by Amy Lloyd
Sean’s dad thinks about it.
‘All right, cheeky sod, if you can clear a space she can kip in there.’ Sean’s dad looks at me. ‘But don’t you dare tell your Auntie Fay, OK? I’m in enough trouble with her as is.’
That is how I end up sleeping on Sean’s floor, looking at a sock with a picture of Taz on it and all the wires coming from Sean’s computer thing he won’t let me touch. I don’t want to touch it in case I am electrocuted anyway.
‘Don’t fall asleep,’ Sean says again. He is talking quietly even though Sean’s dad has the TV on really loud and keeps laughing along with it.
‘I won’t,’ I say.
Now my stomach feels sick because Sean says the plan will still work. We are just waiting a little while and we can go down the outside stairs from Sean’s window that is called a fire escape.
‘You promise you have the thing?’ Sean asks.
‘I promise,’ I say. The thing is the car, Luke’s car, but it is hard to say it out loud. The thing is in the side pocket of my bag. I got it after Auntie Fay had already packed for me and I pretended I needed to go to the toilet before we left.
We keep waiting, Sean’s dad still plays the TV loud and my stomach is nervous. I start to get sleepy but the floor is hard and there’s a funny smell that helps me stay awake. Soon my shoulder is aching and I need to turn over again.
I don’t even notice the quiet until the line of light goes dark under the door.
‘OK,’ Sean says. He throws off the covers and his feet are on the floor next to my head.
‘I don’t want to,’ I say. I am afraid because I don’t think I believed he would really make me go. Sean uses his foot to push me on to my back.
‘You have to come,’ he says. His voice is sharp like smashed glass. ‘Get up, now! Get the thing.’
I get up, making sure I don’t cry. We are both still in all our clothes because Sean’s dad never made us get ready for bed the way Auntie Fay does. He didn’t even make us brush our teeth but I brushed mine anyway. The toothbrushes in the cup on the sink were really old and all the bristles were pointing the wrong way and there were loads of bits of old bars of soap and razors all around the sink. It made me feel dirty even though I was trying to get clean.
I hold the thing out for Sean but he shakes his head.
‘Put it in your pocket,’ he tells me.
‘What if it falls out?’ I ask.
‘Don’t drop it or I’m telling,’ Sean says. ‘I’ll tell the police you stole it and it’s your fault.’
It hurts when he says it and I have to try really, really hard not to cry. I put it in my pocket and do up my shoes. Sean opens his window and it creaks really loudly. He leans out and looks around to check no one is there.
‘Come on then,’ he says in a whisper; then he climbs out and is standing on the other side of his own window looking in. There are butterflies in my stomach. Then I think that I’m afraid and it is night: there are moths in my stomach. Butterflies are for good times; moths must be for bad.
I climb out and my feet make loads of noise on the metal stairs and Sean tells me to be quiet. We leave the window open and climb down the stairs. This means anyone can climb in the window but Sean doesn’t seem to care about this. The stairs go into the alley at the side of the video shop, where they keep the bins and all the cardboard boxes. Because it’s dark I think it should be really cold but it’s not that cold at all. I am shaking because I’m scared, not because I didn’t bring my coat.
Sean goes to the end of the alley and checks there’s no one on the street; then he says I should follow him and we walk quickly down the main street, past all the shops and into the streets with all the houses. When I don’t walk fast enough Sean grabs my hand and drags me along. I don’t want to go through the park because it’s so dark but Sean tells me that this was the plan, because we can’t go round the front of Mr Sampson’s house with all the people who are there with the signs. Sean says he doesn’t know if they’re there in the night but that we can’t risk it anyway.
‘Besides,’ Sean whispers, even though there’s no one around, ‘we need to sneak in through the back door, remember?’
I try not to imagine that bit because it is too frightening so I just nod and hope he will stop talking. We go through the park and round the back of the council flats until we get to the right street. The moths in my stomach start to go crazy when I see how close we are. Sean just seems to be concentrating really hard and he keeps looking everywhere around us to make sure that no one sees where we are because this was the most important bit of the plan, he told me, that it is a complete secret.
We go down the street behind Mr Sampson’s house. All the houses have really high back fences and walls so you can’t see into their gardens and on the other side are garages where people park their cars and keep their lawnmowers. You can see Mr Sampson’s house from ages away because his garden spills out on to the street behind it, as he never got his back wall fixed after it fell down.
Sean goes first and we stand by the bricks and rubble and look at the dark house. Mr Sampson must be asleep, and this is the other important part of the plan.
‘You need to be really brave now, OK?’ Sean tells me. I nod but I don’t feel brave, not at all. ‘Just follow me and be really quiet.’ Then Sean climbs into the garden and I have to follow him.
Every step Sean takes makes a noise. First the bricks move under his feet and then metal bends and clangs as he stands on top of the first washing machine. In the dark it’s hard to see where we are going and the shapes look like tangled branches and piles of bones and spikes that will go right through us if we slip. I think of hands, hands like Mr Sampson’s, with long crooked fingers, reaching up through the rubbish and pulling us down. Then I squeeze my eyes shut and try to think about nice things, of the songs in The Little Mermaid and cherry pop and how Sean promised that after this we wouldn’t have to be scared any more because they would lock Mr Sampson up forever and ever and ever.
I open them and carefully take the same steps that Sean did. I feel very good because I don’t make anywhere near as much noise as Sean, even on the car, which is really rusty and noisy when Sean climbs on it.
Nearer the back of the house it gets harder to climb and a couple of times Sean takes a wrong step and all the bikes and junk lean and clank against everything. I cover my ears because in the quiet it sounds as loud as screaming.
Sean has to help me down at the end and then we crouch so that Mr Sampson can’t see us through the windows, if he is awake after all. The windows are all so piled with newspapers and plates and pots and pans and boxes that I don’t think he could see out anyway but Sean says we need to be extra careful tonight so I don’t tell him that.
‘We need to take the door off together,’ Sean whispers. ‘Remember?’
I nod and crawl-walk to the back door to help Sean because it will be too heavy for him on his own. Sean puts his hand on the handle of the back door and takes a really long breath, and it makes me know he is afraid as well, even if he seems like he’s not scared of anything. I squeeze my pocket to check the thing is still there; then I put my hands out to make sure the door doesn’t fall on us when it comes off. Sean pushes the handle down and the top of the door leans towards us. As the door comes loose it makes a terrible noise, like a ripping sound, really loud, and I think there is no way that Mr Sampson can sleep through that.
I have to hold the door with Sean and it’s really heavy and we both stagger backwards while carrying it.
‘Push forward,’ Sean whispers, too loudly. We tilt it back towards the house and it falls against the wall with a bang but Sean doesn’t stop to worry about it – he just goes straight inside and I follow him because it’s even scarier to be left on my own than to go in.
It smells terrible inside. Worse than the toilets by the shopping centre in town, about a million times worse. It’s so bad I think I will be sick but when my stomach turns and I gag Sean turns quickly an
d holds his hand over my mouth.
He doesn’t speak but I can see his mouth move: Quiet. He puts a finger against his lips and I try not to sniff the air. It is impossible to be silent now. The floor is covered in old plastic bottles and ready-meal containers.
After the kitchen is the hallway and that has old tins and newspapers everywhere. Above us there is a big hole in the ceiling that goes right through into the upstairs of the house. The stairs don’t have a bannister and at the top it is so black we can’t see anything else. But that is where Mr Sampson must be: upstairs and in bed, in the dark. I look at the hole in the ceiling as we walk underneath it. That big black hole, like Mr Sampson’s howling mouth. It feels like he might be there, watching us through it.
I tug on Sean’s sleeve. I want to leave. I want to ask why we are still here. Can’t we just drop the thing now and get out? But Sean said we had to put it somewhere the police could find it but Mr Sampson couldn’t, so that he couldn’t get rid of it before the police come to look. Besides, Sean ignores me tugging on his sleeve and just keeps creeping forward through the house.
Some light comes through the bumpy glass on the front door. The light is orange, like fire, and lights up the piles of rubbish closest to the door. But there is a space by the front door that is clear, where the door has to swing open and shut, and all the rubbish gets swept up to the side of the hall.
We go into the room that I think is supposed to be the dining room. There are loads of clothes and cuddly toys and books in here. This seems like it would be a good place to put the thing but Sean shakes his head and points back out of the door. I let him go first. Then we keep going to the front of the house and the room that would probably be the living room. We go inside slowly, both of us looking at the window that faces on to the street, checking that no one can see in. There is so much piled in front of the windows that we know we are OK and that is when Sean turns around.
I turn, too, and I see Mr Sampson, standing facing the opposite wall, and before I can scream Sean holds his hand over my mouth again. It is too late and even though he muffles the sound, I have a made a lot of noise and Sean starts to pull me away, ready to run back through the hall and the kitchen and out, away, to home where it’s safe.
Except Mr Sampson doesn’t turn to look at us like he should. Instead he stands very, very still. Sean goes back into the room and I shake my head, silently crying out for him to stop, but he keeps going anyway. That’s when I notice the way Mr Sampson is standing. The way his feet aren’t quite touching the ground. Just the tip of his toe seems to brush the space on the floor that is clear around him. Everywhere else there are the papers and the bottles and the books and the clothes and the rubbish. But where his feet are there is just the floor.
I am too confused to scream. Then I am too frightened to scream. I watch Sean get closer and closer until he is right by the floating Mr Sampson and then right in front of him and then Sean is stumbling back towards me and I almost scream again but Sean starts talking quickly.
‘He’s dead,’ Sean says. ‘He’s hung himself. Don’t be scared. He’s just dead, that’s all. That’s good, that’s good: it means he can’t hurt us. He can’t do anything now. Please don’t cry, don’t cry.’
I am crying, though, and I feel like I’ll never be able to stop.
‘Just give me the thing,’ Sean says. ‘Give it to me.’
When I give Sean the thing from my pocket, Sean pulls his jumper over his hand so he doesn’t have to touch it. I don’t want him to leave me, so I grab hold of his other hand and won’t let go, even when he tries to shake me off.
‘Please,’ I’m saying. ‘Please can we go now. Please.’
‘You just need to be brave for one more minute,’ Sean says. His voice sounds like he might cry, too. ‘Can you do that? One more minute?’
I nod but I still won’t let go of his hand. So I let myself be dragged closer and closer to floating Mr Sampson, seeing the shape of his long bony fingers hanging down by his sides, all the time whispering to Sean to please, please hurry up. Sean starts to hold my hand tighter and I can hear him breathe, quick and loud, like he’s been running fast. I close my eyes as we get in front of floating Mr Sampson but peek to see what Sean is doing. That is when I see Mr Sampson’s face, all blown up like a balloon, dark purple like he’s really, really mad.
‘Sean,’ I whisper.
‘Be brave,’ Sean says, squeezing my hand.
With his other hand Sean reaches up, standing on his tiptoes. I check that his feet are still on the ground; I see the way they touch the floor and look again at the way Mr Sampson’s don’t, and a long squeak comes out of my mouth as I cry again. Sean ignores me and reaches as far as he can, pushing the thing towards the front pocket of Mr Sampson’s dirty shirt. One final stretch and Sean manages to get the thing into the pocket. He lets it go and his heels fall back to the ground.
‘OK,’ he says. ‘You were so brave.’
Mr Sampson jolts, like he’s waking up from a bad dream, and then Sean and I both scream; we scream so loudly that half the street must hear us, and so we know that there is no point in trying to be quiet any more, that we have to just run as fast we can. And we do, we run, we knock over the piles in the hallway and all the bottles in the kitchen, we run out of the back garden jumping loudly from car to washing machine to back wall, and we run all the way through the park and the streets and up the fire escape and my lungs feel like they will explode.
We climb in through Sean’s bedroom window, neither of us thinking about the fact that the light is turned on, even though it was off when we left. We are just happy to be out of the dark. Before we can sit down on the bed Sean’s dad comes through the open door.
‘Where the bloody hell have you pair been?’ he says. ‘I’ve been worried sick.’
Please don’t say you called my auntie Fay, I think. Please.
‘We were playing,’ Sean says. ‘Sorry.’
‘Sorry’s not good enough,’ Sean’s dad says. ‘You’ll need a better explanation than that.’
‘I—’
‘Don’t explain to me,’ Sean’s dad says. ‘I’ve got the bloody police in my living room. You can explain it to them.’
36
Her: Now
I follow the directions on my phone to Dr Isherwood’s house, where her dot blinks on the map. It is a one-and-a-half-hour walk and even though I’m tired I’m sure I have to go now. It is like something is pulling me there, telling me I need to look out for her.
I walk in the dark and I am free to poke around in the memory of what happened that night long ago, like a tongue searching the cavity left from a lost tooth, impossible to leave alone. It is not that I had forgotten – you could never forget a night like that – but that it feels fresh, as if it had only just happened, as if I am seeing it clearly for the first time. It used to have the quality of a nightmare, not making sense in consciousness but leaving its mark, lurking in the dark. Now it seems as real as a nightmare is when you’re asleep.
We told ourselves he hadn’t moved, that we had scared ourselves, that we had knocked Mr Sampson’s body and set it swinging. Of course, now, we know differently. That nothing is so simple. You can find out anything online. Like how it can take hours to die by hanging, that Mr Sampson might have still been alive when we found him. It is not so easy to take your own life, not as easy as taking the life of another.
How easy was it for your dad to strangle your mother? Easy enough to call it an accident? You once read that your father left her lying in bed while he went to buy the petrol, that before he left he turned the key in the lock of the little girl’s room and put it in his pocket. When he came back he soaked the house in fuel, washed down pills with neat vodka, and lit the match. He died with his arms around your mother, like it was an act of love.
The map is hard to follow and sometimes I take a wrong direction and have to find my way back to the right street. At first I am cold but I warm up the quicker I move. When I am
only thirty minutes away from Dr Isherwood’s house I see a twenty-four-hour Tesco Extra and go inside to think before I am at Dr Isherwood’s house and there’s no going back.
The store is not completely empty, as I thought it would be. There are customers: a nurse, still in the light blue scrubs of the hospital, pushing a trolley; two twenty-something men, who are holding multi-packs of crisps under one arm like a baby, a bottle of Pepsi swinging from one hand, a huge packet of Penguin bars draped over a forearm. They look pale and tired, and they smell strongly of weed, which makes me smile as they pass.
The employees are pulling huge pallets of food around. One is constructing a pyramid of tins of Roses and Quality Street near the front of the store. Boxes of fake Christmas trees are being priced up. Everyone says Christmas gets earlier every year but I can’t remember it being much different. Auntie Fay never let us put the Christmas tree up until we’d finished the school term and she would keep the tins of sweets hidden until Christmas Eve, along with all the presents. But Ryan showed me where to look for them, in the top of the wardrobe in their bedroom, and we would peek and try to put everything back where it was supposed to be.
I always felt jealous of Luke’s family, who put up all their Christmas lights and tree at the beginning of November. When other families did that, Auntie Fay used to say it was too bloody early and tsk under her breath. But everyone knew Luke’s and Liam’s mum did it to make Luke happy, because he loved Christmas. Even the neighbours there started to put up all of their lights early because something about Luke being happy seemed to make everyone else happy.
There’s so much to look at in the store: all the Christmas decorations and the aisles of chocolate and the scented candles and the magazines and books. I hardly think about what I’m supposed to be thinking about at all. It makes me forget I was ever worried about it in the first place. I start to wonder things like: Does Dr Isherwood put her Christmas decorations up this early? Will she have a detached house or a semi? Will it have a front garden? I manage to make myself believe that these are the things I am really going there to find out about, quickly pushing away any thoughts about a baby or sickness. Instead I choose three chocolate bars and a Coke and go to the checkout to pay.
