’t get any from Ella either. Thanks for that.

I go back to school on Monday; no Rahilah. I assume she’s got what I had; quite a few other people in the class are away too. I certainly don’t connect it with the smirks of some of Frankie’s girls when I come in through the school gates. I do wonder why there’s a group of Muslim girls in headscarves looking at me and whispering; but that has happened before during Rahilah’s and my friendship. I don’t have time to hang about the playground and talk to anyone. I’m late.

It’s double maths first, my hated maths, still worse than usual because I’ve missed a week and don’t understand anything, especially without Rahilah to explain. I’d have asked Trace but she’s not there: she has got flu, the teacher says during registration. It’s no good asking Jay maths aren’t his thing either; Rashid I can’t ask for the usual reasons –I do send him a note saying ‘why haven’t you emailed me?’ But he shakes his head glumly and doesn’t look at me. Jay doesn’t look at me either. Maths: I think. As usual that teacher has got us by the…But I begin to feel a bit uneasy.

I try to catch Jay when the bell goes, but he rushes out. So does Rashid. I feel uneasier still. I’m not made to go out into the cold playground this break-time because of just being back from flu. I go back to our classroom, and open my desk take out my copy of Lord of the Flies ready for the next class. A piece of paper falls out. On the back of it are rows of smilys in red ink. On the other side is written, also in red ink

THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS TO TERRORISTS. KEEP OUT!!!!

Rahilah, It has to be something to do with Rahilah. I grab the first person who comes into the room, not a friend, a fat girl called Janice, who doesn’t seem to like anyone much, not surprisingly since noone much seems to like her – people say she smells, though I’ve never noticed it. I feel a bit sorry for her but that’s about it. She jumps when I scream at her; ‘What’s happened to Rahilah?? What’s happened. ‘ Janice blinks. She’s like that.

‘How should I know?’ she asks.

‘Rahilah,’ I scream back; ‘in our class; the one wears a headscarf.’

‘Oh, a Muslim girl,’ she says, as if Muslim girls don’t count really. ‘Oh her.’ She adds reflectively as if glad to find someone even less popular than her, ‘She got attacked; out of school, by some girls – girls from our school, probably, but noone knows for sure, they had balaclavas on.’ (Oh don’t they, I think. I know who. I know who exactly.) ‘How badly attacked?’ I ask, furiously. Janice blinks again.

‘Her scarf got torn off,’ she said. ‘She was wearing earrings, someone said. We’re not allowed to wear earrings at school.’

‘But was she hurt,’ I scream. ‘Was she hurt?’

‘She might of got a black eye. All her books and papers were pulled out of backpack and torn up.’

I can’t bear it; it’s ALL MY FAULT. If I hadn’t talked to her … they told me not to talk to her. I could hardly see Janice now for tears though I can hear her– she hasn’t finished yet. ‘She – the Muslim girl - had red paint poured over her,’ she says.

Why haven’t Rashid and Jay told me? I’m angry with them now; it’s easier. I’m angrier with Jay, I don’t want to be angry with Rashid.

The rest of the class come in then and look at me curiously. I go on crying, who cares what they think. One or two of the nicer girls try to comfort me, but they can’t. Rashid and Jay I notice looking uncomfortable. I hold tears enough to glare at Jay. ‘But you’re a Hindu,’ I say through them. ‘Not a Muslim. They won’t hurt you. Why couldn’t you tell me?’ The teacher arrives then. She sends me to the school nurse. The school nurse is very nice, makes me lie down for a bit until I stop crying and shaking, she says I’ve probably come in too soon after flu. She asks if my mother will be at home and when I say yes, she sends me home.

But when I go to get my coat etc from my locker, I find everything has been pulled out and thrown on the floor and my anorak has been slashed and daubed with red ink, and the covers of my books have been daubed too and some of them even torn off.

KEEP AWAY FROM TERRORISTS the notice says.

Quite how I get out of school and on the bus, I don’t know. I walk home via the Gas Street Basin – I’m calmer now, zombified more like. I hammer on the door of Mnemosyne – a surprised gull flaps up from the roof of the boat. I can hear Border barking inside, whining, whining ever more frantically – I want her almost more than I want Granny. I want to see her smile at me, and make her greeting noises. I want to bury my face in her lavatory-brush brown coat. But I can’t reach her. Granny’s not at home. I think she would have let me in otherwise. Hearing me scream the way I am doing. People are looking at me from the other side of the canal. I don’t care. I’m weird. GROSS. I don’t care.

No good trying Poseiden. The Seventh Dwarf won’t be back from building yet. All I can do is go home, creeping into the flat very quietly so that mum won’t hear me. So that I can go into my room and hurl myself on my bed and cry, scream, whatever I need to do to shut out the horrible pictures in my head. Pictures of Rahilah, my friend, above all; of what has been done to her. I don’t seem to know what the world is any more. I don’t know which way it’s facing.

But I am not quite quiet enough. Before I can get to my room, Mum comes out of the kitchen and sees my torn, dirty, anorak – ‘What on earth,’ she starts saying, then she must have seen my face. ‘Oh Esther,’ she says, and to my surprise I fling myself into her arms, glad she’s there after all, howling and howling into her red winter sweater instead of into my bed. I even end up telling her what’s happened, while she makes me sweet coffee, because it’s what I say I want. She doesn’t once say I shouldn’t be drinking coffee at my age, doesn’t once hint once that nothing like this would have happened if I’d gone to the nice kind of school she’d planned for me instead of the Comprehensive in Smelly Poke. She’s alright sometimes, my mum.

********

But for some reason when I go to bed that night, the face I see while I lie tossing about isn’t Rahilah’s let alone Mum’s. It’s Granny’s. Not her present face. The face of Granny as a child frowning through the family albums stacked above her bed.

In all the times I asked her why she looked so sad she only answered once: ‘I was an only child; Esther. I expect I felt lonely.’

‘I’m only child,’ I said. ‘Pictures of me aren’t sad. Not like that.’

‘You’ve got brothers and sisters,’ granny said. ‘I didn’t have any.’

‘Grown-up brothers and sisters,’ I said. ‘I might just as well be an only child. It’s just as lonely.’ I was almost feeling sorry for myself now. Granny just laughed, though. And I still don’t have a clue about what was biting her those long-ago days, frowning at the camera as if the miseries of the world were on her back.

Thinking these words, ‘the miseries of the world on her back’ makes me remember Rahilah. I cry a bit. I can’t sleep.

At school next day I want to ask her friends if she’s alright. Which is stupid of me, after all Frankie’s lot might do the same as they had done to Rahilah if they saw any of them talking to me. They know it. They hurry away as soon as I come near. They look at me as if I am a murderer, as if I am dangerous.

Trace is back at school now. ‘Not your fault, Es,’ she says once from nothing and nowhere. She even touches my shoulder. But then she goes away again. And though I don’t get any more nasty notes, one of Frankie’s girls seems to be there, smirking at me, wherever I look. I hate them. I hate the world. If anyone took a picture of me now, I think, I’d look just as sad as Granny in all those pictures - just as lonely. I switch off my mobile. I don’t even bother to check my email when I get in. Who could be texting me, who could be writing to me except Ella? And I don’t want to hear anything from her.

Surprisingly – surprising to me anyway – my best comforter now is Barty, my little nephew. When I come in from school and hear him there, I run to the sitting-room. I love the smile comes over his face, his shouts of glee when he sees me.

He is crawling everywhere now. He is also pulling himself up. He’ll be walking soon, I think. I want to walk him for me before he walks for anyone else. I kneel a little way away and hold out my arms – ‘Come on Barty, come on, walk to Esther,’ I urge him. But each time he smiles, drops to the floor and crawls my way.

‘He’s not ready yet, Esther’ my mother chides. ‘He’s not 10 months He’s only just learned to crawl.’

But I want him to walk towards me now, this minute. Then the world will seem right again – nearly right – I think.

CHAPTER SIX

The motor in the machinery arm lifts the load.

That night in bed, I fall straight to sleep. I dream I am running away from something, running and running. I can’t see where I am at first; the legs of tall steel towers loom around me. Not solid legs – open legs cross-hatched with steel girders. They are cranes, I realise. In a moment I am on a ladder in the centre of one of them. I am climbing, fast as I can, gasping for breath. Then I am at the top, gazing dizzily at Birmingham spread widely below. I look towards our flats. I see a face at my window. Granny’s face I think at first – then - Ella? -or is it me? – ‘Ella!’ I cry ‘Ella!’ and make a huge jump towards the window – where Rahilah’s face awaits me now; not one but two Rahilahs – twins. For a moment I soar ecstatically. Suddenly I am falling, falling - before I can hit the ground I wake up, shaking, sweating, crying.

*******

I don’t feel like going back to sleep after that. I get out of bed and turn on my computer. Almost without knowing, I get my email up, my finger poised on the delete button in case there’s anything from Ella. I won’t read any message from Ella, not ever again.

I do have a message. I click on and inspect it. And to my amazement it’s not from Rashid, not from Jay, certainly not from Ella. It’s from Rahilah who doesn’t have a computer, who’s never sent me an email before.

Dear Esther, I read. Fatima told me what happened to you. I am so sorry. And I wanted to tell you that what happened to me was not your fault. Not at all. Our friendship is good, it doesn’t deserve that. My father says the same thing. I told him that they’d done bad things to you too, and he said that it was a betrayal of your hospitality to me, that we should make amends for it. He has asked if your mother would be so good as to come with you to our house one day, for an example of Muslim hospitality. He has asked me to give you our phone number so your mother can ring us and arrange a day.

Rahilah sounds so formal here it might be her dad speaking. Maybe it is her dad speaking. But at the bottom she adds – and this has to be real Rahilah: I am not coming back to Anthony Morris, Esther. I’m going to the Islamic School for Girls. Daddy has given me a computer to make up. I miss you Esther. You are my friend. love Rahilah.

I am almost as angry with Rahilah now as I am pleased to hear from her. NOT COMING BACK TO SCHOOL? HOW CAN YOU DO THIS TO ME, RAHILAH? I turn the computer off straightaway. I do not give my mother her phone number.

******
More than ever I hate this time of year. The sky is always grey. Winter seems everlasting. At school I still spend my time looking over my shoulder for Frankie’s lot but they don’t seem on my case any more. I miss Rahilah so much. Without her, I’ve got noone to giggle with. (It’s funny I should remember her for that - I’d always thought Rahilah so serious.) Trace doesn’t giggle, ever. And at the moment she seems totally wrapped up in her own concerns, just as Rashid and Jay are. Both the boys seem wary of me too, especially Rashid (I can’t blame them. I’m wary of myself too, when it comes to Frankie.) What’s more suddenly they seem thick as thieves. It’s as if Frankie has thrown them together. I get silly notes and emails from Jay still, but he sends copies of the emails to Rashid too. I don’t bother to answer them. I’m still angry with Jay for not telling me about Rahilah. I don’t talk to him at school any more if I can help it. I see Rashid working for his uncle on Saturday mornings still and I get an email from him occasionally about one crane or another – this doesn’t say ccJay; it’s just to me. He still smiles at me sometimes, his brown eyes beautiful as ever. But that is all.

To make things still worse, the school seems to think it’s time to stop us all getting overweight. Every class is made to go on a run once a week, no matter how cold and wet the weather. Even the fatties have to; they puff along at the back looking miserable, and end up walking back to school. Afterwards we congregate round the machines in the hall and get out twice as many cans of pop and packets of crisps as usual. Once I see the fat girl in our class, Janice, still red and sweaty from her run get four packets, two cheese and onion and two salt and vinegar and three cokes and gobble them straight down. So that’s no good, is it?

As for lessons: they have never seemed so boring – I skimp my homework as much and more than before. Doory – Miss Key –has given up on me; she has stopped telling me to pull my socks up, anyway. She looks at me in kindly way and shakes her head. Obviously she thinks I’m a hopeless case. I am a hopeless case. Granny thinks I’m a hopeless case. Why bother?

Not even the cranes cheer me when I feel like this. Instead of staring up at them from my window, I look down at the building site. Breeze-block walls are rising. Soon there’ll be a whole set of buildings hiding my view across the city toward Brindley Place and its clock tower and its lit-up clock and no more cranes anywhere; or at least not near us. Why does everything have to keep on changing, I wonder as usual Why does nothing ever stay the same?

The good things in my life are: 1) Border: 2) the woman who writes in the flats I see from the new bridge. (She seems to know I’m miserable: suddenly, most times I go over the bridge she sees me and waves; I wave back.) 3) Barty. 4) when he’s at home, Bob, the seventh dwarf.

I feel as at home in Poseidon now as I used to feel in Mnemosyne. I love the smell of Bob’s Old Holborn Tobacco and his acrylic paints and his fry-ups. I’m getting to like the strong sweet tea he gives me. He even paints sometimes when I’m around, squinting at the page as he fills in his endless little lines. His tiny half reading glasses look ridiculously small against his big face, his big beard, his woollen hat. He doesn’t take his hat off even in his hot hot cabin.

He is not painting the country and sea and flowers any more, I notice. He’s painting the city and the skyline – and the cranes too! I like that. But there’s still no sky there. As if he is afraid of sky. His cities look as unreal, as much like places in a fairy tale as his country landscapes used to. Weird. AND WEIRDER. I think. I’m not sure I like them much. I don’t say. The dwarf doesn’t like people contradicting him or what he does. He’s a tyrant. (When I told him I didn’t really like sugar in my tea, could I have it without now? he threw the contents of my mug down his sink and told me to go home AT ONCE. I did go home. And next day when he handed me sugared tea again I drank it anyway. I almost like sugar in my tea now, at least when it’s his tea. I think I do, really.)

********

One day, though, Trace grabs my arm as we are coming out of school and says; ‘Ok, right. You’re coming home with me today.’

‘Who says?’ I say, not very friendly. I’ve been pretty pissed-off with Trace lately. Most days she doesn’t seem to notice I’m there. Why should I jump just when and as she says? Why should I?

‘I do,’ she says. ‘Have you got your mobile? Ring your mum.’

‘I don’t need to ring my mum,’ I say haughtily, following her sulkily, just the same. Why does everyone assume they can tell me what to do? I’m thinking. On other hand I’m pleased in a way. I liked Trace’s place last time I went there. Now I like it all over again. It seems familiar even though I only went there once.

Her mum, who Trace calls Misa, not mum, is at home, this time, looking as tired, as thin, as ghostly as ever. (I feel like a ghost sometimes myself, these days.) Besides her Trace seems all angles and sharp as knives. It surprises me that those knives don’t slice straight through her wispy mum but they don’t. They seem as easy together as a married couple. Or as a mother and a child - Trace more the mother, her mother more like the child. At the very least they could be best friends. Is that how it is when your mum’s a single parent, I wonder? (I love my mum when I don’t hate her. But she never feels like my friend.)

There’s this too. Trace’s mum not only looks little older than my older sister, I know for a fact that she isn’t so much older than my elder sister. Trace herself could almost be my mum’s granddaughter, then, what a weird thought. Gross even.

Misa has all her papers spread out on the table when we come in, listening to music – Mozart I think. She is filling in forms of some kind. She turns off the music and clears the forms away at once, but not before I’ve seen her name printed neatly at the top of one form, Artemisa Miriam Falconer: Artemisa explains the ‘Misa’, I suppose. (Though it seems a funny name, I’ve heard some name like it quite recently – I’m not sure when - so it can’t be that unusual.)

I notice the African masks and the figures more than I did last time. I don’t like them as much as the rugs. The masks I find quite creepy. The figures are better, though; the men and women with short bent legs and big heads look much less unfriendly. The one I like best is actually two figures; one carried pick-a-back by the other. The carrying man has bent short legs like all the figures. The wood is dark and with a deep sheen on it. It’s beautiful.

I find Misa standing behind me. ‘They’re Dogon figures,’ she says. ‘From Mali. The Dogon culture is based round twins. This is supposed to represent cooperation between two halves, making up a whole.’

I can’t understand what she is saying. I don’t see ‘Co-operation.’ here at all.

Trace doesn’t see it either. ‘Co-operation?’ she says. ‘Come off it, Misa. The bottom man is just a horse; the other one’s exploiting him. That’s not co-operation. No way.’

This is pretty much the way I am seeing things. I can almost hear the man on top saying ‘Gee up.’ I laugh. So does Trace. But then I stop laughing. ‘Twins’ I think. (Look at Rahilah burdened by her dead twin - she always did seem quite burdened. And then Ella: ELLA. My twin? Or not? Burdened by Ella whoever she is - my twin or someone else’s - I feel sorry for the man doing the carrying. I like him much better than I do the man on top.)

We eat cheese on toast with Misa. She makes it for us this time – sprinkles chilli on it - surprising but quite nice – we ask for more. (My mother never sprinkles chilli on her cheese on toast. And she calls it Welsh Rabbit.) Afterwards Trace and I go to her room to do our homework, leaving Misa to her papers. I hear the music go on again then. Not Mozart now, but still classical. Trace is making a face.

Trace’s room is as tidy as ever: much tidier than mine ever is. There are no piles of drawings on her desk. It’s set out for homework with pens, paper. She only has to take the books from her daypack and turn on her desktop in case we need it. I find myself thinking of Rahilah, ‘I miss Rahilah,’ I say suddenly as I get my maths book out. Trace opens her own. ‘So do I,’ she says. ‘Rahilah’s the cleverest of all of us. I like having someone to compete against.’

That’s not why I miss Rahilah, exactly, but I don’t say anything. Trace goes on. ‘Now I’ll have to make do with you, Esther. You’re not so stupid either. When you try.’

‘You sound just like Doory,’ I say sourly. ‘Don’t Rashid and Jay count?’

‘Boys,’ Trace raises an eyebrow.

‘What’s wrong with boys?’ I say furiously. For two pins I think, I’ll go home. What’s with Trace? ‘Why do you have to be so bloody superior?’ I mutter beneath my breath. Maybe Trace hears me. She laughs, anyway.

‘No skin off my nose,’ she says.

‘If what?’ I ask.

‘Anything you like,’ she says, copying something off her notes. ‘If you’re not going to work you can always go home.’

But I don’t want to go home yet. I shake my head. ‘Cool,’ Trace says. She’s not even looking at me.

‘What’s the point of working, Trace?’ I ask her. And now I do really want to know what she thinks. ‘Look at Rahilah,’ I add almost without knowing I’m going to. Trace stops writing then and looks at me.

‘Not working’s letting that lot win,’ she says. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘Is it?’ I say. ‘They’re going to beat people up just the same.’

‘Poor them,’ she says. ‘Poor you.’

‘Poor them, Trace?’

‘Poor them. You’re not going to stay in school forever, Est. What then?’

‘University, I suppose,’ I say. I haven’t thought about any of it much, in spite of the school meetings about GCE plans, about A level plans, about careers and all that. None of it seems real to me. ‘What about you, Trace? Do you know what?’

‘Of course. Medical school. Like Misa,’ she says. ‘I want to be a paediatrician. That’s what I’ve always wanted.’ I look at her in amazement here. Fancy knowing what you want, fancy seeing your grown-up life so clearly. I haven’t a clue about mine, apart from wanting to grow up more like Granny than like Mum. No wonder Trace seems so grown-up. Too grown-up, I think, for a teenager. Almost boringly grown up. I look around her room, at the books, at the posters for singers I’ve never heard of. At a pair of heavily embroidered jeans – dragons I see on it, snow-topped mountains. ‘I never saw a doctor with pink hair before,’ I say. ‘Or with studs in their eye-brows.’

‘Well you have seen one now,’ Trace says. ‘Don’t let those bastards get you down, Est,’ she adds. She starts working on a maths problem. Slowly, reluctantly, I get out my books and do the same. We don’t say any more. Through the wall, faintly, I hear Misa’s music, while I do my maths homework properly for the first time in weeks.

*******

I go straight home after school next day, dump my stuff then set off to fetch Border.

It’s getting lighter these days, the seventh dwarf is never home so I have to go to Mnemosyne. Granny is still not saying much to me, she doesn’t ask me in for tea. But since I haven’t had any more text messages from Ella, I suspect she hasn’t either. Some days when I knock on the door she not only hands over Border, she even smiles. ‘You’ll be the death of me, Esther,’ she says one day, almost fondly. ‘I don’t want to be,’ I say. ‘Watch it then,’ she says. Another day she says, ‘I had a call from Stuart. He says he’ll be up again soon.’ But he hasn’t come up yet and today Border is tied up on deck waiting for me: Mnemosyne is locked and dark. A note says, ‘Take Border back to Bob’s please. xG.

I walk her along the towpath for a bit as usual. But mum has asked me to pick up a jacket from the dry cleaners across the road from Mailbox. I keep Border with me and then, instead of going back up through the Mailbox I decide to walk along the side of the overpass and back up Holliday Street, past the building site I look at from my window.

The gate in the chain-link fence is open for some vehicle or other; an empty dumper truck, like a wide tricycle with an engine and a big barrow in front driven by a man in a yellow helmet. I take the chance to stand by the gate close as I dare to try and get a better look. I hold tight to Border. I can hear her getting excited about something. She’s pulling on her lead, but I’ve got her safe; I think I’ve got her safe: but I haven’t.

PART TWO Chapters 3-4

CHAPTER THREE

The third thing carried by the slewing unit is the much shorter machinery arm.

I’m not writing any more emails to Ella, I think grimly. I don’t. But I’m also too disheartened to write any more to Rashid. I get one from him, though. ‘Give me a place to stand’, it says. ’I will move the world. ARCHIMEDES: Who invented levers.’ (I suppose he means that Archimedes, whoever he is, said it.) ‘Cranes are enormous levers,’ he adds, in case I don’t know: ‘Love Rashid.x’ This almost cheers me: but only for a moment. After a moment I feel more patronised than happy.

The worst thing is that Granny stays in such a strop. She still thinks the message – messages now – there’ve been more, just the same - are my fault. That’s one thing. But why should Ella bug her so much. If Ella is anyone’s twin she’s mine. (This still seems a crazy idea to me, but I can’t think of any other way to explain what’s happening.) Strange messages on your mobile are even creepier than unknown emails. A bit like having a stalker. (I only just thought of that! But yes.) I keep telling her it’s not me sending them, how can it be me sending them if I get them too, from her mobile? But she doesn’t take any notice. It’s as if she just wants someone to blame; anything except believe it could be Ella. What’s it to her though? How can my possible twin get up her nose? The only time we encounter each other – by accident – near her boat, she just bolts her mouth and looks angrier than ever. Weird. Scary, in fact.

I’m so desperate I even ask my mother. ‘Who’s Ella?’ But she looks at me as if I’m crazy. ‘That was your make-believe friend, Esther,’ she says. ‘I don’t know anyone else called Ella.’ Do I believe her? At the moment I don’t believe anything that grown-ups say. Every day now I have to pick up Border from Bob’s boat – ‘Poseidon’ is the Greek god of the sea, he says - not from Mnemosyne - Muse of memory. Who’s remembering who then? I miss Granny. I wonder if she misses me. She’s behaving like someone my age I think. It’s like this with schoolfriends sometimes. But not with Granny? Surely?

School is school, the same as ever. Frankie and his gang look at me evilly but don’t do much. THANKS FOR THAT. I daren’t spend time with Rahilah after what they’ve said, but we do smile at one another. One good thing happens; Trace invites me home with her after school. ‘Will your mum be there?’ I ask.

‘Could be. She was on call last weekend. Sometimes she’s home earlier on days after that.’

But Trace’s mum wasn’t there at first.

Trace lives in a council block – I’d never have guessed. It’s not a very nice one either: the lifts smell of pee: the hall and corridors smell of disinfectant. But once inside her door it’s lovely. The flat’s full of African stuff – blankets – hangings – rugs; also African statues. ‘My grandmother came from South Africa,’ Trace explains. ‘My grandfather was some kind of bully so she ran away from him when Mum and her brother were little and went back home to her mum. Mum stayed there till she was 17 and wanted to go to university. She hated South Africa, because of apartheid and all that. She won’t go back there even now. And my grandmother won’t come here. That’s why I’ve never met her. Lucky you, Esther.’

Not so lucky just now, I think. ‘But I don’t want to talk about granny, not even to Trace. ‘Your mum still likes African stuff,’ I say, looking at it all. There’s a blanket over the sofa that smells of something strange. (‘Goat-hair,’ Trace says casually, when I ask.) But I love the look of it. It’s white and black and red, with small animals and patterns in rows. It’s from Mali, Trace informs me. Not knowing where Mali is, is something else I don’t admit. I’m used to not knowing things Trace takes for granted. I’m used not to understanding her at all really. Maybe she doesn’t understand me. (I don’t understand myself sometimes; not when I wake up terrified out of a nightmare shouting ‘Ella! Ella! Ella!’) Outside this flat, now, in the hallway, I hear shouting and screaming. Trace takes no notice. When she sees I’ve heard she says: ‘The people next door are always fighting. It doesn’t matter.’

There’s more smell of goat in Trace’s room – another blanket is spread across her bed. There’s no more African stuff though, just bookshelves everywhere and a view over the not particularly pretty part of Brum she lives in, not far from the Rover car factory at Longbridge.

Trace has a pc on her desk like me. And she has a heap of cartridge paper, covered in drawings. Seeing me look at them she says, ‘Be my guest,’ making me feel nosy. Trace is just so brilliant, I think, enviously. I knew she was clever and could sing. But now I find she can draw- really draw – and she doesn’t even take art at school! The drawings are all of people, unlike the Seventh Dwarf’s pictures; though they are as tight and detailed as his. When I ask Trace if she does paintings too, she just says. ‘Nope,’ and goes on turning the sheets over.

More and more people appear. I recognise some of them: Rashid, Jay, Rahilah. And suddenly there I am too and I wish I wasn’t. ‘Do I really look like that? Does she always see me as frowning? I wonder Just like Granny in her photographs. Weird.

Perhaps I should ask her to draw a picture of Ella, I think. Which is crazy; Ella doesn’t exist and even if she does, how could Trace know what she looks like. I don’t know what Ella looks like. Yet I almost find myself saying, ‘Trace will you draw someone from me?’ But the words won’t quite come out. Next time, I think. Next time I’ll ask her.

Trace nods as if she hears my thought. She doesn’t say anything, merely turns up a drawing of a thin woman I half recognise, but don’t know. Lots of pictures of her follow: sitting in armchairs, reading, standing at a stove. ‘Your mum, Trace?’ Before she has time to answer a key turns in the lock, and Trace’s mum herself is flinging herself and her bag down on the sofa, not even bothering to take off her coat.

‘Tea, Misa?’ Trace asks. (She hadn’t asked me if I’d like tea, I think. But then why should she? And maybe she was going to ask me later.) She sounds just my mum when I come in from school, or when my dad comes from work. Tea comes out –biscuits - chocolate digestives, like I’ve been getting from Bob the Seventh Dwarf – and her mother drinks the tea and eats the biscuit and livens up fractionally, and tells me, that yes, she remembers me from the school play.

‘Have you got to go back to the hospital, Misa,’ Trace asks. (Is ‘Misa’ a special word for mum, I wonder; or is it her name?) Her mother nods. ‘Sorry love. So I need a bit of sleep now. But we can eat something together before I go back.’

‘That’s OK,’ Trace says. ‘I’m used to it.’ (Her mother grimaces at that. But I don’t get the feeling Trace means to be unkind. I think she just means exactly what she says. Trace always does.) ‘Go and sleep then. I can cook. Shall I make the salmon and rice dish?’

I am impressed by Trace. At the same time I’m glad I don’t have to be like that. I’m glad my mother has time to look after me really. I wish granny still did. WHO IS ELLA? WHAT IS SHE DOING TO US? I shout inside my head. Again I almost ask Trace to draw her picture. But I don’t.

We do homework after that; some difficult maths that Trace has to help me with, then notes on Lord of the Flies which we’re finishing in English. Poor Piggy, we agree, seeing what’s done to him by the others on their island.

‘Makes Smelly Poke seem a doddle,’ Trace says. Thinking of Frankie I’m not so sure.

Tracy walks me to the bus stop in the Bristol Road, then goes home to cook salmon rice and I go home on the bus, and with the help of Google look up Mali on the map. (It’s just South of the Sahara if you’re interested. They make beautiful blankets there. But you know that already, whoever you are.)

*******

All the next week I continue to collect Border from Poseidon not Mnemosyne. Bob leaves the door unlocked for me the days he’s not going to be home – mostly he is; the site stops working when it gets dark. I see the lights on in Mnemosyne and smoke coming from her chimney. I see that plant pots and things have been moved on the top of the cabin. But Granny I don’t see. Her curtains these days are drawn. I feel horribly shut out

An email from Rashid suggesting we meet after his next stint at his uncle’s shop makes me feel better. When I collect mum’s paper that Saturday he winks at me behind his uncle’s back so I know it’s still OK. Outside the shop, three geese are sitting on the patch of grass as if they own it - it’s littered with their round green turds. Turds and all I love them. This morning I love all the people walking up Bridge Street, or getting in and out of cars, mostly Indians today – there must be an Indian wedding at the Registry Office in Centenary Square. The women wear gorgeous silk saris edged with gold; even the children are wearing bright silk clothes and have silk ribbons in their hair. They make English wedding clothes look boring, I think. It makes me still more pleased to be meeting Rashid. Pakistanis wear saris too.What would I look like in a sari, I wonder? If, if? If what?

We don’t meet in Bridge Street – that’s too near Rashid’s uncle – but in the Gas Street Basin, just by the Tap and Stile. Even on a day like today people are standing outside it with beer glasses in their hands. We walk past them, past the car park, round the corner along Holliday Wharf. The Stamp Man is sitting on the bench outside, huddled up in what looks like an old army coat. He doesn’t look at us.

I feel very shy suddenly. ‘Look at all the geese’ is all I can think of to say, reminded of the geese sitting outside the newsagent’s shop. ‘My uncle is always getting complaints about the geese from people in the flats,’ Rashid answers. ‘He just says, “they live by the canal, so what do they expect? There are too many terrible things in the world to worry about geese.” He should know.’ Rashid falls silent a moment – when he does speak I wish he hadn’t. ‘A lot of my family were killed in India when India split from Pakistan. Some of them were pulled off a train and murdered. Another uncle was killed in anti-Muslim riots in Gujerat, not very long ago. He had his head cut off.

I stare at a duck swimming along the canal, at a wok sitting on the other side of the canal below some flats. My mind is so awash with this awfulness, I hardly notice it. I’m trying to imagine such things happening to Granny…. I can’t - I don’t want to imagine it. I cannot believe I’m talking to someone in whose family such things can have happened.

‘You seem to have a lot of uncles Rashid,’ I say, at last.

‘What’s a WOK doing there?’ asks Rashid.

He must have realised how much he’s shocked me. He takes my arm – he almost takes my arm and then takes his hand away. He’s not supposed to be out with a girl, I know, let alone touch one. He points at a crane far over to the left of us. ‘I still find cranes so beautiful,’ he says, ‘But I don’t think I want to go up one, not the way you do, Esther. I don’t like heights,’

‘I don’t like heights either,’ I say. ‘That’s not the point.’ But I’m not even sure what the point is. There’s a big dog ahead of us, now. ‘Border.’ I shout before she can try to attack it – she’s not afraid of big dogs. She comes running back and I put her on the lead.

The ice between Rashid and me is broken now. We walk along quite happily, talking when we feel like it, not when we don’t – just how things should be between friends, I think. We go through the long tunnel up towards the university. The ground is uneven there, it’s dim almost dark in the middle, damp-smelling, altogether creepy. We don’t go far beyond it. Rashid says he can’t be too late and nor can I. Coming back through the tunnel, I stumble, fall against Rashid who steadies me; for a moment we are almost holding hands. We look at each other in the dark – I think Rashid is looking at me– and hastily separate. Then we walk back silently along the towpath. A train trundles along the line besides us. Two cyclists ring their bells to show they want to get past. Border strains after two more ducks on the canal and barks loudly. ‘Shut up,’ I say. Rashid laughs. When we reach the staircase that leads up to Bath Road, he says; ‘I’d better go now. I can catch the bus at the top of Broad Street.’ ‘See you Monday,’ I say. He smiles and is off, his feet clattering on the iron rungs.

The Stamp Man is still sitting outside Holliday Wharf. He holds out his Stamp Hand when I go past; I blow him a kiss I’m feeling so happy. So happy in fact, I even dare knock on Granny’s door - the curtains are open; I know she’s there. I see her face staring out of the window. I knock still harder, but she doesn’t answer. I hand Border in at Poseidon and suddenly I’m not so happy any longer.

‘What have you been doing to your grandmother?’ Mum asks when I get in. ‘She seems quite upset.’

‘What’s she been doing to me?’ I say, and run out.

I slam my bedroom door behind me. Even the lovely warm thoughts of Rashid can’t stop me bursting into tears. Again. These days, it seems to me, I’m always bursting into tears. It’s BORING.

CHAPTER FOUR

What would I do without the Seventh Dwarf? When I bring Border back after her evening walk these days, he almost always gives us tea and a biscuit. The tea is the strong sweet stuff we never have at home; mum drinks green tea mostly, and dad, coffee.

Bob is so used to me now he even gets his paints out sometimes and his drawing-board. But he covers what he’s doing, never actually paints while I’m in there. Nor does he say much. Once he says, out of the blue. ‘Apollo was my son’s name. I made him a mobile when he was born. With suns all over it. Apollo was the Greek sun god.’

‘ I know,’ I say huffily.

Another day he says. ‘My little girl; she was Artemis. Moon goddess. She got moons. On her mobile.’

‘I bet it was nice,’ I say, not particularly interested. I’m not feeling happy today. I’ve been unable to stop myself thinking about dead babies; what happens to them. Was Ella in hell because she hadn’t been christened? Is that why she keeps plaguing granny and me? I suppose I ought to feel sorry for granny too, if so, but I don’t. I just feel angry. And a bit frightened. As well as alone.

At home I spend a lot of my time on Google putting in words like ‘twins’ and ‘past lives’ and ‘unborn’ and ‘ghosts’ and even ‘cyberspace’. I get a lot of stuff back but none of it helps. It doesn’t seem to cover ghosts sending emails, let alone text messages. I go back to cranes with relief; I know all the sites now. Or I think I do. I especially like the message board, its chatroom. Even though you can get too much of crane drivers boasting about the view from cranes in places like Cincinnati or people called things like ‘Bossman’ droning on about safety precautions and security on tower-crane sites- about people getting to the top of cranes who shouldn’t - ‘another unsecured crane,’ I read, over and over. It takes a while for the penny to drop. That this means people like me do get to go up cranes sometimes, in spite of everything done to stop them. I’ll remember this, I think. For a moment I feel encouraged.

*********
My homework doesn’t go too well now. Even when I do it, it’s pretty skimped. Miss Key our class-teacher (politer nickname ‘Doory’ I’m not going to explain why; just guess) shakes her head and says I’m going to have to pull my socks up or I’ll be demoted. (Miss K – Doory- is always full of phrases like ‘pulling up socks,’ which I put up with because she can, mostly, keep our class in order, unlike some.) I worry about this in a distant way, but not so much that my ‘socks’ don’t remain round my ankles.

Trace seems to think it’s my problem, nothing to do with her. Jay teases me as usual. I’m fed up with Jay making a joke of everything; nothing feels like a joke just now. I feel ever more fed up too, with the way he fiddles with his hair. Sometimes I almost hate him. I glare at him, and he looks back – his expression might look hurt on anyone else; but not on Jay, I think. Rashid doesn’t say anything; he just gives me the odd worried glance. Rahilah fills in stuff for me, finds answers, tries to help me keep up with the rest of them. Probably it’s thanks to her I stay where I am, for the moment.

I haven’t been to Trace’s again. Rashid hasn’t suggested another walk. Suddenly Rahilah seems the only person in the world who’s nice to me apart from Barty who’s taken to shouting with pleasure every time I walk in at the door. I can’t think why he does, though.

I need more and more to talk to Rahilah. She’s the only person who might understand what’s happening, I think, because of her own dead twin. But I don’t want her to think that I’m crazy. Sometimes I feel as if I am.

Forgetting about Frankie, let alone his mates, I corner her in the Year Ten cloakroom one day, and ask her ‘do you ever dream about your dead twin?’ It feels tactless even as I say it. ‘Your dead twin.’ Rahilah, her coat in her hands, crumpling and un-crumpling it between her fingers, considers the question very seriously. ‘Sometimes, perhaps,’ she says. ‘But I don’t remember my dreams very often.’

‘Do you ever hear her speaking to you in your head?’ I ask still more urgently. She drops her coat – it’s a dark green anorak with a tartan lining. She bends to pick it up – stays down there as if thinking very hard. Again, though, rising to her feet, not really looking at me, she shakes her scarved head.

I can’t stop now. ‘Rahilah, can you imagine getting letters from your twin?’ but this time she throws her head back, thrusts her arms into the green anorak, pulls the trailing end of her hijab out of the way, and says almost crossly for her – or is upset? – I wonder: ‘Esther do you think I’m crazy?’

‘Of course you’re not,’ I say. Wanting to add. ‘Do you think I am?’ But I don’t. Perhaps because she might say ‘yes.’ And also because I know she is sad about her twin. I also know, suddenly, looking at her, – I don’t know quite how I know, but I do – that her sadness is quite different from mine, much sadder even. Compared to hers, my sadness seems as much about loneliness –bewilderment - anger – fear -as about grief. My grief, though real enough, feels almost like it belongs to someone else.

******

Talking to Rahilah has been against all my rules. But Frankie’s leaving me mostly alone this term has made me forget. Also, seeing him in New Street being shouted at by his mother has made it harder to see him as scary. Even though I still know that he is.

Silly me then. One of his girl hangers-must have been seen me and Rahilah hobnobbing in the girls’ cloakroom. What happens next is my fault, for sure. I wish - I really wish – it has happened to me, not Rahilah. Fat lot of good that does.

It wasn’t Frankie did it anyway – I guess Frankie’s a bit too fly to attack a Muslim girl himself. He let the girls do his dirty work for him: out of school what’s more.

PART TWO; CHAPTERS 1 -2

PART TWO

CHAPTER ONE

The second thing carried by the slewing unit is the cabin in which the driver sits, from which he controls the load.

Let’s face it; everything I’ve been writing here has been like emails to Ella. My New Year Resolution is this; I’m not going to pretend any more that it’s not all messages to her; and if you, whoever you are think I’m bonkers to send messages to someone who doesn’t exist that’s your problem. See if I care. I’M NOT WRITING TO YOU. So here goes; my first – new year - email to Ella.

January 1st. Birmingham.
Dear Ella, wherever you are, whoever you are: my born dead twin or what? Why don’t I hear from you any more? OK if you’re going to be like this be like it. See if I care. And I tell you what, even if you won’t email me, I’m going to email you: till you’re sick of it, really really sick. Assuming you exist. I’m doing you the honour of assuming you do, somewhere, out there, up there, in another world, Harry Potter’s or Philip Pullman’s, or something quite different. I don’t know where you are. I don’t know who you are. I just know you are there. Dead or alive, I don’t care. EMAIL ME!!!!

What’s been going on then? Not a lot. The usual Christmas stuff. Granny came and Stuart and my sister Norah – she’s named after Granny - and Josh her husband and Barty, their baby. I’ve told you about the baby. I’m beginning to like him better. He’s almost crawling. He lies on his front and pushes his bum up and his back legs out. Mum says, fondly, as if she’s looking forward to it, ‘he’ll be a little nuisance once he’s into everything.’. Norah, on the other hand, just groans. I’m not sure she enjoys motherhood. She’s going back to work next week, which means her taking Barty to nursery three days a week, and my mother looking after him one day instead of two. My sister’s supposed to look after him herself on the fifth day, I bet she’ll always be ringing mum up to say she has to do XYZ and then mum will have him on her day too. Why bother with having a baby at all if you’re going to be like that?

I like the way I can make Barty laugh. He laughs almost as much for me now as he did for Trace. Makes me think I wouldn’t mind having a baby of my own one of these days, after all.

I haven’t seen Trace since the end of term; or Rahilah, or Rashid or Jay or anyone. I miss them – especially Rahilah funnily enough, she’s the only one can’t email me, not that Trace does much. No way I miss Frankie and his lot. I did see Frankie in New Street one day. But he was with a white woman must be his mum, which means it’s his dad is black. She looked nasty. I could hear her screaming at him, like he was a horrible insect, not a person at all. Well he is a horrible insect, I should know, but his mum shouldn’t see him like that. He didn’t shout back. He looked angry, and sulky. He wasn’t wearing his ear-ring, he hadn’t got his hood on, even his flat top didn’t look flat as usual; he stuck to his mum like Border sticks to me when I really tell her off and she’s listening for once. He didn’t see me. I scarpered.

At least Rashid’s been emailing me. So has Jay. About cranes mostly, both of them. Rashid wrote; ‘they had to get a crane somewhere in America to lift an elephant!!!! While Jay told me he’d found something about what crane drivers keep in their cabin. “I’ll tell you about that when I see you, Est. Or maybe I shouldn’t!!!!!!” he said, He probably just means they’ve got sexy – what mum calls ‘lewd’ - pin-ups. Why shouldn’t I believe that? Rashid didn’t mention that though I bet Jay told him. He wouldn’t. Not to a girl.

Granny has given me a mobile for Christmas. Mum’s furious – she thinks mobiles are a waste of space. And will make me even more materialistic than she assumes I am already. She must be thinking of those ads which say ‘Does your mobile let you down?’ to make you get a jazzier one to show off to your mates. No good my saying my mates aren’t like that. They aren’t. (Trace is the only one with a mobile anyway, and as far as I can see she never uses it. It’s just so she and her mum can keep in touch.) No use either me saying, airily ‘I’m just a typical teenager, I’ll grow out of it’ this makes her crosser than ever – maybe because I pinched her line – I hear her saying it to dad, sometimes, when she’s talking to him about me. Well why do you think I used it? POW.

(Actually, being a teenager is something I’d happily grow out of. I don’t like it much. Think of Frankie and Co, lurking down the street. Are there bullies where you are, Ella?)

‘Who’s going to pay for all your calls?’ mum asks. ‘Granny’s putting in five pounds a month,’ I say, smugly I admit. That really drives Mum spare as I knew it would. Sparer. Sparest. I send a text to Granny on her mobile to tell her to watch out. She hasn’t texted me back yet. I daresay she can handle mum. She can usually, isn’t that just what drives Mum so totally, utterly mad. At least it makes her forget to be so mad at me.

?love Esther.
PS. I just went out to see Barty. AND HE’S CRAWLING. HE REALLY IS.

PPS. I enailed my number to Rashid.. He emailed his. I didn’t even know he had a mobile! He doesn’t ring me - I don’t suppose he ever will. And I don’t suppose I’ll ever dare ring him!!

PPPS. I don’t know if you have mobiles where you are, Ella. Text me if you do. My number is…..’
TEXT ME, ELLA.

I hesitate before writing this. Do I WANT Ella send me texts as well as emails?
I write it anyway, Maybe she won’t text me. And she doesn’t text me. Not at first. What she does is much MUCH worse.

CHAPTER TWO

Dear Ella.
Still nothing? Who cares? I’m back at school now. It’s boring. But not as boring as being at home with just mum and me. And it’s good seeing Rashid and Rahilah and Jay and Trace again. Though I still have to be careful about seeming too friendly with any of them, except Trace. You know why. That’s all. Your turn? EMAIL ME. Love? Esther

Actually the very morning after I write this I discover how I can see Rashid sometime outside school. This is how.

A new little newsagent has opened in the corner of the flats in Bridge Street, opposite the multi-storey car parks. It’s more than a kiosk than a shop, barely enough for more than one customer – when there are two, the second one in has to move outside to let the first go out again. Mum thinks a newspaper shop is A GOOD THING. This means she has cancelled the delivery from our old newsagent and until the new man finds a delivery boy - he keeps promising he will - she picks up her Independent from there instead, except on Saturdays when she sends me instead. So it is not such A GOOD THING for me. When I grumble at having to get up early on a Saturday, she says it doesn’t hurt me to get moving even if I’m not like some of those other teenagers she hears about who only get out of bed at the weekends to go clubbing. ‘You wouldn’t let me go clubbing anyway,’ I say, crossly.

(In fact I’m not sure I’m much into that kind of thing. Yet. Not that I tell mum. Trace says clubbing’s dead boring and I believe her, especially as all the people at school who claim they go are boring. BORING. Not to say silly. If Rashid could go clubbing with me that might be different. But I don’t suppose he’s allowed to go clubbing either.)

The second Saturday morning who should I see inside the shop but the builder man who lives on the boat opposite Granny, and who I’ve taken to calling the Seventh Dwarf - not just because he’s shortish and roundish and bearded but because he always carrying something as if he’s off to work like in that silly song. (‘Heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s off to work…’ etc). Today, for some reason, he’s got a small coil of rope over one shoulder. He’s buying a bar of Cadbury’s fruit and nut, a Bounty bar, a small packet of Old Holborn tobacco, a copy of the Guardian, a copy of Sporting Life and a copy of the Daily Telegraph. He shows me all these things when he emerges. ‘Guardian, man, for your pinko Gran’ he says. ‘Telegraph for me. Telegraph crossword’s better.’

‘Granny only does the easy crossword,’ I say. ‘Sometimes I do it with her.’

The Seventh Dwarf just snorts. Then off he goes with the papers etc under one arm, his mysterious coil of rope over the other. His name is Bob really. That’s what granny calls him anyway.

There’s more room now in the tiny shop. The man smiles at me, says ‘Come for your Independent have you?’ “My mum’s Independent,’ I correct him. And at that moment someone who’s been a bent back till then, sorting out a pile of Saturday supplements just inside the door of the store-room, pops up his head and says ‘Hullo, Esther.’ ‘What are you doing here, Rashid?’ I ask.

‘She’s in my class,’ Rashid mumbles to the newsagent, a bit red in the face: maybe because he’s not supposed to talk to girls. Not that the newsagent seems to mind. “I am Rashid’s uncle,’ he says.’ Rashid’s a good boy, he’s coming to help me out with all these supplements on Saturday mornings. It’s much too much work for me. You will know from school that Rashid is a good boy, that he works hard and is helpful and doesn’t get into trouble.’

I agree that Rashid is all these things; Rashid doesn’t look at me again until I start turning to go out of the shop when he gives me a big wink behind his uncle’s back. ‘See you at school next week, Esther,’ he says.

‘See you, Rashid,’ I say. Maybe he and I can meet on Saturday mornings sometimes, after he’s finished work, I think, as I head for home with Mum’s paper. That is if Rashid would like to. I don’t know for sure. What I do know is that it would be safer to meet round here, so far from school.

***

I don’t stay at home long. Mum is busy reading her paper, dad writing something in his office. I decide to collect Border for her walk. I go the Bridge Street way hoping to see Rashid again, but there’s no sign of him. I don’t dare go looking for him inside the shop.

There’s no sign of granny either. I take my mobile and call her up, but her mobile is switched off and the door of Mnemosyne locked, her Guardian slung in a carrier bag on the tiller. As I stand hesitating, I hear a familiar bark. Bob, the Seventh Dwarf, appears with Border behind him. ‘Your gran had to go off so I took Toilet Brush here. She said you might want her before she could get back.’

‘Her name’s Border,’ I say indignantly.

‘She looks like a toilet brush to me, man,’ he says.

I walk Border along the towpath for a bit, as usual. It’s a grey windy winter morning – even the geese look cold. I’m frozen. I don’t stay long. When I get back to Gas Street Basin Mnemosyne is still locked, Granny’s Guardian still hung on the tiller.

I knock on the Seventh Dwarf’s door. When he takes Border in, she doesn’t seem to mind one bit, even gives him a pleased bark. ‘Cold are you?’ he adds to my surprise. ‘Got the kettle on. Come in.’

I only hesitate a minute. Then I bend my head to his door. I don’t know quite what I expect to find; something deep and fuggy and underground like him, perhaps. And it IS deep and fuggy and underground in a way. There is a reek of paraffin lamp, coal stove and some kind of cooking – onions? - also pipe smoke. There’s a bit of damp - a faintly watery smell; (there’s always a watery smell in these boats; Mnemosyne has it too.) There’s some other smell I can’t quite place. What surprises me is how orderly everything is. Bob’s bed just inside the door is made up as tightly as a hospital bed, a striped blanket folded across the foot. The brass rim to the window is shining. The face on the old-fashioned black alarm clock is white white white. More surprising still this cabin is not just a bedroom. It’s a toolshed. On every wall are rows of hooks, on every hook a hammer, a pair of pliers, a can of nails, a Stanley knife, a plane, a set of screwdrivers in a bag. All the tools are clean; every blade shiny.

There are more tools in the kitchen, a row of yellow mugs lined up like soldiers just below the roof, and another neat row of tins – mostly baked beans and tomatoes - on shelves under the calor gas hob. It’s lit. The kettle is beginning to shout. On the other side, beneath the sink, are rows of smaller cans with lids, all different colours – before I can inspect them the Dwarf ushers me through to the little sitting-room at the back and that is the most surprising place of all. Not another tool room– a picture gallery. Really!! Small pictures are so crammed up against each other you can’t see an inch of the walls. All of them alike. I don’t mean they’re the same picture of the same thing: I mean they’re the same sort of picture. Landscapes mostly - seas, valleys, mountains – and a few of plants –climbing plants like vines covered in exotic fruits and flowers. Some– even fewer – have landscapes and flowers. Sea, mountains, etc are framed by climbing plants.

While the Dwarf (I must remember to call him, Bob) goes back into the kitchen to deal with the screaming kettle, I peer more closely. I see that the pictures are all painted the same way, in tight little lines of colour like cross-hatching. They must take hours of close work. I am not surprised to see 3 pairs of reading specs hung on a hook by the door. There’s also a big jar of mostly fine-pointed paintbrushes on shelf over the stove. The familiar smell was paint, of course. The small cans in the kitchen would be paint cans.

I’m not sure I like the pictures. While I’m wondering Bob reappears with two mugs of tea. He must see me looking at them but all he says is, ‘I had a daughter once.’ Then he fills a saucer with tea and milk for Border. We sit watching her lap it up and he doesn’t say anything more. So I ask him about being a builder and about cranes.

He doesn’t answer that. He just asks me suddenly why I want to go up a crane. I’ve forgotten asking him about this before, obviously he hasn’t. I look back at him silently I can’t – I don’t want - to explain. In the end he says; ‘must be air you like.’ Then he adds, ‘not my element. Water and earth; that’s me. Sky’s not my scene, man.’

That’s right. None of his pictures leave much room for sky. Perhaps that’s why I don’t seem to like them much. This cabin has no sky in it anywhere. Out of the window all I can see are buildings – brick buildings made of earth - and the water of the canal. The bitter smell of coal overwhelms everything as Bob opens the stove door and dumps new stuff on the glowing coals.

‘Not my scene, man.’ I am enchanted suddenly by the Seventh Dwarf’s way of putting things – calling me ‘man’ all the time. ‘Not my scene, man…. sounds like something out of the sixties, like he’s a hippy: or was a hippy. He’s too old to be a hippy now.

Border stops lapping tea, suddenly, pricks up her ears and yelps. A knock comes on the door. ‘It’s open,’ Bob yells. As Border gives a welcome bark, there’s Granny’s face arrives in the entrance. But when I go to hug her she pushes me away, yelling angrily, and pulls her mobile out of her pocket. She stops yelling for a moment as she keys something in, then she hands it to me and starts all over. ‘What do you mean by this Esther?’ I hear. Border is barking now, too. The Seventh Dwarf with his back to us stokes the fire furiously. And I am looking at a message on Granny’s mobile saying: ‘Remember me? Love Ella.’ I look for the number the message has been sent from. My number. Sent at 11.05 am. But it’s only 11.15 now and my phone has been in my pocket all morning switched off.

I throw Granny’s phone back at her and scrabble for my own. As soon as I turn it on the message signal sounds. And there it is; just the same. ‘Remember me? love Ella.’ Sent from Granny’s phone. I hand my mobile to Granny. She only stops shouting for as long as it takes her to look. Then she starts all over again. I don’t know what upsets me more, her being so angry, so unfairly, or the creepiness of the message. I can’t bear it either way.

CHAPTERS ELEVEN AND TWELVE

CHAPTER ELEVEN
A trolley runs along the jib to move the load in and out from the crane’s centre

One thing Rashid has emailed me about cranes sticks especially in my head; how they grow right from inside themselves. They sit inside buildings and raise their arm – their jib part – then pick up another section and slot it in underneath; they can go on like that, on and on, as high as they need to. I was so pleased with this one I even told Trace about it one wet day when we’re sitting in a corner of the hall eating our lunch. Trace had marmite and lettuce sandwiches – she always has marmite and lettuce sandwiches. Her mum used to give her peanut butter instead, she says. But that isn’t allowed any more because some people are so allergic they swell up and die if you put a hand on their arm with the smallest trace of peanut butter: if their hand touches it and they lick that hand.

‘I’m not allergic to peanut butter,’ I say.

‘Lucky you, then,’ Trace says.

‘To die just like that,’ I say. And for a moment we both sit in silence. Is Trace thinking what I am, I wonder? – about sudden deaths sitting around us, everywhere we look. Not just the poisons they keep warning us that get into our food. About all the other lurking dangers. Suicide bombers. Dirty bombs. Car crashes. Meningitis. Serial killers. So on and so forth.

To counteract such gloomy thoughts I tell Tracy how cranes grow themselves. And how when the time comes they take themselves down again, using the reverse process.

‘A bit like we do really; people, animals, all of ourselves,’ Tracy says. ‘Growing from the inside. While noone’s looking.’

‘Cranes take their new sections from outside,’ I point out.

‘So do we,’ Tracy says. ‘We eat. We take stuff from outside too.’

I’m doubtful about this. But then Tracy adds. ‘Look at babies. Look at your baby, how he eats.’ And then I do think of him with my usual mix of tenderness and fury; and it’s true he does take a lot of milk and other stuff, he does seem to get seems bigger by the day.

“Well there you are then,’ Tracy insists when I admit it.

‘But people don’t get smaller getting older, and they go on eating,’ I say, thinking of Granny who seems the same size to me that she’s always been.

‘Oh but they do,’ Tracy says. ‘My great gran in South Africa did. She just shrivelled upside herself. Till she shrivelled away.’ She said it almost ghoulishly. Glancing over her shoulder as if to tell her ghosts to get lost.

‘Well my granny doesn’t,’ I say.

‘But she will,’ Trace says ‘She will, she will.’ Why do we keep getting onto to such sad subjects today – now I’m remembering the urn on the shelf in Mnemosyne. But then Trace and I look at each other and giggle as if the best thing to do is laugh. And I ask her about the play and being Potiphar’s wife and that’s all right, that matter’s not sad at all, it’s nice. Potiphar’s wife hasn’t any songs of her own, Trace says. But because she can sing – or so the play producer’s think - she’s being allowed to sing a solo. Potiphar’s wife has to try and seduce Joseph after all and songs are good for that. As long as the producer agrees she can even choose her own.

‘What song are you going to sing?’ I ask.

‘Wait and see,’ Trace says.

*********

In fact it’s only a few days now till the play; only a week or ten days then till the end of term. And now, suddenly, it’s the day of the performance.

At dinnertime, I ask Trace, cautiously, if her mum’s coming. (Trace never talks about her mother. I’m not sure that it’s a safe question.)

‘Of course she’s coming, if she can; if she’s not bleeped.’

‘Bleeped?’ But Trace is calling someone else now across the room. Maybe she doesn’t want me asking more questions. If I don’t understand what ‘bleeped’ means that’s my problem.

Trace is often like that. As usual I’m left to work things out for myself. The only people I know who have bleepers are doctors like the ones in Casualty. If Trace’s mum was a doctor, wouldn’t Trace have told us sometime? I don’t know what to think.

But then it’s evening and everyone’s coming in and I’m showing them to their seats in the school hall turned theatre. The stage at the far end is set with a throne and a palm tree and a blown-up photograph of a desert reaching back far away, a pyramid in the middle distance. For some plays they put up curtains but Mr Painter the music teacher said – according to Trace who did not appear impressed – that curtains – and what he called ‘a proscenium arch’ -were old hat. Theatre in the round was much more interesting. The problem is that there is nothing in the round about our school stage: it’s at end of the hall and that’s that. All he can do is put a few fidgeting seventh years in the aisles and up the sides of the hall dressed up as Egyptian slaves to make the whole hall look like the Pharaoh’s court. It doesn’t. Even a camel – or an elephant – couldn’t have made our school hall look like Pharaoh’s court.

Granny and Stuart arrive and I show them to their seats, correctly. Granny is wearing a dark red coat I haven’t seen before, she doesn’t look the least eccentric, just a nice granny to have. Stuart is wearing jeans and a leather jacket as usual. If he’s got an earring in one ear, so what, there’s plenty of other older brothers have; even some of the Asians have.

My parents are due soon, too. ‘I’m looking forward to this,’ my mother has said, and my father is coming home early especially, even though I’m only an usher.

I don’t show them to their seats. Jay ushering on the other side does that. Looking out all the time for someone who could be Trace’s mum, I pick one or two small and thin women with fairish hair as possibles but I don’t know for sure. And then I see Mrs Scott who’s organising what she calls ‘front of house people’ frowning at me; I’m forgetting to do my job; I have to stop.

All the seats are occupied I see as the doors close and I take up my position at the back. Even though I’m not taking part myself I feel a small shiver of excitement as the room darkens and Mr Philips starts to play his piano accompanied by a brilliant drummer – a Jamaican boy I don’t know from Year ten. Two other boys, one white, one black, neither so brilliant, play guitars – one electric, one accoustic. A girl is playing the trombone, an assortment of drums, bells, clangers, rattles, bangers are played by all sorts of people, boys and girls, of all ages, from all classes. Mr Philips has been training them up since the start of term. The rest of us are sick of the racket.

But it’s different on the night: and with the singers too. I think they sound pretty good. Of course like everyone else by now I know all the tunes and pretty much all the words of ‘Joseph’ by heart. I chant them under my breath most of the way through.

Trace does not come on for quite a while as Potiphar’s wife, though I see her in the chorus earlier on. Then suddenly there she is, reclining on a couch at the back of the stage wearing her golden pyjamas covered in sequins sewn on by me. She has a flimsy veil on her head round which she peers seductively at Joseph while the choir is singing about Potiphar’s wife’s scheming. Joseph is played by a black boy, Clinton Kingston from another class in year ten–.he’s not handsome unfortunately: he got the part because he can sing really well. (Lots of people tell him he should enter for Pop Idol. But he says he’s going to be a doctor, so he won’t have time. Just as well really. Somehow I can’t see him as the next Will Young.)

The choir stops singing. The stage is beginning to darken when the door alongside me creaks open. I’m supposed to stop anyone coming in mid-performance, but for some reason I don’t try and stop this person. She’s so little and light, like a tired ghost, she floats rather than enters, closing the door so softly it doesn’t make a sound. The next minute she’s leaning against the wall besides me. She’s wearing a long dark coat; her hair tied up in a scarf; that’s all I have time to notice, because the lights are coming up again on Trace’s couch. Every eye in the house is on her.

Slowly she gets to her feet – I can almost forget it is Trace now, the slow way she unwinds her scarf, reveals her face, slowly, lazily takes the microphone someone is handing her, leans back against a convenient pillar in her suit of gold. Alone but for a solitary rattle, the trombone plays an introduction tune, and suddenly Trace is singing.

The introductory tune sounded faintly familiar – I only realise why until a little way into the song which Trace is singing oh so simply, lazily, almost lovingly, when I hear the words… ‘The fundamental things apply…As Time Goes By.’ ‘As Time Goes By is the name of an old sitcom on TV; also the name of the song they use at the beginning and end of it. I don’t like the sitcom much myself; it’s soppy, it’s about people almost as old as granny. Yet now the song makes me want to cry; or maybe it’s just the way Trace sings it makes me want to cry. She’s singing it for me, I think, she’s looking straight at me. And then I see that the little woman in the big coat standing next to me really is crying; and that maybe Trace is not looking at me she’s looking at her. More likely she’s not looking at either of us, too blinded by the stage lights to see anyone at all. And maybe, the way she’s singing, there’s not a person in the hall doesn’t think she’s singing just for them. Even the kids who may be laughing at the soppy thing inside their heads - gross they may be thinking, just as I should be thinking - are silent. It’s the way she’s singing it, probably; in such a mellow, soft loving way. Like she loves all of us. ‘Time goes by.’ ‘Gross’ I repeat to myself, furious for being made to feel so soft; so like crying. But then it’s over. There’s a long pause. Then everyone starts clapping.

I am clapping like everyone else when I hear another faint, beep, beep sound. The next moment I feel someone tapping on my arm. It is the woman beside me in the long coat.

‘If you see Trace, could you very kindly tell her I did come,’ she says. ‘I heard her sing. But I can’t stay. I have to get back to the hospital.’

‘Are you her mum?’ I whisper back, even though I know the answer. ‘Misa,’ she says. And then she’s gone.

********

I do see Trace after, just for a minute. I do tell her. I say the name ‘Misa.’ ‘Your mum?’ I inquire. ‘Misa?’ She just nods. Then adds. ‘She’s a doctor,’ matter-of-factly, ‘A paediatrician, up at the QE. That means dealing with sick kids all day and every day.’

‘Must have been useful when you were little and sick,’ I say. ‘She was just a medical student then,’ Tracy says ‘She didn’t know anything about sick children then.’ She adds: ‘She’s always done her thing and I’ve always done my thing. It’s all worked out.’ I think she isn’t going to say any more. But suddenly, back over her shoulder she throws. ‘I’m glad she heard me. She likes that programme. She likes that song.’

Granny and Stuart come up then and my mother and father. All of them go on and on about how lovely Trace was. Was that really your friend? The one who came to tea?’ My mother asks. ‘I wouldn’t have thought that was her kind of song.’ (Or Trace’s kind of sitcom I’m thinking, imagining Judi Dench and Co, the actors. All very cosy: unlike Trace. My mother of course loves it.)

‘I don’t think it is her kind of song usually,’ Stuart says. ‘She rang to ask me what she should sing. It was my idea.’

‘You?’ I say. ‘I might have known. You always like such corny things.’ I roll my eyes, and we all go on home linking our arms, in silence. The whole time, though, when I’m not thinking about Stuart and Trace exchanging mobile numbers - how dare they? – my brother and my friend behind my back? – I’m thinking about that song.

********

It’s about love and lovers of course, as well as time. How it goes on ‘as time goes by.’ Will I still love Rashid’s beautiful brown eyes, I wonder, ‘as time goes by?’ But actually it’s not love so much I think about when I hear those words. It’s time. I don’t know how to deal with time; it scares me the way it moves on so fast. It scares me in Birmingham all the time. All those builders; all those cranes. One minute there’s an empty space; the next zillions of people are living in it, or shopping in it, or driving along it. This summer I saw a notice on an exhibition about Birmingham at the Ikon Gallery. People were asked to write their comments – and one girl said – it had to be a child, she hadn’t got grown-up writing; ‘why does Birmingham have to rebuild itself completely, now this year, this moment, August?’ I knew exactly what she meant.

Even the way the baby keeps on growing scares me sometimes. It doesn’t seem any time since it was a tiny space creature, its eyes looking at nothing, its face crinkled up, its little limbs punching and kicking invisible objects. And now he sits up and looks around himself and chortles; any moment he will be crawling then walking and talking and growing up to go to school like me. Does nothing ever stop for a moment? It’s all time’s fault, I think, that everything keeps on changing, so fast.

Sometimes I try to make time stop still. Eating my school picnic about of my lunchbox, I look around and think; stop; I’ve caught this moment and it’s here for as long as I want it. Jay is nibbling on crisps and a chapatti. Trace’s marmite and lettuce sandwiches are uneaten besides her while she fiddles with her belly ring, her eyes miles away. Ralilah and her best Muslim friend scarved heads together so can you can hardly tell which belongs to which, are giggling; there are the sounds of boys outside and a plane in the sky and the moaning hoot of a train on the railway line. All of it will stay there the same, like people and places in picture, until I tell it to stop. Now, just in this moment, I’m safe.

But then something distracts me. I don’t think of the moment again for hours sometimes, not till I’m home again. And then I think: I’ve lost it. And all those moments in between that I’ve never noticed. Time has simply kept on going by. And by. And by. No matter what.

I wonder if other people my age think like this? If so they don’t say, and I’m not going to ask in case they think I’m crazy. I’m sure Trace would think I’m crazy. Is it because of Ella I think like this I wonder suddenly? (I haven’t thought about Ella much lately: I haven’t had any more messages from her. What with the play and with Christmas coming up, and horrible Frankie, I’ve had too much else in my head.) Do I worry about time so much because Ella lives in the past? Is she slipping ever further away the more time goes on, her emails coming from further and further away? The thought of a growing distance, of a bigger and bigger gap opening between us feels both creepy and sad. Is that what makes me feel so sad?

I don’t enjoy thinking like this. I was so happy after hearing Trace sing and now I’m not happy at all. Only a week now till the end of term, till Christmas, I think, hoping to cheer myself up. It doesn’t cheer me up. I put Simon Rattle and Beethoven on very loudly. But when even that won’t do, I take it off and put on Morcheeba. Tonight I do not go to see if I have any emails; even from Rashid. I don’t want any emails. They’re too scary. My mother bangs on my door. ‘Turn that racket down,’ she shouts. But I don’t. I turn it up. I need it. Loud. Louder. LOUDEST.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Comanza: Potain: Wolff: Kroll: Lindea: Comedin: Heede: different makes of tower cranes.

The day after the play is Saturday. I sit at my desk, doing my homework; well that’s the idea. In fact I’m looking out of the window.

They work on the building site on Saturday mornings. By the car park in Bridge Street, I can see people getting out of their cars dressed for weddings in the Registry Office round the corner. Down below me the workers move around like ants, like pictures in history books on the building of the Pyramids. This side of the site, the foundations of the flats are already rising. Steel girders are set in vertical rows ready to support the next layers of breeze blocks. On the far side mobile cranes are moving about, lifting, digging. One tower crane is working, swinging bundles of girders across to the places where they are needed. The others are both still. Looking down to the bottom of the one nearest me, I suddenly see a man swing himself onto the ladder and start climbing up inside it.

He is wearing an orange safely helmet and a black donkey jacket, with something written on the back of it that I can’t see properly, except once, briefly, when he reaches yet another platform and starts on the next ladder. Even then I don’t have time to read it. He has a green plastic box slung over one shoulder. His lunch, I wonder? Cheese sandwiches? Ham? A pork pie? A flask of tea? Or coffee? When he’s up there in his cabin, does he sit longing for dinnertime I wonder, the way I do during especially boring classes at school. Or is he too busy concentrating, mesmerised like Border in front of a mouse hole, by the little bundle he’s negotiating towards its destination way below? What does he think about all day? What can you think about high up there all by yourself? Maybe his mind wanders just like mine does. Does he have a radio? Does he listen in to radio Birmingham, the way I’m do sometimes? Does he like eighties music? Or seventies music? And how does he go to the loo, I wonder? I really wonder about that. I send the question up to him in my thoughts as loudly as I can.

He won’t be able to hear me though, or what I’m listening to at this minute – a cd of granny’s, Bob Marley that I love to little bits, almost as much as I love Simon conducting Leonora number 3. He can’t hear anything except the wind noise, climbing. I really see, or do I just imagine the wind buffeting the ladder gently, swaying him about? I can hear the wind buffeting my own window.. It is blowing quite a bit today. The Christmas tree at the back of the jib above the counter weight is swaying but only a little. Its lights are winking on and off. Even in the daytime they’re not turned off. Does the man notice them? Do they make him too think ‘good, it’s almost Christmas?’ Or do all grown-ups dread Christmas like my mother says she does. Is he cold I wonder? Does he look down? Does he ever feel giddy with the height? Or does he simply not notice it?

The man in the donkey jacket is almost at the top. He swings onto the platform. He opens the door into the little glass cabin with its slanted front, and disappears inside. He’s shut inside away from everything and everybody. He doesn’t have a mother calling outside the door: ‘Esther!’ ‘Esther!’ ‘Coming,’ I shout, filled with longing and envy. ‘I will get up there myself one day, I tell myself. ‘I will, Ella, I will, I will. See if I don’t. I don’t mind if it’s scary.’

That’s a lie of course. Even if I am not scared at the thought of that ladder – not too scared - I’m scared of lots of other things. In particular I’m scared of Frankie and Frankie’s bullies. They’ve lain low recently. But I know they haven’t gone away altogether.
********

It’s a sunny day, quite mild really. Even the wind seems kindly enough. I take Border for a longer walk on Saturdays. I take her along the canal as usual, but the other way now, up towards the university. At weekends especially there’s plenty of life; runners, cyclists, families with children, pushchairs, prams; people walking dogs. I usually have to be careful of Border with other dogs, but even she seems laid back today. Just sniffs and passes on. There aren’t any narrow boats. There almost never are in winter. Though one or two might ride the canal over the Christmas holidays.

When we walk back, I see the usual drunks on the seat outside Holliday Wharf. At least I think it’s all drunks. But as I get nearer I see that the man sitting away from the others, on the far end, is the Stamp Man. I haven’t seen him since the day he was attacked. He doesn’t look any different from then, he’s staring at the ground as usual; when I say ‘hullo’ he doesn’t look up or move let alone speak. His hands are dangling besides him. Border goes up and licks them gently as if she remembers him. He doesn’t move them away. He lets her lick as if too remembers her too. I am happy to see that. At the other end of the bench one drunk is waving a can of Carlings Best Bitter and shouting; ‘I’ve got to protect my rights I have.’ ‘Yers’, mate,’ agrees the other. ‘You’ve got to protect them.’. I hope they’re nice to the Stamp Man. If he stays around I can ask Granny to keep an eye on him. I know she walks this way herself.

I take Border back to the Mnemosyne. I haven’t expected to see Granny, she’d told me she was going to see a film at the multi-screen at the top of Bridge Street. But it looks as if she’s been to Tesco instead. There’s stuff laid out for tea, chocolate olivers (wow!) even a hunk of cake from Costa Coffee. ‘Are you expecting someone, Granny?’ I ask. ‘I thought I might be expecting you, Esther,’ she answers. ‘How about staying to tea?’

It’s quite a while since I’ve stayed to tea with Granny. I say yes, wondering what she’s up to.

But she doesn’t seem up to anything at first. We talk about lots of things; the play, Trace, Stuart, school. Very casually at some point Granny asks if bullying goes on. I eye her suspiciously. She looks back, as casual as ever.. ‘A bit, I think,’ I say, equally casual. ‘I mean there are some gangs, and they do rather go for nerdy kids.’

I am not a nerdy kid, I tell myself. I stare granny straight in the eye to make sure she knows it. Granny pours more tea into my cup. ‘You know the theory about bullies?’ she says. ‘That they only attack people they think are weak. Meaning it’s better to show you’re not frightened, that you just don’t care. But I still think it’s a good idea to tell someone in the school that it’s happening. One of the teachers.’

‘That would only make it worse,’ I say. ‘Some of them bully teachers too.’ I think of poor Miss Petty who was new at the beginning of term and is supposed to teach us French, but hardly gets the chance. I’ve a feeling she won’t be there next term.

‘Not that kind of teacher,’ granny says.

‘Then they’d call you – the person – a snitch,’ I say. ‘And it would be even worse.’

‘Does anyone bully Trace?’ Granny asks. ‘I don’t think so,’ I say.

‘You see,’ she says.

I don’t quite know what I’m supposed to see. But Granny changes the subject, starts asking me what I want for Christmas, and when I tell her I haven’t a clue, tries to help me think.

It’s wonderfully cosy in her boat. She brings out old photograph albums for me to look at - one of my favourite things. I leaf through snaps of mum as a child – in colour mostly – but faded – and earlier pictures of granny herself as a child, mostly black and white. There’s little Granny in smocked frocks and fair-isle sweaters; bigger granny in a pair of boy’s corduroy shorts passed on from her brother; bigger granny still in a tweed coat and skirt like a grown-up’s, hair in long plaits. There’s even grown-up granny in black jeans and black polo-necked sweater, her hair cut in a fringe now, holding a baby mum. She looks happier in this one. In all the child photos, plaits granny, shorts granny, smocked frock granny, one thing never changes: the frown on her face.

The stove is hot: I’m perched on a stool in the shape of a hand that fits me exactly. Border is snoring on the sofa, somewhere she’s not allowed in our house –but then we have white sofas. Granny’s little sofa is covered by a bright Indian cloth set with tiny mirrors. Over the top of it is the shelf holding the Indian god and the shadow puppet, between which for a while stood the urn containing dead man’s ashes. Outside it’s dark already. The boat rocks slightly in the water. I wish I could stay here forever.

‘Why are you always frowning in your pictures, granny?’ I ask.

‘Only a week till Christmas,’ Granny says, as if I haven’t spoken.

‘And then what?’ I ask, wanting to ask the first question again, but somehow not able to.

‘And then what indeed?’ she answers. Which is hopeless. And I have to go home lonely. Because not only the bullies, all this stuff with Ella too, not being able – not being allowed - to tell anyone about her is lonely. Lonelier. Loneliest. I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t what will happen – what Ella may make happen – next.

END OF PART ONE.

CHAPTERS NINE AND TEN

CHAPTER NINE

The slewing unit carries three parts: first the long horizantal jib, the portion of the crane that carries the load.

Waking next morning I can hardly believe any of it. Surely they can’t have left me in the dark all these years? Then I remember Stuart’s hesitations. Maybe there is something I haven’t been told -but who can I ask about it? I can’t bring myself to ask my mother. Usually I go to Granny, but this does not seem something I can ask Granny about. If such a secret has been kept from me, it’s her I’m most angry with. She of all people should have told me. When I take Border back from her walk, I don’t stay to talk.

I try and talk to Rahilah a little. But she doesn’t seem to want to discuss the subject of twins any more. I daresay it hurts her. I look up twin websites on the internet, after school, even though I should have been doing my homework. I can always pretend to myself – or to my mother if she comes into the room- I do once - that I’m still pursuing the subject of genetics. As I am, in a way. But not for homework.

I learn a lot, little of it helpful. I learn that there are huge organisations of twins – mostly identical - who have posted up pictures of themselves wearing the same clothes and looking just the same; copies of each other. A bit creepy I think. Not to say freaky. I’m not sure I’d want to have been a twin if it meant not being a single person at all just a copy of someone else.

Would Ella be a copy of me? Would we really be one and the same if she was alive now? I find the website of a restaurant in New York called ‘Twins’ where all the staff, from the owners to the waiters and waitresses, to the barmen and girls, to the people who take your coats, are look-alike twins, where most of the people who come to eat are twins too, so that everywhere you see double. Surely twins aren’t just twins, I think. Surely they’re separate people too, and different in some ways?

I don’t find anywhere I can just ask questions. I do discover an English organisation called The Lone Twin Network for people whose twins have died. But they don’t have a website, only an address to write to. I don’t know for sure that I am a lone twin. So how can I write to them?

I also come across a scientific site. Many more people in the world than used to be thought, it says, started off as twins in the womb; but the other twin disappears soon after conception; within two or three or four months anyway. How do they know this? Because sometimes two babies come up on the first scan and only one on the second. What happens to the second twin? The first twin kind of ‘swallows it up’, they suggest. Does that mean that the one does get born is made up two people, I wonder? Gross. Creepy. Weird. But the idea’s in my head now. I can’t do anything about it.

Did I swallow up Ella? I ask myself. Is that why I have an imaginary or not imaginary, more likely dead friend? But if I did, surely Ella would seem more like me than she does? I don’t have any idea what Ella would look like. And now I think about she has always seemed like someone older than me, like a big sister, rather than a twin. Why? Nothing is sure about any of this, which is disturbing; I wish I could go back to seeing Ella as I used to. As my imaginary friend, no more, no less.

*********

I don’t tell any of my friends, Jay, Rashid, Rahilah, Trace, what I’m thinking. I don’t tell Jay or Rashid about Stuart either, any more than I tell Rahilah. Like I said, I don’t know what Muslims think about gays. Jay I suspect would just make a joke of it anyway, as he does of most things. I don’t want anyone making a joke of my big brother. Trace, though, is a different matter; I do tell her. With difficulty. I’m not used to talking about my brother to anyone, not because I’m embarrassed that he’s gay, but because people in my family rarely talk about each other, even between themselves. (The way Stuart and I discuss granny and mum is a relief, though it feels odd.)

Trace thinks it’s Stuart’s being gay makes me slow to get the words out. ‘Big deal,’ she says when I make it at last. ‘Big deal. You’re brother’s gay – is that all? Cool.’ Sounding at the same time both interested and bored. ‘Would you like to meet him?’ I ask. ‘Why?’ she sounds more bored than ever. ‘I think you’d like him’ I say. ‘I’m meeting him later as a matter of fact. Do you want to come?’ Trace just shrugs. But after school she heads for the bus stop on my side of the road as if there’s never been any question.

Stuart has suggested meeting up at the same Mailbox café where he and I went before. This time we stay there quite a long time. Skinny Trace eats the way she did at our flat: lots that is. She has two slices of cheesecake and three cappuccinos, but doesn’t look as if she notices because she’s so taken up with Stuart and he with her. I can’t get a word in edgeways. Though on the one hand, I’m glad to see my friend and my darling brother getting on so well, on the other I’m quite jealous. I don’t know a lot of the music they’re talking about, let alone the films. Trace is only two months older than me, so how did she get to see and hear all these things? Through her mum, I suppose. I’d always suspected her mum wasn’t a bit like mine. Now I know for sure.

It’s not just what they talk about; it’s how they talk about it; camping it up, making jokes. I can’t do that. I can talk about things seriously, or not at all. Stuart is quite happy to talk my way with me, but alongside Trace he turns into someone quite different. ‘Darling’, he says, ‘DARLING - in ways which are both like and not like him. As if bouncing off her turns him into someone else.

Trace even says ‘DARLING’ back: but only once. She raises an eyebrow from time to time – she’s had a stud put in the right hand one lately, it looks fantastic - and laughs or says something funny, at least it sounds very funny at the time. But I can’t remember a word of it afterwards – or of what Stuart says. It’s as if they are bouncing words between them. ‘Witty repartee’ I suppose you’d call it. Witty I’m not. All this makes me feel even less so. Stuart smiles at me affectionately sometimes, but it looks like Trace has forgotten I’m there. Nibbling at my cheesecake to make it last, I watch the remaining bubbles in my coffee cup burst one by one and feel gloomier by the minute.

How would Ella do, I wonder? If I’m not witty I’m sure she must be. And then I think: that’s odd, I haven’t heard a word from Ella lately. Not since I heard her voice – if it was her voice – in the lift. Two days ago I even emailed her –but I haven’t had a reply yet. Maybe they’ll be one waiting when I get home. All at once I want, desperately, to be at home, in my room, by myself. But I just keep on sitting in the café. ‘More coffee?’ Stuart asks. I shake my head.

We leave the café at last. It’s a wild night out there, grown wilder still since we went inside. The sign on the nearest crane is swinging madly, reflected as madly in the canal itself. Catspaws of wind are running up and down, on top of water racing along so wildly it looks like a living river, not like a man-made waterway. Up in the sky the wind keeps tearing the cloud apart– I see the whole of Orion the hunter once, my favourite constellation. But he doesn’t comfort me tonight.

Trace and Stuart seem even more excited by the wildness of the wind. ‘Let’s walk along the canal,’ they say. We cross the new bridge –as usual I look up at flats to see if the writer is at her window; but though the light is on, her curtains are drawn – no comfort for me there, either.

‘I’m not coming,’ I say. ‘I’m going home.’ I start running back over the bridge fighting the wind, the bridge thumping under me, my backpack thumping against my shoulders. I don’t look back to see where Trace and Stuart are. I don’t care what they are doing. I arrive, panting, in the hall of the mailbox feeling like the whole world is against me.

‘This is the fifth floor,’ says the lift in its normal voice, reminding me that I’d meant to go and give Border a quick run. Too late now, I think, heading for our front door: not to say too bad. I’d taken her out before school. Granny would have to take her out this evening.

Back in my room I sit straight down at my computer, go online. No email from Ella, not even one from Rashid, which is unusual – most nights we go back and forth two or three times. On the other hand it’s Friday: I know that Friday is like Sunday for Muslims, maybe he’s had to go with his father to the mosque.

I send an email myself: Ella, again.

‘Are you my dead twin?’ I ask. ‘Are you my dead twin? ARE YOU?’

Again I get no reply.

CHAPTER TEN

Nearer and nearer Christmas: baby Jesus and all that stuff. Our school is not putting on a Nativity play, of course, that’s for little kids in the Juniors and Infants. We’re doing Joseph and his Amazing Technicoloured Dreamcoat. Some of the kids in my class auditioned for it: four are in the chorus and Trace is playing Potiphar’s wife. As the time for the two performances gets nearer she’s off at rehearsals more and more, I hardly have a chance to talk to her. I’m still cross with her after the evening with Stuart, so I don’t mind. ‘Why didn’t you audition too?’ she asks. ‘I can’t sing for one,’ I say shortly. ‘I can’t act for two. That’s why.’

The tops of the cranes have sprouted strings of lights and Christmas trees. There’s a competition for the best decorated crane in Birmingham. I don’t know how they’ll choose it. They all look pretty much the same to me. But I do like the lofty little trees scattered with gaudy light. There are coloured bulbs strung over some of the narrow boats in the Gas Street Basin too, along with branches of fir and holly. Mnemonsyne is not decorated; granny says she might put up some lights in due course; but she doesn’t like Christmas to start until the proper time. In her childhood, she says, the proper time was Christmas Eve. But she might do it sooner than that.

She’s not the only one still lacking in Christmas spirit. Some of the kids in our school have so very little that they’ve taken to waylaying me in the playgound at breaktime and after school and they aren’t bringing messages of love and peace, let alone goodwill to all men. Far from it.

I’m getting ahead of myself. I haven’t told you about the builder yet. Not that I know he is a builder when I meet him coming off Granny’s boat one weekend. At first I even wonder if he’s her boyfriend, until I realise she’s not the least worried about my running into him the way she might be if he was. Nor can I imagine her having a boyfriend quite like him. He doesn’t speak much except in smiles and grunts. Any boyfriend of granny’s would have to be VERY gabby.

He seems a bit familiar, too, I don’t know why. He doesn’t look easy to forget. With his big belly, his short, stocky legs and his bushy red beard, he’s a more or less full-sized version of one of Snow White’s dwarfs. A matching bushy ponytail sticks out from under a red and black striped woollen hat with a pom-pom on top.

It’s the beard I’m sure I’ve seen before. It reminds me of a rhyme Granny used to recite, and which she recites again, obligingly, when I ask her. ‘There was an old man with a beard, who said it is just as I feared, an owl and a hen, two larks and a wren, have all made their nests in my beard.’

‘I don’t think old red-beard could manage the hen,’ I say thoughtfully. ‘Or even the owl. But the larks and the wren could have made it for sure.’ We both crease ourselves up laughing, till Granny stops and says warningly, ‘We shouldn’t laugh, really. He only brought his boat here last week. He started helping me out straight off.’

Turns out he’s been lugging her Elsan about for her and bringing in coal, even lighting her stove sometimes when it’s playing up. His narrow boat is moored at the pontoon on the other side of the walkway. ‘He’s works on a building site,’ granny says. Immediately my mind replaces the striped hat with a plastic helmet. I remember the bearded man coming out of what I think of as my site.

Next time I run into him near his boat – it’s called Poseidon - he’s carrying a coil of rope over one shoulder and a bucket laden with coal in the other hand. ‘Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s off to work I go,’ I hum to myself. Is he Bashful? Or Grumpy? I wonder. He smiles at me but clearly doesn’t want to stop.

Never mind that. ‘I saw you at the building-site once,’ I say. He nods, passing the coal bucket from hand to hand as if it’s filled with something light as paper.

‘I live in the flats’ - I eye him closely.‘I’m always watching the building. I like the cranes.’

‘It’s flats we’re building,’ His jeans look like they could do with a wash; so does his beard. I can smell the beard. I imagine I do. Maybe it’s the birds inside. It is quite big and bushy enough to hide a bird - or three.

‘Are you a crane driver?’ I ask. He looks startled, shakes his head. Puts the bucket down now, shifts the rope to the other shoulder, picks the bucket up again and moves one foot forward.

I block his way still. He can’t get round me.

‘I’d like to climb one of those cranes,’ I say. ‘I’d really like to climb one.’

‘More than I would, man,’ he says.

‘If I went and asked would they let me?’ I enquire out loud.

‘Likely not, man’ he says.

‘Who would I ask?’ I persist.

‘Foreman. Site Manager, to you. Don’t waste breath.’

You don’t waste yours, I’m thinking. But he does not look hostile, he’s smiling awkwardly, shifting his bucket between coal-grimed hands and at last I take pity on him and stand aside to let him pass. He grunts a goodbye. Looking back over his shoulder, he jerks his head at Mnemosyne and says, ‘Tell her in there I got her more coal up.’

‘Alright,’ I say, wondering why Granny’s boyfriend doesn’t do these things for her. Maybe he’s too posh. Lifting my left leg over the chain, I hop onto Granny’s section of the pontoon, then step up onto the boat. There’s a jar of mixed holly and fir standing on top of the cabin now, but still no sign of Christmas lights. I can hear Border yipping on the other side of the closed door, which means she’s heard me coming. She doesn’t make that yipping noise for anyone else.

********

Meeting the builder is alright. What isn’t alright is my other meetings these days, in the playground, or just outside the school gate.

It’s boys mostly. Big year eleven boys. Plus some girl hangers-on, year tens mostly like me. They don’t say much just giggle obediently. I know the boys’ leader; everybody in the school knows him: he’s very tall, and part black, though I don’t know whether it’s his dad is black or his mum. It doesn’t matter. His name is Franklin – after Frank Bruno, everyone says – the boxer. You have to be aggressive to be a boxer and this Franklin – Frankie they all call him – is all of that. ‘Our Frankie’s got form,’ they say in between pride and terror. He’s got a flat-top, and one gold earring. Despite his colour – or part colour – his skin is not that much darker than theirs - the gang he hangs around with is all white, bar one boy, a really dim Jamaican who’s a cousin of his. Some of the white boys have flat-tops too which look pretty weird on them.

Seeing that lot hanging around together, some stupid teachers see it as good racial integration in our school. Ha bloody ha. Black boys and white ones may get on but both kinds have it in for the Asians. This is why they are getting at me. ‘Paki-lover,’ they chant, ‘Hanging round with Paki girls. and boys. Terrorists. Got the hots for Paki terrorists have you?’

‘Maybe she’s a lezzie,’ one of the girls chips in. ‘Maybe it’s the girls she fancies. Maybe she wants to know what’s under all those clothes. A pervert.’

I think they can see into my head. I think they see how I fancy Rashid. I’m terrified. I’m also angry.

‘So,’ I say. ‘SO?’ The threatening way they crowd round me then, hiding me from the safer people who might come to my rescue, I wish I hadn’t. Someone – a boy I think – leans over and pulls at my backpack. Immediately I pull it round and hold to me closely.

‘Got love letters in there, have you?’ a voice behind me says. I can’t see whose voice it is. Another adds. ‘Does she know what happens to paki lovers? Does she know?’

‘We could tell her,’ says someone else. It’s all the worse for being someone I can’t see. ‘Leave my bag alone,’ I say.

‘And just listen to her fancy accent,’ yet another voice chips in; one of the girls this time. Esther bloody Rantzen are we?’ I almost laugh at this; wondering what my ma would say. She’s always complaining that I sound like a Brummie these days. Someone tweaks my hair. Someone else puts a small punch on my back. A little kick meets my shin. I stop laughing straightaway.

‘Watch it, paki lover, just watch it. Keep away from terrorists or else.’ This time I can see who’s speaking: Frankie himself. He bends his head towards me, good as rams his greasy flat top into my face, his little gold earring bobbing. Then he stands back, pulls his hood over his head, jerks his hand, and suddenly the group parts, lets me out into the normal world. Still noone else dares come too near. People skirt round me, looking the other way. I stand by myself, in the middle of the playground, shaking.

‘They’re bullies,’ Trace says when I tell her later. ‘Take no notice. The more you do the more they’ll go for you.’

‘They might go for Rahilah,’ I said. ‘Or Rashid.’ I am terrified for Rashid, suddenly, and for Jay too, still more terrified than for myself. Sometimes aggro like this ends in knives. Oh yes I’ve heard it. But how could they know about Rashid? We never speak to each other except in class, when we have to, during some lesson.

‘Don’t give them an inch,’ Tracy adds. If I can stick around with you, Tracy, they wouldn’t, I think. But Tracy is never in the playground these days, never comes out if school with me at the end of the day; she’s always rehearsing. She does suggest, though, I help with the props and costumes for the play. This means my working in the artroom at breaktime instead of spending it in the playground, means I can stay on after school until everyone else has gone home.

But still, sometimes, they get me. I feel a punch at my back, coming from nowhere, I hear hisses from people I can’t see: ‘Paki-lover’. Once I find a nasty little note topped by a skull and crossbones stuck onto my bag. ‘Keep away from TERRORISTS’ it says.

I stop hanging out with Rahilah. I see her only in the classroom, or outside school where it’s not so obvious. Rahilah hasn’t got a pc so I can’t warn her by email. But to both the boys I write ‘I’m getting a bit of aggro – if I seem a bit stand-offish, don’t worry. I just don’t want you getting aggro too.’ I guess they know what I’m talking about. Once Jay finds me by myself in the art room sewing sequins on Trace’s mother’s gold pyjamas from M and S that she’s going to wear as Potiphar’s wife. He gives me half of an awkward hug, surprising himself as much as me from the look on his face. He’s gone at once and I wonder vaguely why he’d come there. He’s not working on the play, he had no real reason. But I’m glad he did.

Nothing actually happens. Nothing. No word comes from Ella either. ‘Are you my twin?’ I ask again. Nothing.

‘You look peaky, Esther,’ Granny says next time I deliver Border. ‘I’m fine,’ I say. Wanting and not wanting to tell Granny what’s happening. I’m afraid that for once she might tell my mother who would see it as one more reason I shouldn’t have gone to Anthony Morris. ‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘Just fine.’ I tell her about Joseph just to change the subject. ‘Would you like me to come?’ she asks.

‘Please,’ I say.
.
‘’Right,’ she says, ‘Tell me the day and then get me a ticket.’

‘Do you want to come with mum?’ I ask.

‘Only if you want me to.’

‘Of course I do’ I say. All the same I’m hoping that granny won’t put on one of her more outlandish get-ups.

Granny as usual knows exactly what I am thinking. ‘Don’t worry, darling,’ she says ‘I’ll wear my ordinary old lady look. If Stuart’s around why don’t I bring him too?

‘Only if you get him to wear his ordinary old lady look,’ I say. Though it’s not such a good joke really, we both burst out laughing. And suddenly I feel much better, better than I have for days.

‘There,’ Granny says, ‘You’ve stopped looking like you’ve seen a ghost. Good.’

The word ghost sends my eyes to the shelf to see if the urn full of ashes is still standing there next to the Hopi Indian pot. It isn’t. Granny sees where my eyes are going, shakes her head, but says nothing. I’ve been too angry with her recently to visit much. But I realise now that I need her more than ever. I need to ask her about Ella more than ever. But I can’t. It’s as if she won’t let me somehow – and at that thought, for a moment, I’m angry with her again.