City of Flowers (2 page)

Sky passed a day at school that felt almost normal. He was used to being in the sixth form now, but he had never quite felt part of the school and had no close friends there.

The trouble was, he looked the part of someone cool and trendy and he knew that lots of girls were initially attracted to him. He was tall for his age and he wore his gold-brown hair in dreadlocks. But he didn't listen to any kind of rock music. It reminded him too much of his father. Rosalind sometimes played the Warrior's CDs, which were the only ones she had that weren't classical or folk, and it made Sky almost literally sick.

He used not to care about his father but, ever since the singer had ignored Sky's letter, written from the heart of despair, he had begun to hate the very idea of him. He knew that the Warrior's music was having a fashionable revival at the time, because it had featured in a film that broke box office records, but Sky didn't see the film and he never told anyone of his connection with the singer.

If he could have been interested in football, he might have felt less of a fish out of water at school. He had the physique for it but just couldn't raise the enthusiasm. He supposed it was because he had more important things to think about. He probably wasn't the only student at his school looking after a sick parent; he'd read an article once about how many carers there were under the age of sixteen – really small kids like nine-year-olds, looking after parents in wheelchairs.

Well, he was better off than they were; he was seventeen, and his mother wasn't ill all the time. But he didn't know anyone else in his position and he felt set apart, somehow marked. And it showed. Gradually, the friendly overtures had tailed off and the girls wrote him off as useless too.

There was just one girl, though, quiet and fair, whom he really liked, and if she had ever shown any interest in him, things might have been different. But she was inseparable from her fierce friend with the dyed red hair and tattoo, so Sky never got up the courage to talk to her. Still, they were all doing English AS, so at least they were in some of the same classes.

It didn't take Sky long to reach home, since his flat was in a house right next to the school. He dawdled, wondering what he would find there, whether his mother would still be feeling OK or back in bed unable to move. But he was quite unprepared for what he did find. On the doorstep to their flats stood a small blue glass bottle, with a silver stopper in the shape of a fleur-de-lys. It was empty and incredibly fragile, just sitting there on the step, where anyone might knock it over.

Instinctively, Sky picked it up and took out the stopper; a heavenly smell wafted out of it, more delicious than anything in his mother's store of oils and essences. Was it meant for her? There was no message attached to it.

He let himself in through the front door and then into their ground-floor flat. Rosalind had sold the one that the Warrior had paid for and bought this smaller one less than a year ago because she couldn't manage stairs any more. The newly converted house still smelt of fresh paint and plaster. That and the smell of flower essences greeted Sky's return.

‘Mum,' he called, though she would have heard his key in the lock. ‘I'm home!'

She wasn't in the living room or the tiny kitchen, and he knocked on her bedroom door with a sick feeling that something terrible had happened to her. But she wasn't there and when he went back to the kitchen, he found her note:

.

Gone to supermarket; there won't be any biscuits till I get back.

.

Sky smiled with relief; when had she last been well enough to go shopping on her own? That was usually his job, every Wednesday afternoon after school, lugging plastic carrier bags on to the bus and then putting everything away. His mother must have taken the car, though; she couldn't have managed on the bus.

Sky took the damp wash out of the machine, put it in the tumble-dryer, washed up the breakfast things from the morning and looked in the cupboards to see what he could make for dinner. Normally, he would make a start on peeling potatoes or chopping onions, but he thought he'd better wait and see what his mother brought back with her; maybe she had planned something.

He fed Remedy, because the tabby rescue cat was in danger of tripping him up by twining round his legs, then made himself a cup of tea and sat down at the table, where the little blue glass bottle stood looking innocent and at the same time significant. Remedy leapt on to the chair beside him and started washing. Sky sighed and got out his school books and read a short story for French.

Sandro was delighted with his new master. Everyone knew about the Eel; he was becoming a figure to be reckoned with in Giglia. He now had dozens of spies working for him and bringing information back to the di Chimici palace from all over the city and beyond. It was just the kind of work Sandro enjoyed, following people and hanging about eavesdropping on their private conversations. He would have been happy to do it for nothing.

Sandro was small and quick-witted and completely inconspicuous, one of those many young boys, none too clean and a bit ragged, who hung about the busy places of the city, hoping for a few cents in return for running errands. But actually he had silver in his pockets, expenses paid to him by the Eel, because he might need to buy a drink for an informant or offer a small bribe for information.

Now Sandro was tailing one of the Nucci clan and it couldn't have been easier. Camillo Nucci was so obviously on his way to an assignation that Sandro had to stifle a chuckle; the young bravo in the red cap kept looking over his shoulder as he walked past the di Chimici's grand new building of Guild offices off the main piazza and across the stone structure that was still called the Ponte Nuovo, even though it had been built two hundred years before.

A lesser spy might have lost the Nucci on the bridge, with its crush of people, its butchers' shops and fishmongers and chandlers. But not Sandro. He had guessed where his quarry was headed, anyway – the half-built palazzo on the other side of the river. The Nucci family, the only one anywhere near close enough in wealth to rival the di Chimici, had started building their grand palazzo five years before and it was still not finished.

But, if it ever was, it would be much bigger than the Ducal palazzo on this side of the river, and that bothered Sandro; he was a di Chimici man through and through. It stood to reason that his masters must have the best, the biggest and the grandest of everything. Take the coming weddings; weren't the young princes and their cousins to be married in the great cathedral by the Pope himself, their uncle Ferdinando, who was coming specially from Remora to conduct the most lavish ceremony the city had ever seen?

Camillo Nucci had reached the walls of his father's palazzo-to-be and was talking to his father and brothers. Sandro saw to his surprise that the second storey was nearly complete; it wouldn't be long before the Nucci palace was finished after all. But why was young Camillo making such a mystery of his evening stroll, since he was joined only by other members of his family? Nothing remarkable about that. But Sandro followed them into a nearby tavern anyway.

And was rewarded by seeing them joined by a couple of very disreputable-looking men. He couldn't get near enough to hear their talk, unfortunately, but he memorised every detail of their appearance to tell the Eel. His master was sure to be interested.

‘Do you think this was left for you?' Sky asked his mother when he had unpacked the shopping for her.

Rosalind was looking tired again now and had flopped down on the sofa, kicking her shoes off as soon as she had got in. She looked at the little bottle in his hand.

‘No idea,' she said. ‘It's pretty though, isn't it?'

‘But empty,' said Sky, still puzzled. ‘Shall I put it with your other bottles?'

‘No, it would outclass all my plastic refillables,' said Rosalind. ‘Just put it on the mantelpiece – unless you want it?'

Sky hesitated. It seemed a girly thing to want a blue perfume bottle in his room, but the little phial seemed to speak to him in some way he didn't understand.

‘OK,' he said, putting it temporarily on the living-room mantelpiece. ‘What shall I cook tonight?'

‘How about spag bol?' suggested his mother. ‘That's nice and easy and we can eat it on our laps. It's
ER
tonight.'

Sky grinned. His mother loved hospital dramas but always closed her eyes during the gory scenes and operations. You would have thought she'd have had enough of doctors and nurses, but she lapped it all up.

He went away to chop onions and peppers. Later, after they had eaten and Rosalind had seen even less of
ER
than usual, because it had involved a multiple road traffic accident, Sky carried her to bed. She was very light, he realised, and she had fallen asleep before he had time to help her into her nightdress or to clean her teeth.

But Sky didn't have the heart to wake her; he left her on the bed and went to do the rest of his homework. Then he washed up, put out the wheelie bin, folded the dry washing for ironing the next day, changed the cat litter, hung his damp jeans in the airing cupboard, locked up and eventually got into bed at half past eleven.

He was exhausted. How long can I carry on like this? he wondered. True, his mother had been much better that day but he knew from experience that she would be even more wiped out than usual the next day. He started to calculate the ratio of good to bad days she had had recently. Time, the doctor had said, but how long was enough time to make her well again?

If he looked ahead to the next few years, Sky could see nothing but difficulties. His mother wanted passionately for him to go to university and have the chances she had thrown away for herself, and he was just as keen. But how could he leave her, knowing that some days she wouldn't eat or be able to shower or even feed the cat? He envied other boys his age who could leave home in a year or two and go to Kathmandu if they wanted without worrying about their mothers. He'd probably have to settle for a college in London and living at home.

Remedy climbed on to Sky's chest to purr happily. He ruffled the cat's ears. ‘Easy being you, isn't it?' he said. Then he remembered the bottle. Despite Remedy's protests, he got up again and fetched it from the living room. He lay in the dark, sniffing the wonderful scent that came from it and feeling strangely comforted. The cat had stalked off in protest; these were not the kind of smells he liked and there were far too many of them in the flat as it was – give him kipper any day.

I wonder where it can have come from? was Sky's last thought before drifting off into a deep sleep, the bottle in his hand.