‘Okay,’ I said with a nod. ‘I will.’
I pushed my bike to the rack and locked it up.
‘Hey!’ The shout made me turn. Finn was standing a little way away, shielding his eyes from the sun.
‘You didn’t tell me your name,’ he called.
‘You didn’t ask.’
He laughed loudly again. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Stephanie,’ I said. ‘But my friends call me Stevie.’
‘See you later, Stevie.’
I waved to him and then I wandered up the path to the unit, to see my nan.
To my delight, today was one of my nan’s good days. She knew who I was straightaway.
‘Stephanie,’ she said. I went to where she was sitting in her usual chair by the window. ‘Hello, dear.’
I braced myself for the normal barrage of questions about Max, but it was my father who was on her mind today.
‘Where’s that useless dad of yours, eh?’
‘He’s in Portugal, Nan.’
‘Portugal?’ She looked pleased with herself and then she began singing about going to sunny Spain and clicking her fingers like castanets.
‘That’s right, Nan,’ I said, laughing. ‘Just about.’
She settled back in her chair. ‘Useless.’
‘Do you remember the Blitz, Nan?’
Nan turned her dark eyes to me and for a moment I thought she’d gone again. That happened sometimes – she’d have a period of being lucid and then it was like a cloud had descended and she was back to not remembering. And even when her mind was clear, her thoughts danced about. But then she nodded.
‘I was only a nipper.’
‘I know.’ Nan had been born in 1935, so she would barely have started school when the bombs began falling. ‘You stayed in London, though? You weren’t evacuated?’
Nan shook her head. ‘I stayed with my mum.’ She laughed. ‘She was a right piece of work. She went to prison.’
The word made me widen my eyes in alarm. Had she heard about Max and got confused?
‘What? Your mum didn’t go to prison.’
Nan folded her arms. ‘Me and Auntie Sandra went to visit her.’ She smiled fondly. ‘You can’t just take stuff that belongs to other people though. She needed to be punished.’
‘She went to prison? Really?’ I said. Perhaps Max’s recklessness didn’t come from our mother after all.
‘My old mum could sell sand to the Arabs. My Geoff’s the same.’
‘He is,’ I said. I had to be honest, she was right about my dad. He was a born salesman.
‘We’ll go to the bombsite and see what we can get,’ Nan said in a sort of sing-song way, like she was talking to a child. ‘See what we can sell.’
‘Did your mum steal from bombed-out houses?’ I asked. ‘That’s terrible.’
