What Abigail Did Tha Summer, Ben Aaronovitch [if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud txt] 📗

taste of peanut butter, Simon wants to play Risk, but I pull out his Latin textbook instead. There’s a Post-it note stuck to the cover that says Do exercise 1.1 to 1.4 xxx.

This is odd, because either Simon is older than he looks or he’s starting Latin GCSE a year early. Nothing wrong with that. I started two years early – but I have motivation. If I pass my Latin GCSE I get to learn magic. Peter promised and Peter better not be lying.

More likely Simon’s mum is trying to give Simon a head start.

These first exercises are easy, because they’re easing you into the idea of inflection which we don’t do in English no more, because we use word order instead. Once you’ve got your head round that, you can stick your slave in front of the woman and still have her salute him. Femina servum salutat. What makes it long5 is memorising all the inflections, which change with tense and other things. I was hoping if I made it a game Simon would pick it up quicker, but he doesn’t. One thing I noticed, though, is once he’s got it stuck in his head, there it stays.

*

Angelica has obviously told Simon’s mum that I’m in the house and we can hear her doing the mad step up the stairs. The staircases in these old houses creak and each thump on a riser is followed by a creak. The angry thump-creaks are getting closer and I look at Simon, and he’s giving me a superior smile and I’m wondering if it might be worth me risking that jump to the tree. It’s not that I’m scared of Simon’s mum, right? But a girl can get tired of being misunderstood. And if I want to be shouted at, there’s a ton of elders forming an orderly queue for the privilege. Starting with my mum.

The thumping stops on the landing below as she catches her breath, and Simon jumps to his feet. He takes a classic ballet stance, second position, back straight, hands held palm-up in front of his belly.

In the silence I hear his mum take a deep breath and Simon is miming taking his own breath, hands rising as they both breathe in, before flipping over and pushing down on the exhale. Simon repeats the action twice more before miming straightening an imaginary suit jacket and flicking non-existent dust off his shoulders. I can hear his mum coming up the final flight of stairs in slow deliberate steps. Simon winks at me, scoops up his Latin homework, and as soon as his mum’s head emerges through the slot in the floor he runs forward and waves it at her.

‘Look, Mum,’ he cries. ‘I can do Latin – Abigail helped me.’

I’m impressed that she doesn’t cave right away. Instead she takes the A4 pad and flicks over the answers written out in Simon’s terrible handwriting. She looks at Simon, looks back at the work and then back at me. Her eyes narrow and she cocks her head to one side – but she can’t be vexed with Simon because the homework is done and she has to know I’m the reason it got done.

I try the innocent look again – sooner or later it’s bound to work.

She gives a little snort and invites us both down for ‘supper’.

*

Simon’s mum cooks exactly the same way my mum does. Banging pots and pans about as if she’s angry with the ingredients and is daring them to fight her. She dishes up home-made fish fingers, peas, carrots and boiled potatoes. I’m not sure whose home the fish fingers were made in, because Simon’s mum got them out of a packet.

Weirdly, she doesn’t seem that bothered about Simon’s bruise. She fusses a bit, but apparently this is just the latest in a long run of scrapes and bruises that Simon’s been accumulating since he learnt to crawl.

‘We had to sell the monkey bars,’ she says, and Simon pulls a face.

For pudding we have posh peach-flavoured sorbet which, I won’t lie, tastes like ice cream without the cream, but since me and Simon’s mum are getting on so well right now I keep my lips zipped. After supper she’s hustling me out the door, but this time she insists on driving me home.

‘I’m worried about your safety,’ she says, and I can’t tell if she just wants to be sure I clear the area or she’s genuinely concerned. If she is, I’m wondering what she knows that I don’t.

I was expecting a Range Rover or something like that. But instead it’s a sensible Audi with, I notice, an Airwave vehicle kit hidden amongst the other electronics. Airwave is mainly Radio Fed, but it’s also used by fire and ambulance – I’m guessing Simon’s mum is Fed-adjacent in some way.

‘Seat belt?’ she asks and, satisfied I’m strapped in, off we go.

*

‘I’m surprised that your school does Latin,’ says Simon’s mum one minute into the drive. ‘And there was no mention of it on the website, although your creative arts programme seemed strong.’

So she’d checked the Acland Burghley website – because of course she had.

‘I do it after school,’ I say, which is half true.

‘Interesting,’ says Simon’s mum. ‘Why do you want to learn Latin?’

Because Peter Grant, apprentice wizard, said that if I passed my Latin GCSE then he’d teach me magic. I think he thought he was joking. But if he did, more fool him.

‘So I can learn to cast magic spells,’ I say to test her.

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Like Harry Potter?’

Which I think means she either doesn’t know about the Folly, Peter Grant and Inspector Nightingale, or hasn’t figured out the connection. And why should she?

‘Sort of,’ I say.

‘Whatever gets you up in the morning,’ she says.

I have her drop me off on Falkland Road so she won’t know where I live.

Unlike certain foxes I could name.

Indigo is waiting for me in the garden square in the centre of my flats. She squeezes through