Artichoke Hearts (9 page)

‘I’ve got the newspaper clippings. I can bring them in to show you, if you want,’ Ben booms.

I can’t help thinking of Big Ben’s tiny baby heart.

‘You see,’ smiles Pat Print. ‘You were only just born and you’d already hit the news.’

Then Ben reads out Millie’s word: loyalty.

‘We talked about Millie’s ancestor, guarding the heart,’ Ben says. ‘He must have really cared about the person whose heart he was protecting, to stay loyal to them for
all that time, even though they were dead.’

Ben’s dad left home a few years ago. I bet that’s what he’s thinking about, but he’s not the type to say anything.

Pat nods. ‘The heart is probably the most powerful symbol in life and literature. My guess is that Millie’s ancestor could have either been protecting the heart, because it was such
a precious symbol, or preventing it from being returned to its people, like a scalp or a macabre trophy. You might have to dig a bit deeper to find out,’ Pat Print tells Millie. ‘So
what do you think? If Millie did the research, would you want to read that story?’

‘I would, for definite . . . that’s what I go for . . . adventure, mystery, that sort of thing,’ perks up Ben.

‘Indeed. You’ve got an epic historical novel on your hands there, Millie Lockhart. If anyone can handle it, you can. Why don’t you write the opening paragraph for next week?
Let’s see if we can help you out a bit. Jidé, if you were reading that book, what would make it a page-turner for you?’

Jidé doesn’t even need to think before he answers.

‘She’ll have to make a link between herself and that story, like an adventure through time.’

Millie nods.

‘I think I’ll just give up my day job,’ jokes Pat Print. ‘With a writer’s note like that, I may as well pack up and go home.’

A noise that never escapes my mouth in school fills up the room. It’s strange and low and loud and it shocks everyone, my laugh, because I don’t think, except for Millie, the others
have ever heard it before. It’s so embarrassing. I don’t even know why I’m laughing.

‘Now, that’s a first!’ Jidé Jackson nudges me on the arm, playfully.

My face is as hot and red as if I’ve been running a very high temperature. How did that slip out? And now my laugh and Jidé’s nudge have made my temperature shoot up to
boiling point and left behind a stupid grin that I can’t wipe off my face. I can’t even look up. Pat Print must realize that I am paralysed with embarrassment because she switches to
Jidé instead.

‘Jidé. What about your surname? Did you find out anything more?’

Jidé shakes his head, Suddenly Jidé the joker looks miserable. It’s like we’ve swapped roles.

‘That’s a shame,’ sighs Pat.

‘”We don’t have that information.” That’s what Grace said when I asked her if we could ever trace my original surname. I wasn’t always a Jackson.’

I’ve never heard Jidé talk so quietly.

‘I don’t know what my birth name is. I had a sister, she was about three when she died, they think, older than me anyway . . . but she wouldn’t speak, not even to tell them her
name or mine. Grace said she was too traumatized to talk. Grace and Jai, they gave me the name “BabaJidé” when they found me. I told you, didn’t I, it means “father
has returned,” and even though Jai met so many children out there he had a feeling, as soon as he saw me, that he should be my father. I was about a year old, they’re not sure. I have a
made-up birthday. And . . . my birth parents, who knows? You probably watched them on the news, floating down the river.’

The words from Jidé’s list echo around my mind.

A blueberry-coloured rash starts to spread up Pat Print’s neck and over her face. I didn’t have her down as a blusher.

‘Rwanda . . . is that right?’

Jidé nods.

‘What did Grace and Jai do out there?’ she asks gently.

Aid workers in one of the refugee camps, the one my sister walked into with me. I suppose I could research what happened to people
like
my birth parents, but I could never find out my
proper name,’ explains Jidé. Anyway, I’m lucky to be alive, aren’t I? If it wasn’t for Grace and Jai . . .’ Jidé trails off.

He suddenly looks exhausted. I don’t think he talks about his past to many people. I haven’t really understood this before, about Jidé, how much he doesn’t say. The
layers of his heart are well protected. Even the way he tells us all this is said in a matter-of-fact sort of voice, but he can’t disguise the fact that he’s angry. Now I think I
understand why there are all these different edges to him. ‘Jidé the joker’, ‘Jidé with attitude’, ‘Jidé trying his best to hide how clever he
is’, although at least in Pat Print’s class he seems to be giving up on that one. Nana thinks I’m lucky because I haven’t had a reason to grow protective layers. Jidé
has, and suddenly this all makes me feel like I live in a very cosy little world. A minute ago we were discussing names. Now, suddenly, we’re in Rwanda. I don’t even know where Rwanda
is.

I’ve been trying to work out what’s different about this class. I don’t know what it is about Pat Print, but she’s definitely got this way of letting people say what they
want to say. Once she gets us all talking it’s as if she’s almost not here at all; she sort of disappears from the room while the conversation’s flowing and only really steps back
in to start it up again, like keeping one of Laila’s spinning tops whirling. Maybe that’s why Jidé Jackson has talked about himself for the first time ever. I don’t think
anyone in this room knew that, about Jidé, and I’ve been at school with him since primary. By the look on Ben’s face, he didn’t know either.

Pat Print sighs deeply. That’s the other thing about her. She’s not scared of long silences like some teachers are. It’s weird, but you don’t get embarrassed in the
silence in her class and it doesn’t feel like a punishment either. It’s actually a relief to have the time to feel whatever it is you’re feeling, and after what
Jidé’s told us I think she’s right . . . we need a bit of time to let it all sink in.

‘Now, how did you get on with your diaries?’ Pat asks, breaking the quiet.

‘Nothing happened to me this week,’ booms Ben.

‘Nothing never happens,’ replies Pat, smiling.

‘It does to me,’ sulks Ben.

‘I did it,’ perks up Millie, enthusiastically, ‘but I’d rather not read it out aloud.’

‘You’re just trying to get us interested,’ jokes Ben.

‘Did it work?’ laughs Millie.

I think Millie and Ben are flirting with each other!

‘Fair enough,’ says Pat. ‘Jidé?’

He shakes his head.

‘Now you said you’ve got something for me, Mira. Will you read it out to us?’

I take out my red leather diary. I have already decided which bits I don’t mind them hearing about -obviously there are some things I wouldn’t want any of them to know, not even
Millie and especially not Jidé!

‘I got this diary last week. It starts on my birthday, but I’ll read last Sunday. That’s the day me and Nana went to buy paint,’ I explain.

We park right next to Dusty Bird’s art shop. Nana leans on my arm as Mum and I walk her inside. She wants acrylic water-based paints. Nana says it’s very
important to choose
the
exact colours she has in her mind . . .

All the way through reading this I feel Jidé watching me and properly listening, and all I can feel is guilty, because I’m talking about my nana dying . . . and in
a way she’s had her life, and such a good life, and a rich life. I just wish that Jidé’s family were alive. I wish that his little sister hadn’t died so young and that he
knew her name. Because I can’t stop thinking about Jidé, I’ve forgotten how much I hate reading aloud. Anyway, reading out your work isn’t so bad because at least you can
lean on the words you’ve already written. I don’t manage to get to the end because the bell rings for the start of school. Usually everyone jumps up and starts packing their things
away, but today, nobody moves till I get to the end of my sentence.

When someone is dying, everything you say and do means more than it normally does. When someone is dying, you notice things . . . everything really. The whole of life is in
slow motion.

There’s that silence again . . . the one where you can hear people’s thoughts echoing around the room. Jidé nods and smiles at me sadly. Somehow, since he
told us what he told us, he seems less tough.

‘Everything OK?’ chirps Miss Poplar, peering round the door and spotting Moses. She raises her right eyebrow. That means something’s happening that shouldn’t be happening
. . . Miss Poplar never raises her voice, just her right eyebrow. In this case that right eyebrow is managing to say two things at the same time – ‘Dogs aren’t allowed in school,’
and, ‘Why aren’t you wearing your uniforms correctly?’ but she doesn’t say anything to Pat Print, not in front of us anyway.

‘I wish you could have heard what I just heard. Mira read us a diary entry about her grandmother,’ Pat Print tells Miss Poplar.

Sometimes, because I don’t talk very much, some adults might assume I don’t think much either. Maybe Pat Print thought that about me.

‘When I agreed to take this job, I anticipated it would be a nice little bit of research, nothing too stretching, but I feel absolutely wrung out by the talent and the bravery of your
students,’ Pat says, looking from Miss Poplar to Jidé. ‘Jidé, could you just stay on for a minute.’ It’s Jidé’s turn for a private word.

I wonder what she could possibly say to him, to make it better.

‘Excuse me, I’ve got to go now,’ I say, standing up and packing up my diary.

I feel Jidé’s eyes on my back as I leave the room.

Millie and Ben follow me out into the corridor.

‘Where is Rwanda anyway?’ Ben asks Millie.

‘Africa,’ Millie answers without hesitation.

‘How do you get to know so much about everything?’ asks Ben.

‘Try reading!’ smiles Millie.

Ben sticks his tongue out at her and wanders off laughing and occasionally glancing back at her.

‘Did you bring your mobile in today?’ asks Millie.

I get my pebble out of my pocket to show her.

‘You’re so lucky. My mum would never let me bring mine into school.’

‘Mine wouldn’t either!’

‘Aren’t you the rebel! What’s your number?’

I have it stuck to the back of the phone until I remember it, which will probably be never because I’m rubbish at memorizing numbers. Millie repeats it over a few times out loud.

‘OK, got that. I’ll call you. I wish I could come with you. Remember the last time we went?’

It was only last summer that Millie and me were together in Suffolk, jumping off the dunes and making a den down on the marsh. I can’t imagine us doing that now. It feels like a whole
lifetime away.

Still, the thought of Millie being the first person to call me on my mobile cheers me up as I walk along the corridor following the faint mud trail of Pat Print’s journey into school.

As we drive past the school, on our way to pick up Nana, Pat Print and Miss Poplar are standing at the end of the walkway to school that leads out on to the road. Miss Poplar
waves and says something to Pat, who peers into our car. She glances from Mum to Dad, past my brother and sister till she finally sees me. Then she waves, smiles and blows me a kiss.

‘Who’s that with Miss Poplar?’ asks Mum.

‘That’s Pat Print, the writer woman I told you about.’

‘Why did she blow you a kiss?’ asks Krish, pulling his grossed-out face.

I shrug. ‘I think she likes my writing.’

‘It’s a bit weird though. It’s not as if she knows you or anything.’

‘Miss Poplar’s probably told her why we’re going to Suffolk. Maybe she feels sorry for us.’

‘Why do you call her by her first name anyway?’

I can’t be bothered to answer Krish.

‘Guess what her dog’s called?’ I say, attempting to change the subject.

‘Shep,’ tries Dad. ‘Or Lassie? Or—’

‘Do you want to know or not?’ I say, cutting him off and wishing I’d never asked in the first place.

‘Want to know what?’ asks Dad.

‘Her dog’s name,’ I sigh, almost giving up completely.

‘Go on then,’ encourages Mum.

‘Moses!’

‘Jesus, not him again,’ groans Dad.

‘Not Jesus, Moses,’ jokes Krish.

This is how conversations go in our house. What
is
the point?

We are making this trip to Suffolk because Nana needs to see the big Suffolk sky just once more. There is a lot of sky in Suffolk – that’s why people from London like it,
because of the wide-open sky and sea, with nothing on the horizon.

Nana has a little wooden cottage, like a doll’s house; everything in it is small and delicate. It’s got a white porch, like a summerhouse, looking on to the garden. There are pots
and hanging things on little hooks all over the porch . . . pottery birds, horseshoes, a rusty green wind chime that’s lost its chime, a Jeremy Fisher frog sitting on a lily pad, a rusty
Indian metal heart with bells threaded through it and Nana’s long string of holey stones, stretching from one end of the porch to the other. I learned to count on those holey stones.

High up, on a whitewashed shelf, always in exactly the same place, sits the flycatcher’s pot. Every summer a family of flycatchers make their journey over the Sahara desert from Africa to
the same little white pot that sits on Nana Josie’s porch. They’ve been coming here for as long as Nana can remember. Those little birds could have sat on a branch near
Jidé’s mum and dad and flown thousands and thousands of kilometres over land and sea, just to be in Nana’s garden. She says she feels privileged to have what she calls her
‘feathered guests’, and that when she’s gone we must be very quiet, at the time of the flycatchers, so they will know they’re still welcome. But we can’t really be
quiet enough. Nana used to stand for hours painting at her easel in the garden, hardly moving at all, but Krish is always kicking a football or playing cricket or swing ball, and as for Laila,
well, you can’t make her be quiet unless she’s asleep or ill. Even I can’t be as quiet as Nana. Anyway, it’s too early for the flycatchers.