The girl came to the door. She still had the phone in her hand. She looked up at me and handed me the phone. ‘Mum wants the address.’ I didn’t want to talk to her mum. I didn’t want any of these children on my property and I didn’t want a broken window. ‘You,’ I said, pointing to Maduka, ‘tell her where I live.’ Maduka approached and I could read fear in his face too.
He took the phone from me. ‘Hi, Mum,’ he said in a low voice and wandered away with the phone. I didn’t look at the other two boys’ faces but I noticed them picking up their bikes and edging slowly up the driveway towards the gate. By the time Maduka handed back the phone, they were gone.
Maduka and the girl sat on the sofa together while I cleaned up the broken glass and set the fire going. They whispered to each other as I cut up a piece of cardboard and taped it to the window.
Then I gave them chocolate biscuits and they took one each, sniffing them first, and then Maduka licked his and nodded to the girl and they both ate their biscuits in a hurry, dropping crumbs into their laps. We sat in silence.
Eventually, Maduka coughed and said, ‘Did you do it?’
I avoided looking at him.
‘Do what?’ I’m not normally good at guessing but I had a good idea what he was going to ask.
‘Kill your own dad and then burn him? I mean, did you burn him alive?’
‘No. I did not. He was dead that morning when I brought him his cup of tea, so I put him out with the bins and we always incinerate most of our rubbish so I thought it was the best thing to do.’
‘Are you absolutely sure that you did not kill him?’
‘One hundred per cent. I took his pulse. Nothing. The guards agreed that I didn’t kill him. I made a mistake by burning his body. I didn’t know that I wasn’t supposed to do that. If I had killed him, I’d be in jail, wouldn’t I?’
‘That’s not what they said at school.’
‘Schools are full of liars. When I was at school, everybody lied about me. It was a dreadful place.’
The children looked at each other. Maduka said, ‘Fergus said that I smell.’
‘Of what?’
‘I don’t know … I guess that I smell … bad.’
I approached him without getting too close and sniffed the air.
‘See? They are liars. You don’t smell of anything. Why are you hanging around with eejits like Fergus? Was he the freckly one?’
‘No, he’s the tall one.’
The girl smiled. ‘My name is Abebi.’
‘You don’t look like a baby.’
She giggled and spelled her name. I smiled back at her.
‘Do they say that you smell too?’
‘No, but some girls say I should keep washing so that my face would be white.’
‘Stupid girls.’
Their mum came to collect them. I heard and then saw the car in the driveway. I told them to go on out. The boy said, ‘I will make Sean and Fergus pay for your window. I told them not to throw stones, but they wouldn’t listen.’
‘Do they have jobs?’
‘No, we’re only twelve,’ he said.
‘I’ll pay for the window, then. I have lots of money now.’
He smiled. ‘Thank you.’
‘Do you want to come to my dad’s funeral on Tuesday?’
Abebi looked up at me with her big eyes. ‘We have school.’
‘I wouldn’t bother going to school if I were you,’ I said. ‘Waste of time.’
The mother was outside putting the boy’s bicycle into the boot of her car. She did not approach the doorway but she was craning her neck to see me. I stood back behind the door, out of sight. She was a white lady. I heard her shouting at the children, ‘Hurry up! Get out of here! Wait until I get you home!’
I played Mum’s game of trying to imagine what she thought of me and I realized that she must be scared. Maybe a lot of people were scared of me. Except perhaps those two children. I liked them. Maduka and Abebi. I forgot to ask Abebi what age she was. I wanted to know. I wanted to know what house they lived in and what TV shows they watched and if their dad was nice like mine.
10
The next day, early, there was a knock on the door. It was Angela. Her eyebrows were furrowed and her lips were thin. This meant she was annoyed.
‘Sally! What were you thinking? You can’t take strange children into your house!’
‘I did not invite them. They trespassed. I treated one of them for concussion and I gave them chocolate biscuits.’
‘You told them not to go to school!’
‘I liked them.’
‘Yes, well, it took me a while to calm down their mother and explain your situation. Sally, please, try to think about the consequences of your words and actions, especially with children. I’m a full-time GP. I had to get a locum in last week while I dealt with your crisis.’
‘What crisis?’
Her face was red, but then she cracked a smile and then laughed out loud. ‘Sally, you are a crisis. You don’t mean to be, but if you have doubts about anything, you must ask me, okay?’
‘But I don’t have doubts about anything.’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of. Mrs Adebayo understands everything now, but all she had heard were the rumours that you’d killed your dad. I talked her around and, luckily, the children did say you were nice to them.’
‘The white boys broke my window.’
I showed Angela the damage and asked her to call a glazier.
‘Sally, I know it’s hard for you, but you are going to have to learn to do things for yourself. Like calling a glazier. Oh God, you don’t have a smartphone, do you? Or a laptop. But you know how to look up the Golden Pages? You still have one, don’t you? I saw it on the hall table.’
I nodded.
‘Well, find one that’s local to here and ask them to come out and fix it.’
I started to pace the room.
‘Sally, I know your dad meant well, but he was overprotective. You should have gone to college. Jean was right.’ Jean was my mother’s name. She and Dad had argued over whether I should go to university. Dad won.
‘I don’t like talking to strangers.’
‘Well, you brought two strangers into your house yesterday, and you had no problem talking to them. Did you invite them to your dad’s funeral?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why? They are children.’
‘I liked them.’
‘Well, there you go. So you don’t dislike all strangers.’
I hadn’t thought of it like that.
‘So, find a glazier in Roscommon and ask them to come out and fix the window, okay?’
‘But what if he’s mean, or if he attacks me, or if he’s one of those that thinks I killed my dad?’
‘Most people know the truth, and the ones that don’t are, well …’
‘They’re scared of me?’
‘I’d say the glazier will come out, fix the window and get out as soon as he can.’
‘So I won’t have to make him a cup of tea?’
‘You won’t have to do anything except pay him.’
‘In cash?’
‘Yes, he’ll probably prefer that. Look, I have to go. I’ll be late for work. Ring me only if there are any problems. Put your phone back on the hook, so that I don’t have to keep coming out to the house. I’ll see you on Tuesday at the funeral, but I am busy.’