I read the words and then I read them again. After which I shut my eyes, turn a full circle, and open my eyes again. The words are still there. As they must have been every one of the hundred times I’ve walked up this street.
“You can go there. Walk. It’s not far.”
And of course I know it’s Edith Sorrel’s house because it is precisely what I have been expecting. It’s the place I saw before I slept last night, the one I pretended to imagine. The one I knew was here but, perhaps, would rather not have known, which is why I suppose I chose to hear Edith Sorrel say “St Albans” when her clear-as-a-bell voice actually said, “St Aubyns”.
Do you sometimes feel drawn and repelled in the same moment? I call it the car-crash mentality – you don’t want to look but you just can’t help yourself. Even though you know you are going to see something appalling. Well, Chance House is my car crash. I’ve tried ignoring it but it won’t go away. So now I’m going to have to look. Worse than that, I’m going to have to go in, though every sensible fibre in my body is willing me to walk away.
There are two bits of good news. One is that I have to be at school in less than ten minutes. The other is that Chance House is boarded up. And I don’t just mean with a few nails and a bit of chipboard. Each of the eight-foot ground-floor windows has been secured with a sheet of steel-framed, steel-meshed fibreglass. The front door is barricaded with a criss-cross of steel bars, and although the second-floor windows are not obstructed, they are twenty foot from any hand-hold I can see. Of course it could be different around the back.
I look up the road and then down the road. No-one is watching. No-one I can see anyway. I slip into the shadow of the side of the house. Grass sprouts through the concrete paving. There’s a small door, set into the wall of the house about four foot above ground level. It’s not barred but it doesn’t look like it has to be. There are no steps to it, and as well as being overgrown with brambles, it’s swollen shut, rotted into its doorframe.
I advance, slowly, towards the back of the house, as if I’m scared of the corner. As if I expect someone to be lying in wait, just out of view. My heart pounds as I walk. But I can’t stop now. I come to the edge of the house, just one more step, I turn…
The garden is empty, overgrown. There are dandelions in the long grass. Bluebells and a smashed white-wine bottle. The sun is remarkably warm. I compose my breathing. There is steel mesh on the first window. And on the second. There is no way I will be able to get into the house.
And then I see it. French doors on to the garden. The mesh hanging free, ripped from the wall as if it were paper.
I don’t know who’s moving my legs but I’m going towards that open door. Walking fast now, past the dirty Sainsbury’s bag and the length of washing line, past the patch of scorched earth where someone has lit a fire. Of course if the door is open there will be people. Squatters, vagrants, drug addicts. Who knows? My heart’s back at it again. Bang, bang, bang. Like my rib cage is a drum. What am I going to tell these people? That I’ve come because some batty old lady asked me to? I should be creeping, slithering along the walls like they do in the movies. But I’m not. I’m walking with the boldness of the bit-part guy who gets shot. Somebody screams, and for a moment I think it’s me. But actually it’s a seagull, wheeling overhead.
My legs are still on remote control but there’s something wrong with my breathing. I seem to have lost the knack of it. I instruct myself to breathe normally. In out, in out. The ‘out’ seems OK, but the ‘in’ is too quick and too shallow. How long does it take a person to die of oxygen starvation anyway? In out, in out. I’ve come to the door. In.
In. The room has been stripped. There are brackets but no cupboards, the dust shape of what might have been a boiler, plumbing for a sink that isn’t there and a mad array of cut and dangling wires. On the left-hand wall is a rubble hole where a fireplace has been gouged out and the floor is strewn with paper, envelopes and smashed brick.
At the far end of the room is a glass door. An internal door which must lead to the rest of the house. I look behind me and then I step inside. The door’s closed but obviously not locked because someone has put a brick at its foot, to stop it swinging. A final look over my shoulder and I’m moving towards that door. But I’ve only gone a couple of paces when I hear the scraping. A rhythmic, deliberate noise that stops me dead. The sort of noise you’d make if you were watching someone, and wanted them to know you were watching, without yourself being seen.
Scrape, scrape, scrape. Pause. Scrape.
It’s coming from my right. From the small kitchen window over the absent sink. This window is almost opaque, darkened by the steel-mesh glass and the shadow of some bush or tree that’s growing too close to the house.
Scrape. Pause. Scrape.
I see the finger now. And the knuckle – which looks deformed. But perhaps that’s just the trick of the light, the refraction of bone through fibreglass. My heart is beating like a warrior drum. Tom torn torn torn torn torn. But I’m not going to panic. I’m emphatically not going to panic.
I panic.
I leap out of the room into the garden.
I scream: “I can see you!”
A holly bush continues to scrape one of its branches against the glass of the kitchen window. Scrape. Pause. Scrape. In time with the wind.
I’m so relieved I sob. Huge foolish tears rolling down my cheeks. Norbert No-Brain. Norbert No-Botde. At least Niker isn’t here to see. Or Kate. When the boo-hooing stops I look for a hanky. But I don’t have one so I pick a dock leaf and blow my nose on that.
Right. That’s it. I’m going back in. I make for the glass door. I stride there, kick the brick out of the way and go through into a thin corridor. Then I worry about the brick. If anyone sees the brick’s been moved, they’ll know someone’s in the house. I go back out into the kitchen (which compared with the corridor is light and airy and pleasant) and retrieve the brick. Then I discover I can’t shut the door with me on the inside and the brick on the outside. Or I can, just, if I squeeze my fingers around the gap between door and doorpost, edging the brick back into place. Hang on, what if someone jams the brick right up against the door, barricading me in? Change of plan. Better to have the brick on my side of the door after all. That way at least if someone comes in from the garden, they’ll knock it over getting into the house and I’ll hear them. I bring the brick in, lean it against the door my side. Now I’m safe. If the people are outside.
But what if they’re inside?
I look at my watch. Six minutes to nine. I really have to get to school. Absolutely can’t be late. Have to go right now. The skirting board in the corridor has been ripped off. There’s a gap between the base of the wall and the floorboards through which I can see down to some sort of basement. In the dark cavity there are flowerpots, lamp bases, lamp shades, a desk, a filing cabinet and a sink, the old ceramic sort. There’s also the sound of water. Not a small drip drip, but a gushing, the noise of a tap on full bringing water pouring from a tank. Or maybe a cistern filling, or a bath emptying or…
Crash!
It’s the brick. The brick has fallen. I wheel around, catch my foot in the hole in the floor, fall, twist my ankle, drag myself up, never once taking my eyes from the swinging door. But nobody comes through. Nobody comes through! Why don’t they come through! I’m not an impetuous person, but I burst through that door, hopping across the kitchen faster than normal people run. And then I’m in the garden, and actually my ankle’s all right, so I do run. Run, run, run – flowers, washing line, burnt ground, smashed glass, corner of house, swollen door, front wall. Front wall of Chance House. Safety of St Aubyns. I collapse on to the pavement.
“Run rabbit run rabbit, run, run, run.” A familiar voice croons softly above me. “Don’t be afraid of the farmer’s gun.”
I look up. About a hand’s breadth from my head is a pair of feet.