Page 59 of Strangers in Time

You’re not sellin’ his dead wife’s pen, you git. It ain’t yours.

Charlie’s thoughts had turned back to selling the book because things were quite desperate now. In two days’ time, they would no longer be able to live in the flat, and Gran had so far failed to find another place for them to live. She had begun boxing up her fewpossessions and agonizing over what was to become of her vanity and chair. She had gone off to her room tonight grim-faced and stiff-limbed. Charlie had had no such issues about his possessions. He had nothing, really, to box up other than a few odd bits of spare clothing.

So he would go directly to King & Chauncey in the morning after cleaning himself up and making sure his clothes were presentable. Then he would plead his case to Miss Woodley, get the five quid, rush back here, and wait for Gran to return home from work and announce grandly that the sale of the book had saved them. He would hand her the five pounds, and the half crown earned from Molly, along with the shillings from cleaning the boat, and he would see the smile break across her face like the sun did coming through the clouds. And they would be all right again. And it would be Charlie who provided for them after only being a burden to his grandmother for ages and ages.

With a roof securely over their heads, Charlie would seek gainful employment. At very nearly fourteen he was strong with lots of energy. He could surely do things worth real wages.

Charlie shifted slightly in his box. He had to sleep diagonally and curled up, and still he felt the wood on his head and toes.

The rain had started to fall even harder now; he could hear it beating against the darkened panes of the window in the other room. It would be chilly and damp tomorrow, and he worried about Gran getting the cold in her chest. Most medicines were going to the soldiers, as was proper. He would have to watch her carefully. And maybe with some of his future wages he could buy her some cough syrup from the chemist down the street.

Then his thoughts turned to Molly and their meeting with Mr. Oliver. She had lied to him, Charlie believed. Her father wasn’t at the Ministry of Foods; he was gone, Charlie was convinced of that. So even with her very fine home and her nanny, and a Singer, she had no parents, really, while Charlie at least had Gran. Still, Charlie put a hand over his eyes and thought about how nice it would be to haveparents. Maybe Molly was lying awake in her bed thinking the very same thing. It forged a definite bond between them, he suddenly realized, which was startling because they came from such different worlds.

And while he liked Ignatius Oliver very much, he was quite odd. And those packets of papers? He said it was a manuscript or some such. He thought about the place in the alleyway where Oliver had been given some other papers by the same bloke he’d seen the first night at The Book Keep.

Yeah, quite odd.

He got up and spent some time using his spit to rub the stains off his clothes like a cat did its fur, and making sure his cloth cap was in good shape. He would manage his hair in the morning and use the tap and the soap bar to scrub his face and hands pink.

The meager cleaning of his clothes finished, an exhausted Charlie got back into his box. The beats of the rain slowly grew so melodic that once Charlie closed his eyes he succumbed to a slumber that carried him past all possible waking points. When he finally opened his eyes it was still pouring outside. He sat up and stretched in his bed, sensing that it was later than usual.

Then it occurred to him: He had not heard the footsteps, or the shuffle to the lav, or the activity in the kitchen as Gran prepared to leave for work at half wages. And he had not felt the kiss on his forehead.

I must’a been sleeping hard!

SUDDENLYALONE

“GRAN?”

He rose from his bed.

“Gran?”

He went in search of her.

Her bedroom was empty.

The bathroom was not.

Charlie stood in the doorway looking down at the floor.

There was only one eye showing because of how she was lying there. It was open and seemed to stare back at him a bare inch above the cold floor. The pupil seemed dulled and unusually large.

He took one cautious step inside the room.

“Gran?”

She might have fallen, he thought. And then passed out. One of her slippers was off and he could see the full extent of her swollen calf, the blue veins prominent like ink marks of a meandering river enshrined on a cartographer’s survey.

What if she had cried out for help and he had slept through it?

He inched closer. “Gran? Do you need help to get up?”

The eye did not blink. The bare foot did not move, not even a tremor.

He knelt down beside her, reached out, and touched her shoulder. She still had on her nightdress. Her white hair fell around her shoulders; it was longer than he imagined it would be—she always wore it tied up. The strands lay haphazardly around her neck.

He felt that neck.

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