“Well, that’s your fault, isn’t it?”
The boy screwed up his face as if he was going to cry.
“Is this your . . . brother?” said Nina, not wanting to sound nosy or interfering.
Ainslee had started coming in mornings before school and Nina had started to pay her a small wage.
“Aye,” said Ainslee. She reluctantly took out the wages Nina had given her the day before.
“Can I go to the bakers?”
“Aye, but don’t come back.”
Nina didn’t say anything, in case what she said was wrong, but she didn’t like the look of this at all.
“Where’s your mum?” she said gently.
Ben looked at her rudely. “Shut up,” he said, and snatched the money out of Ainslee’s hand.
Ainslee turned back to unpacking the books, her face closed up and inscrutable, daring Nina to say something, so Nina didn’t, and instead concentrated on serving one of her regulars, who only read books that took place in a postapocalyptic universe. He didn’t care if it was zombies, flu, or a nuclear bomb that had taken everyone out; he only cared that there was almost nobody left to get in the way.
Nina let her eyes stray out of the van. The boy was still loitering in the square—they were back in Kirrinfief where Ainslee lived—chowing down on a sausage roll and staring at them. She smiled encouragingly. When the customer left, she went back to helping Ainslee with the beautiful golden editions of Up on the Rooftops.
Suddenly he was there again, looking over Ainslee’s shoulder.
“What’s that?”
“Go away,” hissed Ainslee. “I told you not to come here.”
“You can come here,” said Nina, even as Ainslee shot her a look.
“Looks boring,” said Ben. He was still staring at the cover, though: the three children, and Robert Carrier the pigeon, in his top hat, silhouetted against the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
“Off to Galleon’s Reach . . . to meet the Queen of the Nethers,” said Ainslee dreamily. “Oh how I would love to be reading this for the first time.”
Nina nodded emphatically. “Every time I stopped reading it, I couldn’t believe I couldn’t fly.”
Ainslee nodded. “You’re going to have a whole village full of kids who haven’t read it.”
“Everyone still reads it, don’t they?” said Nina. “Otherwise how do they know what it’s like to fly?”
“No one can fly,” said Ben scornfully. He’d now taken out a packet of crisps and was eating them messily, crumbs falling onto the floor of the van. Ainslee scowled at him.
“They can in this book,” she said. “That’s what you don’t understand about reading, idiot.”
“What, that it’s a bunch of made-up stuff?”
“You can look at it if you like,” said Nina, although she was nervous about his sticky fingers. These books were valuable.
Ben shrugged and turned his face away. “Sounds rubbish.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter to you, does it? He won’t go to school,” said Ainslee.
“Can’t you make him?” said Nina. “Or your mum?”
“Ha! He won’t listen to us!”
“Reading’s for babies,” burst out Ben suddenly, his ears bright red. “It’s stupid. I don’t care.” And he suddenly hurled his crisp packet on the floor and disappeared out of the van, running across the square.
Ainslee sighed and shrugged. “That’s all he does,” she said. “I can’t help.”
Nina looked after him. “But can’t the school help? That’s not right.”
“They’ve washed their hands of him,” said Ainslee. “He won’t go. My mum doesn’t care. The school doesn’t care; he’s a ‘disruptive influence.’” She hung her head. This was a long speech for her. “And there isn’t another school for five miles. I don’t think anyone cares.”
“Do you want me to call social services?”
Ainslee jumped up, her face a picture of dismay. “No! Please no! You can’t! They’ll separate us!”
“They’re very good these days,” said Nina, who’d come up against them a lot in the library service. “They’re really kind and helpful. Honestly.”
Ainslee shook her head, tears gleaming in the corners of her eyes. “Please no,” she said. “Please. Please don’t. Please. We’re fine, really. We’re okay. We’re all right.” And she looked so heartbroken, Nina didn’t know what to do.
Another child came in, nicely dressed and cared for, with her mother.
“Oh look!” said the mother. “I haven’t seen this for years! Up on the Rooftops! Wow!” Her rather tight face softened suddenly. “I loved this book so much. It made me feel like I could fly.”
The little girl looked up curiously. “Can I have it?”
“Of course, darling. We’ll read it together. I think you’re going to love it!”
Ainslee’s face was stony as Nina took the money, the most she’d ever made on one sale.
Chapter Twenty
The days began to take on a pattern. After Nina had finished work, she would cash out, then start planning what she was going to leave for Marek on their tree. It had developed into a full-blown flirtation. Some days she wanted to be funny, some days more serious. Some days she just wrote to him what was on her mind, and he’d write back. She realized that she hadn’t written a letter for years and years, actually sat down and committed her thoughts to paper rather than pinging them off in an e-mail. She wrote more slowly, felt more deeply.
Always she remembered Marek’s big puppy-dog eyes, his sweet concern for her. He wrote to her about things he missed from home, about funny things he’d seen through people’s back windows. His English was broken and his spelling could be hit and miss, but he had a lovely, often curious way of expressing himself, and she understood him perfectly.
No matter how much Surinder told her it wasn’t real, that she was living through a fantasy, she couldn’t help it. For even with Surinder there, and the new people she met every day at the van, she still felt rather lonely, brand new, alone up here in this little green corner at the tip of the world. Daydreaming about Marek was something to keep her warm, a lovely idea she kept in her heart all day long, thinking of things he would like, what would make him laugh, what would make a pretty parcel in a bag. One night it was a little sculpture of a bear she found for pennies in a market; another time a book of woodcut art nobody wanted; a miniature of whiskey she’d been handed as part of a promotion in one of the larger towns; some deep-scented heather. And he would drop off bags of sweets from his home country; a carved pencil she thought he might have made himself; some new handmade notepaper, which she treasured.