‘She likes drawing,’ Doreen explained. ‘She’s really good. She can even do horses.’
Maggie changed the subject. ‘We’re off into town. You can come with us if you want. We’re off to the Milk Bar.’
‘Aye,’ said Doreen. ‘You look like you need a milkshake.’
Wilbur thought about this. His mother wouldn’t care. She would be off out in a minute anyway to begin her shift. But he had no money at all except a few farthings in his jam jar upstairs, and he doubted that would be enough for a drink.
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
Maggie looked at his shoes. At the small hole in one of the toes. He felt the shame of it.
‘Our treat,’ she told him, meeting his eyes. And there was something about the way she looked at him that made him feel better, like she didn’t judge him in the slightest. And that might have been it, that might have been the seed that was planted inhis mind, that would years later bloom into the courage needed to ask her out.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I will come along.’
But then, as so often when young Wilbur had been on the cusp of happiness, reality snatched it from him. As though he had a reverse guardian angel, trying to test him, trying to sour him and make him bitter ahead of time.
The Broken Glass
‘Oh no,’ said the Ghost out loud to himself. ‘I remember this.’
And he looked and saw it before they did: the car, which would soon come and pull up right beside them.
Not just any old car either.
An all-gleaming, elegant black Wolseley smoothing along the road as ominously as a panther. The kind of car that in the twenty-first century would only be seen carrying a bride to a wedding. But this one had a blue and white sign sayingPOLICEon it just above the front windscreen. Wilbur stood up, burning with shame, and started walking down the street a little way.
‘Wait up,’ said Maggie.
Wilbur didn’t know what to do, so he stopped and just stood there, facing the car and the two policemen on the front seats.
‘Have they come for you?’ whispered Doreen, making light of it. ‘For reading dull, fishy books in the street?’
‘No.’
Wilbur had already seen his brother on the back seat. The policeman in the passenger seat stepped out of the car. He had a long solemn face which stared straight at Wilbur.
‘Ooh,’ said Doreen, as the policeman opened the rear door and out stepped Dougie. This was 1958 Dougie. Rebel-mode Dougie. Greased-back hair and tightly buttoned shirt and drainpipe jeans and white socks and large brogues he called his beetle-crushers. The one who pinned Wilbur up against the wall in arguments and stole his food when their mother wasn’t looking.
Doreen’s voice was deliberately loud enough for all to hear. ‘Who’s that wrong ’un?’
Wilbur shrugged. He turned back to the girls quickly, but not fast enough to avoid Dougie’s eye. ‘No idea.’
Dougie was sharp when he wanted to be. He’d heard all this. The Ghost could see the hurt in his face.
‘Well, that’s charming, Wilbo.’
Doreen laughed. Maggie grimaced at the awkwardness. Young Wilbur turned to face the scene.
‘Is your mam in?’ the police officer asked him.
‘I don’t know,’ sighed Wilbur.
‘Yes you do,’ said his ghost. ‘Don’t lie to the police officer.’
But, of course, it didn’t really matter. What was going to happen was going to happen, and he couldn’t do anything but watch. Which was all a ghost could do.
Wilbur stared at Maggie and wanted to telepathically convey that he wasn’t just a bad little brother ashamed of his sibling. That his life was complicated.
