mother Sophie all about school. What she had learnt there and what she hadn’t and how many times the children got beaten, and about the time the stick broke. She told her things that she usually kept to herself.
After lunch I played with Jake on a red plastic telephone. He rang up Father Christmas and I rang Luigi Mancini. Bea helped Sophie with the washing-up.
I could hear Bea telling Sophie all about how Mum was going to go and live in a mosque with lots of sheikhs who sat all day in the lotus position and that really she didn’t want to go. Luna interrupted her to say that Mum was only going to visit for a short time, not to live, but Bea said she didn’t care – she still didn’t want to go.
As we were about to leave, Bea turned to Sophie. ‘Could I stay with you when Mum goes to the mosque?’ she asked, her eyes round with hope.
Sophie was silent. ‘If that’s all right with your Mummy,’ she said finally, hesitantly, ‘then of course that would be fine with us.’ She glanced towards a closed door through which the clattering of her husband’s typewriter could be heard, muffled between long silences. ‘Yes I’m sure that would be fine,’ she said again as she opened the front door.
We met up with Mum in the Djemaa El Fna. Her money hadn’t arrived and she was in a bad mood. I waited anxiously for Bea to break the news. Whenever I caught her eye, she looked away. Luna said nothing.
‘We’ll stay one more night with you if that’s all right.’ Mum looked to Luna. ‘And then we’ll be off. I think if we get a couple of good lifts it should only take a day to get there.’
‘You’re going to hitch?’
‘Yes. I’ll get the bank to wire the money through to Algiers when it arrives.’
There was a pause in the conversation. This was Bea’s chance. I kicked her under the table. She kicked me back hard and kept quiet.
Then the Fool appeared with our tin. He held it under my nose and with a flourish twisted off the top. Inside was a round of hard black wax, a little like a crayon.
‘This shoe polish,’ the Fool spoke slowly, and Luna translated his halting words, ‘is not so good. This shoe polish is in fact very, very old.’
While Mum sorted through our things, deciding what to take and what to leave behind, Bea said in the most casual of her voices, ‘Oh, Mum, would it be all right if I didn’t come?’
Mum wavered momentarily and continued to pack.
‘I asked Sophie if I could stay with her and she said yes. She said as long as it’s all right with you. She said…’
Mum withdrew a T-shirt of Bea’s and put it to one side.
‘Fine,’ she said flatly, ‘if that’s what you want.’
Bea opened her mouth to continue the argument and then closed it again.
Mum didn’t speak.
‘Goodnight,’ she said eventually when she had finished packing. There was one large bag for me and Mum, and a smaller one for Bea.
‘Goodnight,’ we both said in uncomfortably cheerful voices and she left the room to join Luna and Umbark on their terrace.
Bea stood at the top of the tiled steps of Sophie’s house and watched us go. Sophie stood behind her in a dressing-gown and waved.
‘We’ll be back soon,’ I called before we turned a corner and lost sight of her.
‘I never thought she’d say yes,’ Bea had whispered to me the night before once Mum was safely on the terrace. But we both agreed there was no going back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Mum and I stood at the edge of the road and stretched out our thumbs. Most of the cars that passed were lorries and mostly they were going the wrong way. They crowded up to the gates of the city with full loads of water melons, oranges, chickens and sheep. I thought of all the chickens that had been eaten on the last day of Ramadan. Every family in the hotel had bought one, cluttering the terrace with wilting, shackled birds that squawked in terror on the morning of their last day. They hung, waiting to be cooked, their necks broken and their feet tied. I thought of Snowy and her beady eyes and the way she liked to peck corn from the cracks between the fingers of your hand.
‘In the end they’ll have to turn round and come back,’ Mum said as we