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Dedication

For my husband, Aled, and our children, Hedd Gwenno and Guto. Love and imagination are all you need.

ONE

THIS IS A LIST of what Marty’s grandad had:

• 1 pair of spectacles (one arm broken)
• 7 teeth
• One-room apartment above the Crown and Anchor Public House
• 1 broken outboard engine
• 457 tea bags
• 1 tub of powdered milk
• A lot of time
• 1 allotment for growing vegetables and flowers and such, with shed (with a giant map of the world nailed to the wall inside)
• 1 squeaky camping chair that tried to swallow you whole if you sat on it funny
• Very sparkly blue eyes
• 1 old trilby hat
• 1 Hodgkins & Taylor & Sons seed catalog
• 1 empty cookie tin

This may sound like a lot, but it kind of isn’t. Not compared to Marty’s mum. Marty’s mum had billions of things. Billions and trillions and infinity of them. I mean, I’d make a list, but even if you lived to be a hundred, I don’t think that you’d ever finish reading it, because Marty’s mum kept everything. Newspapers and holey shoes and rusty lawn mowers and unread books and broken picture frames and, well, EVERYTHING. When she used to be able to leave the house, she could never pass a dumpster on the side of the road without reaching in and bringing something home, and she got really stamp-footed and scared if you tried to throw anything away.

Marty’s house was the one at the end of the road with the overgrown garden with the stuff in it. There were washing machines that had never worked and piles of carpet rolled up like soggy cigars. There were coils of cables and old sofas stacked on top of one another. The house was small to begin with, a bungalow with four small rooms and a sort of narrow kitchen and a square room out the back, but ever since Marty was born, the house had been shrinking. Not actually shrinking, like magically shrinking, but it was definitely getting smaller. He didn’t remember ever having been into their living room—it had always been full of stuff—but he kind of remembered sneaking into his mum and dad’s bedroom when he was little, when his dad was still around, and sliding into their bed for cuddles in the middle of the night. But you couldn’t even open that door now as so many piles of stuff blocked the way. After a while, the corridors had started to fill on both sides, leaving only a thin path through from the narrow kitchen to his bedroom. You could only get to one cupboard in the kitchen and to the sink, and that was always full. Mum slept at the back of the kitchen now, in a lounge chair by the back door, and the only time she went outside was when she’d sit on the back step and smoke. In the bathroom, the bath had been filled with old letters and bags of clothes so that he could only have a stand-up wash now with a cloth and some soap and half a sink of semiwarm water.

So far, Marty had managed to save his bedroom. Every time a bag of stuff was put there, he’d push it out again, a bit like standing on the beach and pushing back the waves with your bare hands. So, that’s why he went to see Grandad at his allotment every night after school. Even though they did nothing really except sit outside the garden shed and drink tea from enamel mugs together, it was a break from the squashiness of home, the sense that you were about to be washed away by a tide of stuff.

“All right, Marty boy?” Grandad flashed his toothy grin and passed him a mug of tea so sweet you could live off it for a week.

Marty sat down quietly and shrugged. Now, Grandad was always sparkly-eyed but today he was fizzing inside about something. This wasn’t entirely unusual, because Grandad had a history of getting very excited about strange things. Such as the time he thought he had brewed a new wonder fuel from rhubarb leaves and wanted to call NASA, and the time he built an automatic slug squisher out of six pairs of old boots and an old vacuum cleaner, oh, and the time he built the bum scratcher 2000, and an automatic tea stirrer 250, which worked so well it stirred and stirred Marty’s mug of tea until it started sloshing from side to side more and more violently and suddenly flew off sideways in a spray of scalding liquid, forcing them both to throw themselves on the ground for fear of burning themselves. Today though, Marty could tell that something else was up.

“I got you something,” he said, smiling. “Been waiting for it to arrive for weeks!”

He pulled a small brown envelope from his pocket and held it out.

“Happy birthday, Marty my boy.”

Marty blushed. He thought everyone had forgotten. His mum hadn’t said anything this morning. Even he had tried to forget for most of the day too.

“I didn’t have much money, but I wanted to get you something special…”

Marty didn’t get many presents, and since the house had started filling, Marty didn’t really care for “stuff,” but it was nice that Grandad had remembered.

“Open it, then,” said Grandad eagerly, his eyes prompting Marty to tear open the envelope. Even though he wasn’t a kid anymore, Marty still felt the shyness of being watched opening a present.

Marty took his time. He put down his mug of tea and slid his finger under the envelope flap. It was a small brown square one, like the kind they used to put his mum’s wages in when she worked at the shop. His grandad was still smiling at him. The envelope was so light, it didn’t seem to have anything in it, to be honest. So he tipped it upside down and shook it over his palm and out plopped a seed. Marty’s heart fell a little.

“Wow!” he said. “A seed!”

“One of Hodgkins and Taylor and Sons’ finest, I’ll have you know!”

Grandad was smiling at him still. Marty didn’t quite know what he had been expecting, but it wasn’t this. He swallowed down his disappointment.

“It’s really great…,” he heard himself saying.

Marty held the seed in his fingers. It was an extraordinarily large seed. Smooth, with a plump belly, and it was lightly striped as if it were wearing pajamas. Marty studied it; it was too big for even a sunflower …

“What kind of seed is it?”

Grandad flashed a grin of excitement.

“That, my boy, is a surprise! I could only afford one, so let’s hope it’s a good one!”

Grandad saw that Marty’s smile was fading. “Listen,” he said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t get you those computer games and things that the kids have these days. I’d give you the whole world if I could. You know that, don’t you?”

“I know,” said Marty softly.

“And you never know what this little stunner has in store for us,” Grandad said, taking the seed from Marty’s palm. “There’s magic in seeds, you know”—he winked—“you can never tell what wonders are in them.”

Marty looked at his grandad with his usual mix of love and confusion.

“It is a lovely seed,” he said.

Grandad held it up to the last light of day and studied it, his whole body quivering with excitement.

“You’re right, my boy, it’s a beauty! It’s a rollicking beauty!”

TWO

THIS IS A LIST of what Marty had:

• 1 old BMX bike
• 2 sweaters that fit him: 1 red, 1 blue
• As many books as he could pull from the stuff in the house
• 1 mother who wouldn’t leave the house
• 1 two-inch-tall statue of the Eiffel Tower given to him when he was tiny by the dad he hadn’t seen since he was four, which he kept in his pocket
• Uniform donated to him by the school, which included:
  • 1 pair of trousers with the name Harry Thomas sewn inside them
  • 1 school T-shirt with the name Nathan Sharp written in ink on the collar
  • 1 school sweater with Lee Smith written on the washing instruction label. (Marty didn’t mind not having his own school uniform, except that when he lost an item of clothing at break time or after PE he’d have to remember four names—his own and all these others in order to get his stuff back.)
• Half a packet of toffee chews
• A single bed with a Mickey Mouse duvet cover he was way too old for

“I’m home!” Marty shouted, but his voice was kind of snuffed out. That was the thing with their home. There was so much clutter inside that it seemed to dim any noise. It squished you into quietness and stillness. Marty closed the door. He’d been to the shop to pick up the dinner and some milk and had hung the thin plastic bag on the handlebars of his BMX as he rode home. They usually had a savory pie, because you could bake it in its own tin, and Marty had found that if you swished it out with water afterward and added it to the pile of old pie tins, then they slipped into one another, taking up not very much room.

“You taken your tablets?” he shouted.

“Yes!” came back the muffled voice. Marty could hear his mum dragging stuff about.

“What are you doing?” shouted Marty.

“You’ll see!”

Mum would sleep a lot. And still be really tired, so it was weird to hear her moving about so much. Marty set about opening the pie lid with a tin opener and pushed some dirty dishes aside in order to jam the kettle under the tap to draw water to make tea for his mum.

Marty fished out two dirty plates from the sink and ran them under the tap. He set the oven timer for twenty minutes.

When he stepped into the back room, he almost couldn’t believe his eyes. His mum had cleared a corner of the room. She stood there, hot and sweaty in a baggy T-shirt, her hair tied in a knot at the top of her head, determination in her eyes. She’d put some papers into a bag. She’d found some rubbish bags and had filled at least two. She was out of breath.

“I can do this,” she said, a proud smile on her face. Marty’s heart sank. Not again, he thought.

“I’ve almost cleared in here.”

Marty looked around, and yes, there was a small clear space, but everything else was exactly as it was. His mum did this every now and again. It was like she came alive for a little bit. It was as if she woke up and looked around and thought This is too much and started to clear. And she would. And sometimes it would last a day, and sometimes it would last a week, but usually no longer than that. After a while, it was as if the fog would come back, her body would slow down, and slowly but surely all the mess would come back, sometimes worse than before.

“What do you think?” she asked, grinning.

“It’s great,” he lied.

“It is, isn’t it?” she said, looking around, hands on hips. “I’m going to get it sorted this time…”

Marty felt a tightening in his stomach.

“Of course you are,” he said. “Anyway, the dinner’s on.”

She nodded.

“I’ll give you a shout when it’s ready.”

“Okay!” she said, getting back to her cleaning, her eyes shining.

Marty went to check on the pie. He used to get really upset by the whole thing. The embarrassment, the frustration, the wanting her to just be normal. Just a normal, boring nag-you-to-tidy-your-room kind of mum, but weirdly, over the years, he had also made a kind of room in his head. And he’d stuffed all the “Sorry, you can’t come back to mine, my mum’s not home” and the “Sorry, sir, I forgot my new book at the library” and the “Yeah, we went away over the summer too” excuses into it. He’d pushed them in and squished the door shut, and had become really good at not thinking too much about any of it.

Grandad had tried helping her years ago. He came over with a few of his friends. They rented a dumpster, a big yellow bucket thing, and got a truck crane ma-jiggy to drop it into the garden. They opened the back door and started to carry stuff out. Mum had followed them around all day, wringing her hands and saying “Not that! Not that!” and “I’ll find a use for that, that’ll come in handy.” Marty kind of understood her wanting to keep books and things like that, but who on earth would find a use for six broken radiators or a stack of mismatched window frames? He remembered her and Grandad shouting at each other. Louder and louder until all of Grandad’s friends went to sit in their van. That was the last time they talked to each other. Grandad hadn’t been to the house since, and he barely asked about mum anymore.

The timer rang. Marty fished out the pie with a fork onto two plates and turned sideways to walk down the back corridor where Mum now sat, exhausted in her old armchair. Marty passed her her plate. She blew out her cheeks …

“Gosh, what would I do without you? Eh?”

Marty shrugged. Sat down on the pile of newspapers he usually sat down on.

“You really are an angel.”

Marty watched her as she started to eat, and his smile slowly straightened.

THREE

IT WAS ALWAYS the ones with new sneakers who started it. Being the top predators at school, they seemed to have super vision or something. They could sense kids like Marty scurrying around in the undergrowth and they’d pounce on them when they least expected it. In the lunch line, “Oi, stink fest!” At break, “What a loser!” and as Marty unchained his BMX from the railings before cycling to the allotments, “Hee hee! Does that thing even work? You’d be quicker walking, mate!”

Teachers told him to ignore them. Mr. Garraway, the school counselor, had told him not to “engage.” His mother told him to walk away, but it was his grandad who had given him the best advice. He had taught him to call them names under his breath. Awful, skin-crawling, cheek-reddening, naughty, rude, horrible names. Words that you should NEVER say aloud. Words that would get you in a LOT of trouble. But, funnily enough, it kind of worked. A bit like holding your hand in ice-cold water, you could stand stuff for longer if you just let rip in your head. That’s what he was doing when Gracie saw him.

“You shouldn’t use words like that, you know.”

Marty almost jumped out of his skin.

“Jeepers!” he cried. “Sneak up on someone, why don’t you?”

She smiled. Marty rattled the lock off his bike at last.

“That needs some oil.”

She was right. She stood there smiling at him, and suddenly Marty found her extremely and unusually irritating.

“How’d you know what I was saying anyway?” he asked.

“I can lip read.”

“What? You got some kind of superpower or what?” he said impatiently.

“Well, if you call being deaf a superpower, then yup.”

Marty’s irritation melted into regret.

“Oh,” he mumbled, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” she asked. “That I’m deaf? Or that you have the social skills of a baked bean?”

Marty laughed out loud. She smiled, then she looked at him more sternly.

“You shouldn’t let them talk to you like that, you know.”

Marty shrugged.

Marty had noticed her before. She was in the same year, just a different class, so they didn’t come across each other very often. She was kind of one of those looks-like-everyone-else people. Brown hair. A few freckles. Not big. Not small. Not tall. Not short. Kind of in-the-middle normalness. The only thing extraordinary about her, which he’d never noticed until now, was a hearing aid in her ear and a button-shaped thingy in her hair.

“And you shouldn’t stare either,” she said, interrupting his thoughts.

“Oh, no. I wasn’t.”

“Yes, you were; you’re a terrible liar. Gosh, you really are a disaster, aren’t you?”

She was still smiling at him. He went back to being annoyed at her.

“Anyway, listen, I’ve got to go,” he said, turning his bike around. He usually felt like his head was too big for his narrow shoulders and that his clothes were two sizes too big for him and that his hair, which he cut himself in the bathroom mirror, was wonky, but standing in front of her was making all of this worse. “I’ll see you later,” he said as he turned away.

“Maybe,” she said. “Enjoy yourself at the allotments.”

“Hang on, how do you know about…?” he turned back to ask, but she was already walking away.

The stink reached Marty half a mile away from the allotments. His cheeks flushed, and he knew instantly what was up. Every year around this time, Grandad would swing by the back of the fishmongers on the Old Barley Road and pick up a bucket of the stinkiest, smelliest, disgustingest fish innards and bones and heads that he could. The more putrid and stomach-churningly puke-festy, the better. He’d smile and carry this bucket of gloop all the way back through town waving a cheery “Good morning” to everyone as he walked by and then giggle as he heard them gagging behind him. Then, when he had arrived at the allotments, he’d splatter it liberally about so that it released a stench that made the birds in the nearby trees faint, making all the neighbors turn green and call him names.

“Where’ve you been, Marty boy? You’re late! You’re late! Come and look, come and look!”

Marty pushed the gate open.

“Yeah. I think I can guess what you’ve been doing, Grandad.”

“Everything’s had a good thorough soaking in it!” his grandad said with his usual gap-toothed grin.

After he’d spread the gray pukey mixture everywhere, he would then bottle up what was left, swearing it was the best soil tonic in the world.

The city center itself had once been rich: the size of the houses and banks in the middle of town told you that, but now it seemed to be shriveling. Factories had shut down and the big houses chopped and changed into tiny flats. Shops were closing on the main street, and the only big houses left were the three-story-high ones that ran in a ridge along the side of the allotments.

Grandad’s allotment was around thirty feet by ten feet. Not very big, but Marty was always astounded by how much food Grandad could grow. He would sow potatoes and runner beans and zucchini and squashes. He’d always have peas and carrots, of course, and onions and beets. He’d swap vegetable seeds with John Trinidad, his Caribbean neighbor on the allotments, and have salads and root vegetables that he didn’t even know the names of. Sadiq three allotments down would give him seeds of herbs and greens so leafy they looked tropical, and for chilies so hot they’d blow your head off. Colin, whose day job was being a milkman, would putter around growing the most beautiful dahlias you’ve ever seen. It was like a little town on the edge of the city really, where you could put your name down for a little patch of land the county council didn’t know what to do with, and even though everyone spoke different languages and looked different and grew different things, they all had two things in common: (a) They were all broke and happy to grow some extra food, and (b) None of them had lost that joy of watching something they planted grow. Marty would also laugh at the way they all helped one another but also kept back secret tricks and methods that they would NEVER share with one another. There seemed to be what Grandad would call a “healthy competition” about the whole thing.

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