Christmas Day. Before Mumbles. Before any of this had started. Mrs Angelo – and her smell – were normality. They represented the last moments of my old life, a life where the only things I had to worry about were my mum’s cooking and a regular hammering from school bully, Billy Gibb. A life I’d go back to in a heartbeat.
‘Ssssh!’
I blinked, Ameena’s hissing in my ear dragging me back to the present. ‘I didn’t say anything,’ I whispered.
‘Ssssh! Shut up. Listen,’ she said, clamping her hand over my mouth. ‘Hear that?’
It was a complete role reversal from just a few moments ago, outside the house, when I’d been trying to draw Ameena’s attention to the absolute silence of the street. But there was something to hear now. A slow, irregular knock-knock-knock , coming from the other side of the door at the end of the landing.
‘Mrs Angelo?’ I said.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
I crept closer, Ameena following behind, scanning for trouble. No voice answered from within the room. ‘Mrs Angelo,’ I said again. ‘Is that you?’
Knock. Knock-knock-knock.
‘Maybe it’s Morse Code,’ Ameena suggested.
‘Do you know Morse Code?’ I asked hopefully.
She snorted. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Right. Didn’t think so.’
We were met by more knocking when we reached the door. It wasn’t loud, little more than a tapping against the other side of the wood, really. It seemed to come from all over the door – a knock at the bottom, followed by something bumping against the middle, then again up near head-height.
There was another sound too, that I could only hear now we were closer. It was a shuffling, rubbing sound, as if something was brushing against the other side of the door between knocks.
‘Hello?’ I said, trying the handle. It turned and I eased the door open a crack, but a weight pressed against it from within the room, stopping it opening more than those few millimetres.
‘Mrs Angelo? Are you OK?’
Knock. Swish. Knock. Knock. Swish.
I looked to Ameena. ‘What do we do?’
‘Out the road,’ she said, stepping back. ‘I’ll boot it open.’
I moved to block her. ‘You can’t do that! It could be Mrs Angelo in there.’
‘Exactly,’ Ameena nodded. ‘She might be hurt.’
‘Well getting a door in the face isn’t going to do her much good, is it?’
Ameena thought about this. I could see she knew I was right. She’d never admit it, of course. ‘Well, what do we do then?’ she scowled. ‘Just walk away?’
Knock. Knock. Knock . Was it my imagination, or was the tapping getting louder?
‘The window,’ I said. ‘We’ll look in the window.’
‘Hold it steady,’ I hissed, my legs shaking as I inched up another rung of the metal ladder. It had taken a few minutes of fumbling, but we’d managed to get it unstrapped from the roof of the window-cleaner’s van and around the back of Mrs Angelo’s house.
There were no lights on at the rear of the house either and it had taken a bit more time to figure out which was the window of the room with the knocking.
‘I am holding it steady, it’s not moving.’
‘It’s wobbling like crazy!’ I insisted.
‘No, Kyle, that’s just you,’ Ameena sighed. ‘You sure you don’t want me to go?’
I shook my head and took another step higher. I was only ten or eleven rungs up, but the falling snow meant I could no longer see the ground. ‘No,’ I said aloud, realising Ameena probably couldn’t see me either. ‘She doesn’t know you. If she sees you at the window she might get a fright.’
‘Whereas she won’t if she sees your ugly mug suddenly popping up?’
‘At least she knows who I am,’ I said, ignoring the jibe. ‘Now shut up and hold it steady.’
She muttered something below her breath. I decided to ignore that too. Heaving myself up another two icy-cold rungs, I at last reached the window. The curtains were open, which was possibly the first piece of good luck I’d had in weeks.
It was