‘Taylor, your son.’
‘He’s dead. Taylor’s dead, Lord have mercy on ’im. I’ve had a letter from de doctor, it’s here somewhere.’ She has gone back to the drawers. ‘Dey want to put a camera in me stomach. Oh! I don’t want it. Can y’understand it?’
She has pulled out a folded piece of paper and handed it to Manon.
‘I don’t understand it,’ Maureen is saying, beetling back into the lounge.
Manon skim-reads, sees: ‘Appointment, twelfth of December 2010, 10 a.m. Gastroscopy, Royal Free Hospital.’
‘This appointment was three weeks ago,’ says Manon, following Maureen. ‘Did you go?’
‘Oh, tank God it’s over, den. Now who did ye say ye were?’
‘DS Bradshaw, Cambridgeshire Police. We found Taylor’s body.’
‘Oh no! Oh Jaysus, no, Taylor’s gone, rest his soul.’
Maureen is contemplating her cigarette. Manon can smell the booze on her, sweated out through her freckled skin.
‘Dat’s his room back dere,’ she says, pointing her cigarette towards the hall.
‘Can I have a look?’
‘If you like. You’re nat de first. Will I make ye a cup of tea?’
‘I’m all right, thanks,’ Manon says, thinking of the state of the kitchen.
She walks down the hallway, at the end of which are two open doorways side by side. Through one, she sees legs crossed at the ankles. A pair of thin plimsolls, once white, perhaps, the rubber gaping where it meets the canvas. No socks. Even indoors those feet must be freezing in a January like this one. Black skin, shaded blacker at the knuckle.
She puts her head around the door and sees the boy, sitting on the mattress on the floor, his legs outstretched. There’s a tiny television on the floor beside the mattress and he’s watching it. The mattress – not quite a double but bigger than a single – has two sleeping bags on it. There’s a melamine chest of drawers, all the drawers open, at the base of the mattress, so you’d have to crawl to get to it. The boy looks up. His hair is cut close to his head. His eyes, spectacularly dark, are enormous in his oval face. Manon is unable to speak for a moment. It’s not that he’s beautiful, so much (though he is); it’s that he is so intensely sad.
‘Hello,’ she says.
He looks back at the television.
‘What are you watching?’
‘Dance fucking Download. Piece a shit.’
They look at the screen a moment, with its tinny laughter.
‘My name’s Manon,’ she says. ‘Funny name, huh?’
He looks up at her. She realises he’s too old and too unhappy for games. He wants her to tell it straight.
‘I’m from the police. I’m trying to find out what happened to Taylor. Mind if I sit down?’
‘Now you wanna find out,’ he says.
She points at the bit of mattress next to him. He edges away to make room for her and she sinks down, sighing elaborately, the stiff-jointed grown-up. Her knees won’t quite bend so she sits like him, with her legs crossed at the ankle.
‘What’s your name?’ she asks, not because she doesn’t know, but because the boy deserves some formalities.
‘Fly,’ he says. ‘My name’s Fly.’
‘Nice to meet you, Fly Dent,’ she says, holding out her hand to him and smiling. ‘Manon Bradshaw.’ He takes it, his palm cold and dry in hers. She looks around her.
‘Did you share this room with Taylor?’
He nods.
She notices pirate stickers on the chest of drawers, silver and glittery and curling up at their edges. Skull and crossbones; cutlasses; a pirate ship. Children’s stickers, the kind they get free inside magazines. The sleeping bags behind her are entwined.
‘I’m very sorry, Fly. You must feel very sad,’ she says.
Fly looks at her. His eyes are frightened.
‘Did Taylor have a mobile phone?’
Fly nods. ‘Course.’
‘Do you know where it is?’
He shrugs. ‘He always had it – in his pocket. Same as dis one.’
He leans back to reach into his pocket and takes out a phone, rolling it in his hand.
‘Can I look?’ she asks, as Fly turns back to the television.
‘Taylor give it me,’ he says, keeping hold of the phone, ‘so I could call him. If I need him.’
He presses some buttons and shows her. The word Taylor is on the screen and she presses the green call button. The dead boy’s voice says, ‘I ain’t here, innit! Leave a message and I might call you back, or I might not …’ followed by shrieks of laughter.
‘Is that you laughing with him?’ she says, Fly’s phone to her ear, smiling as she listens because the laughing is infectious.
Fly nods, smiling too.
She hangs up. He has gone back to looking at the television, so she scrolls about the phone. The only number he has ever dialled is Taylor’s. Twenty or thirty times. Trying to find him. Perhaps he plays it as he goes to sleep, listening to his brother’s voice and the two of them laughing.
‘Are you hungry?’ she says.