Page 39 of The Good Boy

“I had toast,” Rory confirms when he sees me looking at it. “But then I was still hungry, but I am a bit scared of the fire thing that makes sausages brown.”

“Hob,” I remind him. Weird how he knows some words and is basically fluent in English—erudite, even—while others are a total mystery to him. One day I would like to speak to the manager of transmutation and have a word with him about the vagaries of the ground rules.

“So, then I had the butter...” He shows me the thoroughly licked out tub.

“Just the butter on its own?” I ask him, noticing that there is no bread left.

“No!” he says. “That would be gross. I had it with the rest of the cheese. And four packets of cheeseballs. Which are like eating cheesy dust. And then some of your emergency chocolate, because I can now. I’m ready to face the day!”

Maybe I’ll just have a coffee, then.

“I love coming to work!” Rory says happily as we arrive at the shop. I unlock the door, and he positively bounds inside, intent on cantering around the table in the middle of the room. The ancient lighting system, designed by Nan sometime in the eighties, flickers then begins to boot up. Red and purple bulbs start to glow behind clamshell-shaped wall lights. A disco ball, for some reason, begins to slowly spin in the center of the room, setting off a swirl of spinning, glittering lights that Rory finds endlessly delightful.

“Like inside stars,” he tells me as he follows the repeating pattern.

You’d think there would be some kind of backup lighting. Like for when the shop is closed and you need to mop the floor. There is not. Everything here is done within the weird disco twilight world of my nanna Maria’s 1990s imagination.

“Ooh, brilliant, new biscuits,” Rory says, after sniffing the air, immediately going out to the back room to investigate the snacks. He sticks his head in the cupboard while I put the kettle on. Nan isn’t here yet and we are already late opening. It’s not unlike her to be late—she will sweep in at some point and tell us she was delayed by spirits, or an angel with a message for her.

I peer out the shop window down the front toward the castle. It’s going to be a warm day—kids with families are already out and about. Fat little toddlers trail about after dads with no tops on, and girls who wear their long hair on top of their heads in big looped buns parade up and down like they are in Cannes looking for the next movie star to whisk them away on a yacht. Beyond, the stretches of golden South Bay shimmer and gleam like they’re made of gold dust. The sea is a startling blue.

We are going to be busy. The warmer the weather, the more people want their fortunes told or to chat to someone dead.

“Where are you, Nan?” I mutter as I turn around theOpensign on the door and hope that she arrives before the first customer does.

“I wonder who we’ll meet today?” Rory says, sitting in Nanna Maria’s red velvet chair and putting on the silk turban she sometimes wears if she’s feeling extra theatrical. I’ll say this for Rory, he certainly is making full use of his new motor skills. Except that he’s put it on upside down, and the long, pink plume attached to it is face down, covering his nose. “I hope we meet nice people. Most people are nice, though, aren’t they? The onlypeople I’ve ever met who aren’t nice are vets and people with beards. Why are people with beards weird? You’d think the more hair a person has the more doglike they would be, but it’s the opposite...”

Before I can even begin to think of an answer the bell on the door rings and a woman walks in. Even though it’s already scorching outside she is wearing a pale blue raincoat buttoned all the way up to the top. She sees Rory sitting at the table and hesitates. I’m about to tell her to come back in ten when I see her straighten her shoulders with resolve and take a seat at the table. Nan is still nowhere to be seen.

“I need a sitting, please,” she says. “I’ve got contactless—is that okay?”

“Fortune?” I ask. “Madam Martinelli will be with us any—”

“No, I need to speak to my husband.” She sits down and looks at Rory, who puffs the feather away from his nose and smiles at her.

“Hello,” he says warmly.

“Hello, I need to speak to my husband,” she says. Oh god. It has taken me several seconds too long to work out what is happening.

“No, excuse me, sorry, this isn’t...” I begin, but the woman is dead set. She’s worked up her courage and nothing is going to delay her now.

“Can you help me speak to him, please?” the woman says. She leans forward in her seat, her narrow face pinched and pale. I watch in horror as Rory reaches across the table and takes her hand in his.

“Have you thought about phoning him?” he asks.

“He’s gone to the other side,” she says.

“Of where?” Rory asks.

I’m rooted to the spot with a kind of immobilized panic, somehow unable to intervene. This is going to be a train wreck.

“Of life,” she says.

“Oh!” Rory exclaims, puffing the feather out of the way again. “You mean he’s gone over the rainbow bridge. Don’t worry, a lot of my friends are there.”

“It’s been a year, but I don’t feel any better, you see,” she says unhappily. “I just want to cry all the time, and tomorrow it’s the anniversary. I thought, I thought, if I could just speak to him one more time... it might help.”

“And what do you want to say to him?” Rory asks, gently and soft.

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