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being X-rayed at security . . . leading a zombie takeover of the cockpit. . .
    My mouth is so full of toast that I don’t think she hears me splutter.
    ‘Poor Ty poor Nicki. . .’ says Mum, sniffling into her tissue.
    Oh my God. That’s who Julie is – Ty’s gran. He’s going to be really upset. I feel like someone’s poured a huge bucket of ice-cold water on my head.
    ‘I thought she was all right . . . in hospital but getting better.’
    ‘She was, but last night she had another massive heart attack. There was nothing they could do. She was only fifty-four, Archie. She used to look after us, me and my sisters, when we were
little. She was like a big sister, poor Julie. She’s had such a hard time.’
    God, Ty’s gran was actually younger than my dad. I hope he’s not going to go splat into a plate of banana any time soon. Luckily he’s superfit and runs the London marathon
every year. He’s been nagging me to come cycling with him, thinks we could do triathlons together. I’ve been waiting to find the right time to tell him that’s not going to happen
– ideally after he’s ruled out boarding schools.
    ‘Was her heart . . . you know . . . kind of worn out?’
    ‘She smoked,’ says Mum, switching to lecture mode, ‘and you know that’s really bad for you, Archie.’
    She can’t possibly smell any fumes on me from over here by the toaster. Why don’t they keep more bread in this house?
    ‘Yeah, but that’s lung cancer.’
    ‘Heart disease too. It blocks the arteries. And of course she’d been under terrible stress. Try the freezer if you want more sliced bread, darling.’
    Seems to me the human body is really badly designed if it can’t cope with a few cigarettes and a tiny bit of stress without self-destructing well before its sell-by date. I mean,
Ty’s gran didn’t even look that old. You could totally see where his mum got her looks from.
    I’d have almost fancied her if she wasn’t actually a grandmother. You have to draw the line somewhere.

    The next time I see Julie she’s looking pretty good, really – apart from being dead, that is – because she’s lying there in her coffin for everyone to
see at the funeral.
    I’m transfixed. She’s looking a load healthier than the last time I saw her, and they’ve obviously cleaned off all the banana. She’s got pink lipstick. It’s the
first time I’ve ever seen a real live dead body.
    I’m trying, really, really trying, to feel solemn and sad and respectful, like you should at a funeral. I’ve never been to a funeral before. But the problem is that I didn’t
really know Ty’s gran at all, so I don’t actually feel sad, and I’m not a solemn person.
    My natural instinct would be to cheer people up with a bit of banter, but just before we came in my dad turned to me and said, ‘None of your nonsense, do me a favour, Archie.’
    Mum had been wiping her eyes with a hankie all the way from Fulham – driving here only took thirty minutes because it’s incredibly early in the morning. London without traffic is
strange – it’s like time has been sped up. Normally it’d take about four hours.
    I spent most of the journey staring out of the window, gazing at locked-up shops armoured with security shutters. As we got further east, there were more people on the street – Muslim men
in white robes spilling out of a mosque, Orthodox Jewish men, with black hats and beards charging along the pavement, ringlets flying at the side of their faces. They mixed together, like a surreal
game of chess.
    In Fulham, where we live, it’s all delis and brasseries, designer shops for babies and Scandinavian interior designers. Here in Hackney it’s halal butchers and Turkish kebabs,
Polski skleps
and a tattoo parlour painted black on the outside.
    I had a hundred questions, but a glance at my dad told me that this wasn’t the time. He was too busy swearing at the satnav, ‘No, you silly cow, I am not turning right. That
street’s