Cold Bath Lane

by Lorna Dounaeva

  “This must be Isabel’s room,” she said, peering into the first window. I leaned over her shoulder. Isabel was making pouty lips in the mirror.

  “She looks like she’s getting ready to go out,” Alicia said, noting her sparkly dress.

  “Perfect.”

  I walked round to the next window and my heart lurched as I spotted Julio, wrapped in a towel. He was completely without modesty. It wouldn’t even occur to him to close the curtains while he changed.

  I remembered running my hands over his big, strong biceps and leaning my head against his chest. I had felt so safe then, so loved. I wanted so much to hate him, but I couldn’t switch my feelings off so easily. I still longed for him, and couldn’t bear that we were no longer together. I should have been in that house with him, but instead I was out here in the cold, my nose pressed up against the glass, like a stray dog.

  I watched as he wriggled into a clean shirt and fastened the buttons. He pulled on some tight jeans and raked a comb through his luscious hair. He sprayed himself liberally with deodorant, and I smelled his scent through the glass. I wished I had a camera so I could record him. I had given my whole heart to our relationship but I had so little to show for it. I longed for a part of him, something I could hold in my hands, like a lock of his hair, or a finger.

  We hid in the bushes for ages, until the door finally opened.

  “There’s their dad,” Alicia whispered, as a man stepped outside. He strolled off down the beach.

  “Damn, I thought they were all going out.”

  We took another look through the windows. Julio and Isabel were smoking. I watched as they finished their fags and stubbed them out in an ashtray.

  “Better get rid of the butts,” I heard Isabel say. “Don’t want Dad to find them.”

  A few minutes later, they finally came out. Julio was wearing his leather jacket, but Isabel wore no coat at all. She shivered violently as she walked down the path behind her brother. Too vain to keep herself warm.

  “Can we go inside now?” Alicia asked, once they had disappeared out of sight.

  “Let’s do it!”

  We walked around to the front door and tried the handle. It was locked.

  “Now what?”

  “Pick a window.”

  The cottage had lousy security. We could have taken the front door off its hinges quite easily, but then they would know there had been a break-in, and that wasn’t how we operated. Since all the rooms were on one floor, we could get into pretty much any of the windows that had been left open – which was most of them.

  “I want to see Isabel’s room,” Alicia said. “Let’s start there.”

  I lifted her up and she slithered in through the open window, easily clearing the space. Once she was inside, she opened a larger window, and helped me in.

  I immediately saw that Isabel had left her lighter on her dressing table.

  “This could be useful,” I said, with a smile.

  I peered into her mirror, and experienced a strange sensation as I saw not my face, but Isabel’s, peering back at me.

  “What?”

  “Jody, that’s a picture,” Alicia said, pulling me away. “How much of that crap did you take?”

  “It’s not crap.”

  But I wasn’t sure what it was. I didn’t feel the way I normally did when I took Angel Dust, but I couldn’t pinpoint what else it could be. I wasn’t chilled like when I smoked weed. Everything seemed normal, yet a bit distorted. Like I was looking at the world in 2D.

  Rose Cottage was really cosy. Homely, you might say, with low ceilings and mismatched cushions. Tapestries hung from the walls, and there were cups and saucers on display, like in a tea room.

  “We forgot to put on our gloves,” Alicia said, slapping her head.

  She pulled them out of her bag and handed me a pair. I fumbled with them, the normally easy task of putting on gloves seemed to have become immensely complicated.

  “Here, let me,” Alicia said, sounding annoyed.

  She wrestled the gloves onto my fingers and I wondered if my body was falling apart. Or else it was my brain. I supposed it didn’t really matter either way. Nothing really mattered, if I couldn’t be with the man I loved.

  I rummaged through Julio’s things, while Alicia tried on some of Isabel’s clothes. His room wasn’t nearly as neat as I had imagined. There were clothes all over the floor and chocolate wrappers left lying about. The thing that surprised me the most was the pair of glasses lying on the night stand. I had had no idea he wore them. We had been together for an entire summer, and he never told me he wore glasses. What else had he hidden from me? I picked up his portable CD player and slipped it into my bag. I also took his deodorant and one of his shirts, so I could smell him whenever I wanted. I could have stayed all night, looking through his stuff, putting the pieces of his life together.

  We knew what we were doing - we were professionals, after all. But Isabel and Julio had made things easy for us. They were always smoking, those two. And they were hopelessly careless about where they put their fags and other smoking paraphernalia, despite the fact that they were apparently trying to hide it from their dad.

  Alicia came out of Isabel’s room, holding a box of makeup and some other personal effects.

  “Not her jewellery,” I warned her. “We don’t want them to know they’ve been robbed.”

  I found a pair of Julio’s underpants beside his bed. I held them to my nose. They smelled like him, peppery and exotic. I lit the flame to the place where his crotch would have been. I imagined his screams of agony, as the flames engulfed him. I dropped the flaming pants and stepped back as the fire spread. Alicia brought in Isabel’s floral dressing gown and we set that alight, too. Dressing gowns usually flamed well. She went off again and came back with the genie costume Isabel had worn for a skit one night at camp. That went up beautifully. Especially as she had left a bottle of nail varnish remover in the pocket.

  I tried to enjoy the fire, but the flames were not behaving themselves. They ran up the walls, puffing and panting as if they were in a race. I had never seen such intense colours. I was familiar with yellow and orange and occasionally blue but this were something else. A beautiful rainbow of fire soared over our heads.

  I felt my clothes growing tighter, as if they were shrinking.

  “What are you doing?” Alicia cried, as I wriggled out of my jeans.

  I heard her laughing, as she helped me dress again. Her laughter came in great bubbles that floated in front of my face.

  “We have to go,” she said.

  “Really? We’re just getting started.”

  “Seriously, Jody. You’re the one who always drags me away.”

  She helped me back to the window and pushed me out. I landed on the grass, and lay very still, staring up at the stars, counting them, wondering what they meant. A moment later, Alicia jumped down beside me.

  “What are you doing? You can’t just lie there!”

  She pulled me to my feet and we retreated some distance to a little cafe down the beach. Alicia ordered me a double espresso and we sat and waited. The fire raged for nearly an hour before anyone happened upon it, and by then, it had done a great deal of damage.

  We snuck back for a closer look once the fire engine had arrived. It wasn’t hard to slip in amongst the crowd that had formed down on the beach. If Isabel and Julio had been more observant, they might have noticed us there, but they had their backs turned, staring at the blaze. A part of me hoped they would turn around and see us. I wanted to look Julio in the eye, and let him know the hurt he had caused me. And I wanted Isabel to know how badly she had let us down. But neither of them looked, they were both too busy consoling each other. And worrying about what had caused the fire. It didn’t occur to either of them that somebody was out to get them. They thought everybody loved them. They had such a narrow view of the world, they thought that everyone saw things the same way they did. That’s why they needed us to educate them.
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br />   Back at the B&B, Alicia and I packed up our stuff. We would be moving on in the morning.

  Bill seemed sad to see us go. “It’s going to be hot all week,” he said, as I paid him for our room. “Sure, you don’t want to stay a couple more days?”

  “Thanks, but we’ve got to get going,” I said. Our job here was done.

  We travelled on to a town twenty miles down the coast, where we found a cheap place for rent. The deposit used up most of the money Richard had given us, so we were going to have to find more somewhere.

  “We could break into a house and take stuff,” Alicia said. To her, it was the simplest thing in the world. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t know what else to do. Finding work was hard, and breaking in was easy. It was all I knew how to do.

  We chose a house and helped ourselves to whatever we needed. We were not greedy. We knew not to take too many things from one home. Not things people would notice, at any rate. The easiest way to get away with a burglary was for no one to know it had taken place.

  It was interesting, the way people protected their homes. Most locked their doors. Some even locked the downstairs windows but we could usually find a way in. Once inside, everything was left out where we could find it. There would be piles of money in jars on the mantelpiece, or in wallets left lying on the kitchen counter. We would find passports, phones and other gadgets. Car keys hung on neat little hooks. Jewellery was inevitably laid out on the dressing table or in a drawer. Personal diaries left lying about.

  “Aren’t we going to set a fire?” Alicia asked.

  “Why do you want to start a fire? We don’t know these people and we aren’t getting paid to do it.”

  “Because I need to,” she said. I stared at her. It sounded so ridiculous.

  “Nobody needs to start a fire,” I told her.

  “But I do!”

  35

  “The family are sleeping,” I told her patiently. “We can’t start a fire.”

  “Shall we come back later and do it?”

  “No, I don’t think we should.”

  “But I want a fire!”

  Her voice was getting louder, and I was worried she would wake somebody.

  “You can start a fire on the way home,” I told her, helping myself to the contents of a wallet.

  There were a few interesting pieces of art, but I had no idea if any of them were valuable. I took bread and bananas from the kitchen, and a heavy laptop computer that was stuffed under the sofa.

  “What are you going to do with that?” Alicia asked.

  “Use it,” I said. This was around the time the internet was becoming a thing, and I wanted to know what it was all about.

  “Can we share it?”

  “Sh…”

  “What?”

  “I thought I heard a creak. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  We let ourselves out the front door and shut it gently behind us.

  Immediately, a light came on.

  “Quick, into the next garden!”

  We scrambled over the wall, and crawled under a trampoline.

  A man come out of the house we’d robbed and waved a torch around.

  “I know you’re out there,” he yelled. His voice quivered slightly, and I realised he was afraid.

  “What a wimp!” Alicia giggled.

  “Shush!” I hissed. Even the weediest of people could turn violent if they thought their home was under threat.

  “Are we going to start a fire now?” Alicia asked, once we’d given him the slip.

  “Do we have to?”

  “Just a little one. I could set light to that washing line over there? It would be funny to see some knickers on fire.”

  I smiled weakly, but I felt uneasy.

  I gave her a leg up, over the fence and she held her lighter up to a pair of French knickers that were dangling on the line. The flames ripped through the flimsy material, and quickly worked their way along the line.

  “Look at it go!” Alicia squealed.

  “Keep it down!”

  I pulled her back over the fence and we stood in the moonlight, watching the show.

  “One of these days, we’re going to get caught,” I said, wrinkling up my nose at the familiar smell.

  “No, we’re not.”

  It worried me that she was so complacent.

  We had to move on again, after that. I didn’t think anyone had seen us, but you never knew who was watching silently in the darkness. We weren’t the only ones who roamed about at night.

  I found a dealer at the train station and bought a large supply of drugs to keep me going. He didn’t have any of my beloved Angel Dust, so I bought a random assortment of pills. I felt safer knowing I had a stash.

  “I want to get the green train,” Alicia said, once I’d made my purchase.

  “OK.”

  I didn’t really care where we went.

  We walked over the bridge and down the steps, onto the platform opposite. The green train was a slow one, stopping at a number of small towns and villages.

  “Let’s get off here,” Alicia said, when we came to a place called Dunderford. “I like the name.”

  Dunderford was way out in the sticks, with hills and farms and not much else. We trudged miles up a mud track before we found a barn to sleep in for the night. It wasn’t the most comfortable place, but it was warm enough, even if it stank of manure.

  “Let’s pick a bigger town next time,” I said, as we packed up all our stuff in the morning. “I don’t want to spend another night out in the open.”

  “I thought you liked sleeping under the stars?”

  I sighed. “Yeah, I did.”

  Alicia was still enjoying the adventure, but I had grown weary of all the travelling. I would have loved to settle somewhere and make it our home. I thought of the comfortable companionship I’d enjoyed at Camp Windylake. It had felt good to have mates, for a while.

  I stood up and dusted the hay from my trousers. “Are you ready?”

  “In a minute. First, I have to burn this barn down.”

  We caught another train, and this time we chose a place called Upper Groat. There was a Lower Groat and a Middle Groat, too, but Upper Groat looked to be the biggest. We found a budget hotel on the high street. I jiggled about impatiently as the receptionist explained all the rules in excruciating detail. When we finally made it up to our room, I flopped down on the bed and stayed there until it was dark.

  We were away from Dad and Cold Bath Lane, but none of it felt real to me. I was tortured by memories from my childhood. Some of them were horrible, like the things I saw Dad do to Mum, but there were pleasant ones too. I remembered Dad, pushing me on the swings when I was little, or taking me to feed the ducks. I couldn’t understand how such a terrible man could have also been so loving. How this was the very same man who had branded me and locked me in my room.

  “Jody? Jody, wake up! It’s time!”

  Alicia shook me roughly, impatient for some action.

  “All right then,” I grumbled, sitting up. “Make me a cup of coffee first, will you?

  We entered three different houses that night, none of them very secure. The first two were a bit disappointing. There was very little money lying about. Nothing we could pawn. For the third house, we chose a bigger place. This house had an ornate iron gate that looked impressive, but it was a doddle to climb.

  “Hope they’re all asleep,” I muttered, as we wriggled through a ground floor window.

  I shone my torch around and found piles of books.

  “Do you think these are worth anything?” Alicia said, turning over the thick volumes.

  “No. They’re all old and dusty. Let’s try the next room.”

  As we snuck past the kitchen, I caught sight of a dog, fast asleep in its bed.

  We both froze as the animal sniffed the air. Its eyes opened wide and it stared at us in confusion.

  “Uh-oh,” I said. “Nice dog!”

  The dog let out a growl.r />
  “Back away slowly,” I whispered. “Don’t let it know you’re afraid.”

  “Who’s afraid?”

  The dog growled a little louder and let out a bark. It was bigger than I had realised and it had luminescent green eyes.

  “Wow, look at that,” Alicia said. “Do you think it’s possessed?”

  “Nice doggy,” I said, fumbling in my pocket. The zip was stuck.

  Oh, come on!

  While I tugged at the zip, Alicia opened a drawer and helped herself to the silverware.

  “Alicia,” I hissed. “There’s no time for that.”

  Finally, I wrenched the zip down, tearing my pocket slightly. I reached inside and pulled out a packet of sausages. I didn’t even have time to open them before the dog snatched them off me. He gnawed at them greedily, distracted enough for us to make it back to the window. I couldn’t relax until we were back out on the street.

  “My god,” I said, as my feet hit the ground. “I was cacking myself when I saw the size of that dog! Good job I’d brought the sausages.”

  “We didn’t start a fire,” Alicia said.

  “We don’t have to do that every time,” I said. “Really, we don’t.”

  “I want to.”

  We climbed the fence and walked over a bridge. A little bit further along, there was a forecourt, full of used cars. I slowed my pace.

  “Go for it,” I told Alicia, looking at the state of the cars. “You’ll be doing everyone a favour.”

  Delightedly, she produced a pack of matches from her pocket. She struck each one in turn and flicked the smouldering flames onto the vehicles. Some fell to the ground and smoked around the tires, but others landed on the bonnets or boots.

  “It will be obvious we did it on purpose,” I warned.

  “Don’t care,” she said. I waited patiently until she’d finished the whole box. I hoped none of them would flame properly, but I saw smoke rising.

  “Stay back,” I warned. “It might explode.”