“Jefferson & Partners, Estate Agents,” the card announced, “Michael Watson. Associate Salesperson.”
“How much?” enquired Roger, scanning the scruffy terraced house. “Forty, two thou—” Michael hesitated, failing to finish yet another sentence. “I’m supposed to tell you about it first, before I give you the price. That’s what they taught me at Jefferson’s.”
“That’s O.K.,” responded Roger, “I can see what it looks like. How much did you say?”
“Forty two thousand … but I might be able to get them down a bit.”
“Don’t bother,” said Roger, “I’ll take it.”
Michael’s laugh turned into a nervous giggle. “Are you having me on?” he enquired, hardly able to conceal his delight—Wait ’til I tell my mum.
“No,” said Roger, retrieving a chequebook from under the mat in the front of his car. “Who do I make it out to?” he asked, never having bought a house before.
“I … I … I don’t know,” stammered Michael, never having sold one. “But if you’re serious, maybe we should go back to the office.”
“O.K.,” Roger replied, “but I don’t want to be long. My mum will have supper ready and I don’t want her to know yet … It’s a surprise,” he added quickly, noticing the renewed cynicism on Michael’s face.
Two weeks later, the first Saturday in May, he unlocked the front door and carted in his sparse possessions: his computer, and a rickety wooden table from a High Street junk shop to stand it on. The brand new bed—the one on which Trudy was lying—with pocket-coiled interior springs and brass bedstead, was delivered that afternoon. The shiny brass bedstead was the most expensive in the store, but the cost hadn’t bothered him. His offshore account, overseen by the company’s financial adviser, was as healthy as a rock star’s bar bill, and a trickle of cash dripped into his local bank— the one his mother kept her eye on. His chequebook from an international bank, the one he bought the
house and bed with, was another of his secrets. The concealed room was his biggest secret of all.
It was a stray electricity cable, which led him to the secret room. He hadn’t been searching—he had no need. Everything he required was in the front room and, at last, he was able to enjoy the freedom of communicating with Trudy without his mother poking her nose in. But George’s continual prying ate into his privacy and forced him into the back room, where the antiquated power socket wouldn’t work.
The electrical supply panel, in the cupboard under the stairs, was part of a mysterious parallel world not usually inhabited by Roger. However, a cursory inspection revealed an old cable, insulated with frayed brown fabric, disappearing through a hole in the cupboard’s floorboards. It must be the one, he thought, for no good reason, and pulled until it snapped, the loose end hurtling out of the hole and attacking him like a spiteful snake. Leaping away, he slammed the cupboard door and stood, sweat-soaked, in the dingy hallway, trying to catch his breath.
Armed with a screwdriver from his car’s toolkit, he returned to the fray and, in the murky light filtering through a filthy transom window above the door, he tried to prise a floorboard to get at the broken cable. The screwdriver slid easily between two boards but, when he exerted pressure, the entire floor lifted. Releasing the tension he tried again, this time prising the board at the other end until he could catch his. fingers underneath. The floor was a trap door and, as it swung upwards, he noticed a hook on the angled ceiling underneath the stairs, and was surprised when the hook grasped and held the door in place. Then he looked down and was startled to find a pitch-black shaft festooned with spider webs.
Dark and dank, the rectangular adit was the size of a small grave, although its depth was lost in the murk. Someone with imagination might have concocted an intriguing tale to explain its presence—may even have written a book: The Rat, the Goblin and the Cupboard Under the Stairs,” perhaps. But Roger shut the door and would have forgotten about it had his neighbour not persisted in peeping.
It was three days before he plucked up the courage to descend into the pit. Driven by George’s constantly twitching curtains, he lifted the trap door, checked that nothing had altered, then felt his way down the robust wooden ladder. The dirt floor met him out of the blue and he gingerly tested it with his weight, fearing it might be a ledge—but it held. With his feet solidly planted he fished a flashlight from his pocket, spun to search for the broken cable, and came face to face with a solid wooden door. His nervous system went into overdrive, quivering his muscles and sucking the saliva from his mouth, and the flashlight fell from his hand with a thud that made him leap.
“Who’s there?” he shouted in panic, scrabbling for his lamp, and he froze, certain he’d heard a reply. Then the doorknob started turning and he wasn’t altogether sure whether it was him or some unseen hand on the other side. As the door swung open the vacant room made a mockery of his anxiety.
“MUM, I’VE FOUND A WAY TO GET SOME AIR,” typed Trudy, the only inhabitant of Roger’s secret room in more than half a century. “I WANT TO TELL YOU WHAT HAPPENED.”
Trudy sat almost motionless on the stone floor, only her damaged hand moving as it painstakingly picked out each key from memory.
“IT WERENT ALL MY FAULT MUM, HONESTLY. ROGER TOOK ME TO HIS HOUSE, HE TOLD ME HIS NAME WAS MATTHEW.”
She stopped, thought, decided.
“MUM I HAVE TO GO. BACK IN A MINUTE.”
Trudy rolled her body sideways, twisted into a crawling position, and dragged herself slowly across the room toward the door. It was only ten feet, no more than the width of her bedroom back home in Leyton, but the crawl took her weakened body nearly two minutes. Five minutes later she was back at the keyboard.
“MUM, IM STILL HERE. I SUCK AIR THREW THE KEYHOLE, BUT ITS A LONG WAY. MY HANDS AND KNEES HURT.”
Her stinging hands, especially the right one with a blister turning septic, were so painful she used her wrists and forearms to pull herself from the computer to the tiny air hole in the door. Two minutes there, two minutes back, and a minute to breathe in between.
“IF I SUCK REALLY HARD IM ALRIGHT FOR A WHILE,” she added, wanting to explain everything.
The keyhole, her lifeline, had also been her focus of hope for the past week. She had stared at it a thousand times a day, waiting for the grate of Roger’s heavy iron key in the lock each morning before he went to work, and then each evening as he came home.
“IM IN A ROOM UNDER ROGERS HOUSE,” she painstakingly typed. “ITS IN WATFORD, BUT I DONT KNOW THE ADDRESS. HE TOLD ME HE HAD A BIG HOUSE—BUT ITS LITTLE.” She paused, exhausted, and panting for breath, then slowly eased herself onto her stomach and started another journey toward her lifeline.
“ITS ME,” she announced five minutes later, unthinkingly writing the expression she had always used to announce her arrival from school. Her routine had rarely varied. Pushing her key into the lock she would throw open the door, drop her school bag on the floor, sling her coat optimistically toward the hall cupboard and shout, “It’s me,” as if she had been away for a month. Before her father had left she could expect her mother’s answering, “Hello Trudy, I’m in the kitchen,” but afterwards, she rarely received a response.
“ROGERS GONE AWAY,” she continued, “HE SAID HE WOULD COME BACK BUT I WASNT VERY NICE. I BIT HIM AND KICKED HIM WHERE IT HURTS, AND I SCREAMED A LOT. THEN HE SUFFOCATED ME.”
Writing “suffocated” reminded her it was almost time to go back to the door. The journey itself consumed most of the energy acquired, so by the time she returned to the computer she was already craving more air.
“HE LEFT ME BISCUITS AND BOTTLES OF WATER,” she continued, as if she had not been away. “BUT NO PROPER FOOD. THERES NO TOILET-JUST