“What?”
“Bad place, Norbert. Bad house. Bad karma.”
He looks at my blank face. “You don’t know, do you? Everyone in town knows. But you don’t.” He turns towards school.
“Niker…”
He pauses. “Yes, Norbert?”
“Tell me.”
“Please. Pretty please, Norbert.”
“Pretty please.”
He looks at me pityingly. “A boy died in there, Norbert.”
“What?”
“You heard.”
“What boy? Who?”
“Just a boy, Norbie. Pasty little thing, by all accounts. Fluffy hair. Pale. Pocked. Bit like you, really. But his mum couldn’t see it. Doted on him, apparently. Told him he was wonderful. So wonderful he could fly. So what does he do? Opens the window of the Top Floor Flat and gives it a go. Pretty nasty mess on the concrete by all accounts.”
“Top Floor? Top Floor Flat, Chance House? Are you sure?”
“You feeling all right, Norbert?”
“Niker, are you sure?”
“Higher the window, more the strawberry jam. Lots of strawberry jam in this boy’s case, Norbert. Top Floor Flat for certain.” He grins. “Come on now, bunny, you’re going to be late for school. Better hop it, eh?”
I remain sitting on the pavement.
“Suit yourself.” He turns away.
As I watch his retreating back, the little swagger in his step, I want to believe it’s all just a story. One he’s made up to frighten me. But I know what’s really frightened me is Chance House itself. You see, it smells like The Dog Leg. It smells of fear.
Let me tell you about Kate. She’s slim and has a small round face with a pointed chin and freckles over the bridge of her nose. Her hair is light brown and straight and she keeps it cut short, usually with a fringe. Her eyes are hazel and, when she smiles, a little dimple appears in her right cheek. Niker says she looks like a cat. She’s my idea of an angel.
It took me two terms to pluck up courage to invite her to my house. I chose a Friday, because that’s a day I know she’s normally free. Both times she went back with Niker it was a Friday.
“Thanks for asking, Robert,” she said. “But I can’t. I’m busy.” She smiled and I watched the dimple appear.
“Fine,” I said. “Another time maybe.”
“Sure.”
But I didn’t ask again. When someone says they’re busy, you never know if they’re really busy or just busy for you. And I thought if I asked again I might find out. And perhaps I didn’t want to find out. Besides it was clear I had left the door open. She could invite herself any time. But she didn’t.
So you can imagine how I feel when, next time we get onto the minibus to visit the Mayfield Rest Home, Kate chooses to sit by me. OK, so it’s not exactly a free choice. She’s late and there are only two seats left, one next to student teacher and damp sponge, Liz Finch, the other next to me. On the other hand, I have the seat over the wheel with the restricted leg room and Miss Finch has the front seat with the view. So if Kate’s just looking for somewhere to sit, Finch’s seat is closer and comfier. So I reckon it has to be significant that it is at my feet that she dumps her bag.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hello,” she replies.
I once set the dream alarm on Kate. Lay on my back in bed and asked myself how to make that dimple come more often for me. At 3 am I was dreaming that a boy was throwing stones in a lake. Every time he hit the surface it made a dimple. The water was radiating dimples. But the boy wasn’t me. I left it alone after that.
Hey – but who cares about the past? Right now Kate Barber is sitting next to me. The journey to the Mayfield Rest Home is ten minutes. I spend two of those ten minutes trying to open my mouth, which seems to have got stuck on closed. I want to say stuff like: did anyone ever tell you how insanely beautiful you are, Kate? But even I can see that’s nerdy, and I don’t want her opinion of me to drop from woodlouse to unicellular organism. So, after four minutes (Kate’s reading her book now) I say:
“Do you know anything about Chance House?”
“Sorry?”
“Chance House, twenty-six St Aubyns.” It’s not such a wild remark. Kate lives on Oakwood, which is just two roads from St Aubyns. “That big house that’s all boarded up?”
“No.” Kate returns to her book.
“Spooky. Spooky, spooky, creepy, spooky.” Wesley Parr’s face appears around my headrest. “Boy died in dat dere housie, Norbert No-Chance.” He looks at Kate. “Norbert No-Chance-at-all.”
“Oh, that house,” says Kate.
“Boy about your littlie, littlie age, Norbert,” says Weasel.
“So about your age too then, Weasel,” says Kate smartly.
“Oh creepy, creepy, bye, bye, spooky.” Weasel’s head disappears.
“So you do know?”
“Not really,” says Kate. “Or only as much as everyone knows. That a boy is supposed to have died there. And that it’s never been much of a lucky house since. Keeps changing hands.”
“Who was the boy?”
“I don’t know. It was ages ago, Robert.”
“How many ages?”
“Thirty years. Forty years. I don’t know. Why are you so interested anyway?”
“My Elder, Edith Sorrel. She lived there.”
“Oh right. Why don’t you ask her then?”
“Mm. Maybe I will.”
But of course I won’t. Can you imagine it?
Me: “Oh hello, Miss Sorrel, would you mind telling me about the boy who died in your house? I mean the one that fell out of the top-floor window? The plenty strawberry jam one?”
Her: (giving me that witchy look where she appears to be able to see right through me and out the other side) “No.”
End of conversation. But not end of story. Miss Sorrel picks up silver-topped ebony cane, bangs it three times on floor and kazzam! I’m a frog. That would be the happy ending. The miserable one would be the ending where…
“Robert. Robert!”
The bus has stopped. Almost everyone has got off.
“Robert Nobel, you are a dreamer.” Liz Finch is waving her hands in front of my face. She looks almost animated.
I pick up my bags and follow the others into the lounge of the Mayfield Rest Home. Today Catherine has arrived in advance of us. She has set up trestle tables with paper, paint, pencils, scissors, magazines and glue. The protective newspaper she’s laid on the carpet is already rucked up with the traffic of wheelchairs.
“Hello, hello,” she says. “Come in. Find your Elder, everyone. Sit down.”
There is a hubbub of greetings.
“Afternoon, Mr Root,” says Kate.
“Eh up,” says Albert.
“How you been, Dulcie?” says Weasel.
“What?”