Voices in Stone - Emily Diamand Page 0,62
down.” He tried to pull a cardboard box from the footwell, but gave up and stamped it flat instead. “You could always brace with your legs. Don’t worry, I’m a very careful driver. The quickest way to get onto their system is to be stopped for a traffic offence.”
Any other time, any other trip, she would have refused to travel without a seat belt, but Isis could feel the twitch of invisible fingers, pulling at her from the hills outside town.
No, not fingers.
It was like trying to remember a forgotten name; somewhere beneath her mind she knew what was really calling to her, but she didn’t have the vocabulary to phrase it.
They were inching along in the traffic jam when Angel materialised between Isis and Gray.
“You still a meany,” she announced. “I still not playing with you! And you go-ed off without saying!”
Isis realised she hadn’t even left a note for Cally. After this, Cally probably wouldn’t leave her alone in the flat until she was twenty. But it was Angel she cared about now, and she spoke to her without noise, only moving her lips.
“Sorry.”
Angel’s face instantly cleared. Sorry always made things better, in her little world.
“It’s cold today,” said Stu, turning the heating up into a loud, petrol-smelling roar. The car didn’t get much warmer though, because of Angel.
Under cover of the heater’s noise, Gray spoke quietly. “When you first showed me Angel, I thought it’d be so cool to see stuff no one else can. But I hate it.” He looked out of the car window. “I didn’t know it would be so… frightening.”
Isis put her hand onto his, only lightly, barely touching him. “I was scared in the summer,” she said. “I thought I was crazy, but you believed me.”
Angel bounced up and down on the seat between them.
“He sad!” she said excitedly. “You got to tell him about our baby!”
Isis had forgotten about that for a minute or two, but now it came flooding back in all its life-jolting strangeness.
“Tell him!” Angel said. “Then he’ll be happy!”
Isis didn’t even shake her head, because there was no way she was going to. Cally might’ve made a mistake. It was in soaps all the time: a big fuss about a baby until it turns out no one’s really pregnant. Isis wasn’t going to say anything until it was definite, until there was no turning back.
Angel glared at her. “You tell!”
Isis glared back, trying to make Angel understand without actually speaking that this wasn’t the right time and Gray had enough on his mind.
Angel looked furious.
“I do it then!” she shouted, putting her hand on top of Isis’s, quickly sliding her fingers between Isis and Gray’s with a freezing wriggle.
Gray gasped, his eyes jolting wide open.
“Mummy having a BABY!” Angel shouted, right in his face.
Isis snatched her hand away, but she knew it was too late.
Gray stared at Isis, unable to see Angel who was dancing in between them and singing, “We got a baby brother,” to the tune of her fishy song.
“Must be an accident on the road,” Stu muttered from the front. “There’s police up ahead. Oh come on, why do they have to talk to every single car driver?”
The car trundled another metre forwards. A policewoman was working her way down the queue, and the cars in front of them were doing three-point turns, going back the way they’d come.
“Is it Dad’s?” Gray whispered.
It took Isis a moment to realise what he meant. “Of course it is!”
“Sorry.” He put his hands over his face. “It’s just, you know, a lot.”
She nodded. It was.
“Baby, baby brother,” sang Angel.
Gray spoke through his fingers. “Do you think Dad and Cally will move in together?”
Isis stared at the policewoman in her bright reflective jacket. Of course Cally would want to be with Gil, and since Gil’s house was bigger… But Isis didn’t want that!
“How did this even happen?” she said.
Gray looked at her, and snorted. “Well, your mum and my dad love each other very much…”
“Oh!” She started to giggle. “No! Don’t make me even think about it!”
“Cally and Gil, sitting in the tree…” said Gray.
“Eugh! Shut up!” They were laughing, hysterical with it.
“What’s going on back there?” asked Stu.
Isis managed to stop, her cheeks aching.
“Me and Gray are going to be related,” she said, and it didn’t seem so bad, put that way.
“Are your parents getting married?” Stu’s voice squeaked up in amazement, sending Isis and Gray into more helpless laughter.
A knock at the window interrupted them. Stu