“Ben?”
The child sniffed. There was snot crusted around his nose, as well as long lines on his dirty sweatshirt. He marched up to her defiantly.
“Ainslee’s no’ coming today.”
“Why not?”
“She’s got . . . dunno.”
Nina frowned. “Well, is it something to do with school?”
“Aye.”
“Has she got exams?”
Ben shook his head. “No,” he said. “No. She’s been told she can’t take her exams. She’s all sad and stuff. Exams sound rubbish.”
Nina looked around. The market wasn’t busy yet; in her bad mood, she’d gotten up far too early after her rough night. She yawned. There were just a few old men walking their dogs, and some women sniffing the produce.
“Why can’t she take her exams?” she said. “That’s awful. She’s such a smart girl.”
Ben shrugged his shoulders. “Dunno,” he said.
Nina blinked. “Okay,” she said finally, remembering Ainslee’s horror when she’d tried to find out more about her home life. “Okay. Thanks so much for coming to tell me.”
Ben lingered. She could see he was peering inside, looking at the red and yellow bean bags. She waited a moment.
“Would you like to come in?”
“Naw.”
She paused. “Okay.”
Ben still didn’t seem keen to leave.
“I think I’m going to sit out on this step,” said Nina gently. “Enjoy the sunshine. And maybe just read for a bit.”
Ben sniffed. “Hmm,” he said.
Nina was going to ask whether he had school that day, but she figured that was probably something he heard quite a lot, so she didn’t. Instead, she picked up a copy of Up on the Rooftops—they’d sold all but two of them, including one she’d kept for herself—and took it out to the step, remembering as she did so how reading this book as a child had made her feel utterly and without a doubt that if she only met the right magic pigeon, kept St. Paul’s as her compass, and didn’t forget “North for truth; West for fresh; South for source, but East, ever East,” then everything would work out all right in the end.
“East, ever East,” she said out loud, eyeing Ben carefully. He was affecting an unconcerned look but still hadn’t moved away.
Hattie, a local woman she’d gotten to know with four children under five and a look that occasionally said “kill me, kill me now,” came bounding up.
“Oh my God, you’re here early!” she said in delight.
“So are you,” observed Nina.
“Are you joking? It’s nearly eight thirty; I’ve been up for four hours. As far as I’m concerned, it’s lunchtime . . . Euan! Stop that! Leave that dog alone! Tildie! Tildie!”
In their buggy, the twins set up a cacophonous roar. Hattie didn’t go anywhere without a halo of crumbs around her, and outside the van was no exception.
“Are you doing story hour?”
Hattie was constantly trying to persuade Nina to do a story session that involved her leaving all the children there, but Nina strenuously refused, muttering “Health and Safety” as a warding-off spell, to which Hattie had once sadly responded, “Well, I don’t mind if you lose one of them, I’ve got loads of others,” and then laughed it off a little too shrilly.
Nina blinked. “I’ll do it if you like, but you have to stay.”
“Just one tiny spa break?” said Hattie. “That’s all I ask. Just one teensy-weensy forty-eight-hour break in New York?”
“I wish that was within my magical book powers,” said Nina. “Actually, I can recommend some globe-trotting glitzbuster stuff if you like. Might help.”
“Yes!” said Hattie. “I’ll read it in the two seconds a day I have to spare. Normally just before they discover I’ve locked myself in the bathroom.”
Nina sat back down and started reading aloud from Up on the Rooftops, and the twins quieted down immediately—not because they could follow the story, but because the soothing cadence of somebody reading always had a transformative effect on babies; Griffin’s theory was that children were evolutionarily engineered to listen to stories, because it stopped them from wandering off into the woods and getting eaten by hairy mammoths.
And as the three children in the story found themselves stranded on the top of their building, after climbing the thousand steps, she couldn’t help but notice scruffy little Ben edging closer and closer, until he was sitting cross-legged right in front of her at the foot of the steps.
At the end of the chapter, she closed the book to great sighs, particularly from Hattie. “I love that book,” she said. “Thank you. Ten minutes of peace and quiet. That is my record this decade.”
Nina smiled. The children started clamoring for more.
“Oh good,” said Hattie. “The bakery’s open. I’m going to go and get them all sticky. Then we can have a bath. Surely that will take me up to nine thirty. Just out of interest, and absolutely nothing to do with anything, what time do you open a bottle of wine of an evening slash afternoon slash lunchtime?”
“See you later,” said Nina, smiling and tactfully prising a set of very sticky fingers off the book.
“I’ll take one,” said Hattie.
There was only one copy left after this. Nina looked at Hattie.
“I need it,” said Hattie.
“Okay,” said Nina, rather regretfully selling it.
She watched them all clattering noisily over the cobbles, somebody wailing.
“What happened, though?” said a little voice by her feet. “What happened next?”
Nina looked down. “Well, lots of things,” she said.
Ben pouted. “I would like to know,” he said. “Have they made it into a film?”
“Yes,” said Nina. “But the film is terrible.”
“Why is the film terrible?”
“It’s not really the film’s fault,” said Nina. “But you know when you’re watching a film you feel like you can see what’s happening?”
Ben nodded.
“Well, that’s one thing. But when you read a book, you feel like you’re in it.”
“Like a computer game?”
“No. Not like a computer game. Computer games are fun, but you’re still just looking at stuff and pressing buttons. Reading is being in stuff.”