‘“As you wish,” said man, and reared up on his hind legs until he stood upright.
‘All the things laughed then, because there stood man – naked and bereft of all his gifts. All the things save the fox, who looked up at the man and saw long slim fingers unencumbered by claws, fingers that could grasp and take and reshape things to suit man’s own purposes. And saw eyes alive with a dreadful intelligence unencumbered by wisdom. And fox was suddenly afraid.
‘Man looked around from his new high vantage and saw that all the world was spread out about him like a neglected picnic.
‘“I propose that man become the master of all things,” man said. “Any objections?”
‘Man waited but objections came there none.
‘“Motion carried,” said man.
‘And that is why everything that wants to talk has to find a man to talk for them,’ says Indigo.
‘But the foxes talk,’ I say.
‘That’s because we won our voices back,’ says Indigo. ‘Can I have the crumbs?’
‘So how did you get your talking back?’ I ask, and hold the empty container in front of her muzzle.
‘That’s classified,’ she says, and snaffles up all the crumbs.
28
That Cylindrical Flickery Cartoon Toy Thing That I Can’t Remember the Name Of
Here is a bit of man’s wisdom for you – when you think things can’t get worse, they usually do.
Real talk – my dad was born poor into a small village with no health care and no prospects except subsistence farming, and you’d think that was bad enough, until the rebels came murdering, kidnapping and chopping off arms. He escaped, but most of the rest of the village didn’t. You never heard about it, because it was just one of thousands of shit things that happened far away and you probably wouldn’t have cared about it if you had.
Now, my dad did escape. And eventually there was my mum and Paul and me. But the first half was one shit thing after another – and he was the lucky one, remember. So, knowing this, I shouldn’t have been surprised when House came looking for me.
*
It’s getting dark again and I’m thinking I’ve sat here too long listening to fox fairy tales. Indigo is trembling as I grab her and jump up.
‘Up or down?’ she hisses.
‘We haven’t tried up yet,’ I say, and swing around the banister. But as I put my foot on the first step I see a flicker of light from the landing above. I stop and wait – the light shivers and starts coming down. As it gets closer a shadow forms, a figure holding a candle with the light being the flame at the tip.
It’s a boy, a white boy my age. The face is familiar. It might be Simon, but it could be Nerd Boy or Long Hair. Either way, it’s radiating happiness in exactly the way a clown doesn’t, and going up the stairs suddenly seems like not a very clever idea at all. There’s a rectangular shadow in the wall – the door to the front room. I decided to risk it and, still holding Indigo, get off the stairs and head for the doorway.
‘Let’s hope this is better,’ I say and step through into gaslight.
*
The telephone is an extremely curious thing, and looks like a very surprised face with the bells as eyes, the speaking tube as a nose and the maker’s plaque a squared-off mouth. Mama refuses to touch it, but Papa is fascinated by the machine and held forth at dinner on how it would revolutionise the practice of business in the Empire. You can always tell that Papa is having a grand vision about the future when he brings up the Empire. The trouble is, the beastly contraption never rings, and today Papa spent the whole morning, once we were back from church, glowering at it. How shall we know it’s working? he cries suddenly. Silly Papa, I say, we must make an outgoing call to someone we know. But it is Sunday, says Mama. It would be scandalous to interrupt another family’s Sabbath. Then we must call Ezra, says Papa. Since his Sabbath was yesterday. Then do let us make a call, I say. And how do we do that? asks Papa, so I show him by picking up the listening tube and turning the handle. There is a crackle and the operator on the other end asks what number I require. Papa beams and I am so happy. Hello, operator, I say. Get me Scotland Yard. There are pops and crackles and a strange repetitive trilling sound and a woman with a coarse common accent asks which emergency service I require. Help, I say, I’m being held prisoner. Putting you through to the police, says the operator, but then, curiously, I am lying on the floor with a stinging pain in my cheek and Papa is standing over me with a scowl I have never seen before. Why did you make me do that? he cries, and I squirm away from him. He is so suddenly frightening and not like Papa. He steps towards me with his fist raised but Indiana, bless his little red-headed terrier heart, is barking furiously, bravely putting himself between me and my enraged parent. There is an acrid smell like the outside privy that makes me . . .
*
Gag . . . and I’m scrambling through a connecting door into another room with Indigo at my heels. For a second I think I’ve escaped the stories, but the room only stays real for a moment before the wallpaper changes and the furniture turns dark and overstuffed. A globe hangs from the ceiling – the gas mantle a soft yellow blaze at its centre. A hand reaches up and pulls the chain and the mantle becomes too bright to look at.
*
I love my new upright piano delivered by Frederick Reogh this morning, and tuned by an old blind Jew recommended by Henry’s funny little friend Ezra. It really does finish the parlour, and I know Henry loves to show my playing off to all his friends. Isabella, he says, I married you for your beauty, your wit – and the happiness you bring when you tickle the ivories. He always uses that term to remind me of his low birth, to test me I think, that I do not hold it against him. As if I would. For he is my rough Henry, who speaks his mind and never withholds his love. I stretch my fingers and hold them over the keys, but something is wrong. I can’t remember where they go. I stand and reel back from the piano in a swoon . . .
*
Well, duh . . . Where would you even fit a piano in my flat? And I had a choice way back in year 7 – laptop or a keyboard. And I said laptop. I’m heading for the door back out into the hallway, but suddenly I realise that Indigo isn’t with me. I turn around and see her standing in the centre of the room, looking up at something I can’t see, and she says – ‘Woof!’
*
Sunlight and dust and Henry sweeping his hand around the room and saying that this will be the parlour and we shall have music – as much music as we ever wanted.
*
And I am in the hallway, brushing up against the memory of a girl chasing a model aeroplane while the rain beats on the windows. I slip and I fall and my hand lands on something the right shape and size and I’m scared that it might be too late.
29
Abigail Down the Laundry Chute
I’m back sitting against the wall under the dumb waiter, only now there’s no Indigo. I’m still in the real ting house, but I can feel the stories pushing at the edges of my perception. From somewhere below I can hear a grandfather clock ticking in the downstairs hall and posh voices fading in and out on a wireless in the parlour.
But all I can smell is Indigo’s wee – interesting.
I know what I’ve got to do, but I reckon that it’s my last chance. And if I cock it up – what then?
I hold the door wedge I picked up in the last room. A bit of hard grey plastic with a black rubber strip along the bottom for grip. Either it’s left over from the last owners, or the builders used it while they were stripping the house. The plastic is rough and comforting under my palm – it’s sharp enough to get me through the first stage.
Not sharp enough to get me out of the house.
Whatever it is keeping us here wants us happy. I’ve tried getting angry and lashing out, but it just seemed to redirect those emotions – used them to tighten its grip on my mind. If external doesn’t
work, then I’m going to have to try what my humanities teacher called ‘internalisation’.
And for that I was going to need something much sharper.
I can feel the House’s attention move from room to room, floor to floor. It’s not looking for me. It knows where I am, it has Simon and Indigo – it can wait. It likes happy. Simon is good at happy. It’s not going to let go of Simon without a fight.
Genii locorum can feed off things like emotions – why not happiness?
Why does it want me, then? Nobody ever accused me of being good at happy.
I’m good at making other people unhappy, at least that’s how it seems to me. Mrs Georgiou who runs the after-school Latin club sat me down when I asked to join and said that she was worried about letting me attend. She said that she was worried I would get bored and disruptive, and I said, well, don’t let me get bored then. And she said that was the problem right there. She said that in the staff room the teachers made bets about whether it was going to be a good Abigail class or a bad Abigail class. They wanted me to join the club in the hope that it would help tire me out.
‘So are you going to let me into Latin club?’ I asked.
‘I have no choice,’ said Mrs Georgiou. ‘The other teachers said they wouldn’t let me in the pub if I didn’t.’
That memory cheers me up enough to get me to my feet. I turn and ram the sharp end of the doorstopper into the crack between the leaves of the dumb waiter’s doors. Even as I get it open a crack, I can feel House coming for me in the drumming of children’s feet as they shout and whoop their way down the stairs. I smack the fat end of the doorstopper with my palm, and there’s a cracking sound and a sharp pain in my hand. The noisy children retreat for a moment before coming tumbling back with the swish of kites and kittens and string.
I smack the doorstopper again and the pain drowns out the laughing children and the doors wedge open with a crack that I feel all the way down to my heels. I wrench the doors open, throw my rucksack down the shaft and, before I can change my mind, I dive after it.
It’s a tight fit and lined with metal, tin I think. I can feel it sliding past my shoulders. Not a dumb waiter, I realise, a laundry chute – who puts a laundry chute in a private house?
If only it were a couple of centimetres wider – then I’d be swooshing down with an improbably slow-motion explosion chasing me. Instead I’m wriggling and scraping my knuckles on what might be the hatches to the ground floor. By my calc, that’ll be right by the front door. I give it a thump, but it’s sealed tight – worth a try. My face is getting heavy with blood, and dust goes in my nose and makes me sneeze, once, twice, and then one of those will-it-won’t-it sneezes. I can hear clanking and rattling and muffled voices below.
Nearly there.
Suddenly the walls have gone and I fall the last two metres head first – fortunately into laundry.
It’s dirty, but it doesn’t smell – that’s important.
30
The Ghost Kitchen
I’m in a kitchen full of ghosts.
The stuff is all real enough, I’ve just had a splinter from a big rough wooden table dominating the centre. There’s a thing that looks like an Aga’s big brother that goes across half the room. The walls are whitewashed and the floor is covered in grey unglazed tile. Black iron skillets and frying pans hang from the walls and there is steam and smoke and shouting.
But the people doing the shouting are ghosts, empty shapes of transparent grey. Sometimes barely there and visible only because the human brain tracks movement better than shapes. It feels like it should be hot in here and full of smells but both are faint, like echoes. Like a daydream of a lost memory.
Like whoever is telling the story never got into the kitchen much.
But there are knives on the table and that’s what I was looking for. Because it’s only a matter of time before . . .
‘Hello, Abigail.’
Charles is standing in the doorway, holding a deformed-looking red terrier with a long snout and pointy ears. Charles is wearing a long pink nightshirt and a nightcap with a floppy point that dangles down by one ear. He looks happy to see me.
‘I thought you were coming to visit,’ he says.
I’ve got my back against the kitchen table, but Charles is staying in the doorway as if he don’t know whether it’s safe or not. Like he don’t want to get into a beef with me in case he gets mash up. Which is interesting and also, I’ll admit, gives me a bounce. But not enough to make me stupid.
I shift slightly so that the kitchen knives I saw on the table are right behind me. They’re ghost knives, but the ghost cooks are still banging pots and stirring shit so I’m hoping Charles’s being here means they will be real enough to both of us.
‘Is that you, Simon?’ I ask.
‘Never mind Simon,’ says Charles, but the deformed terrier flattens its ears at the sound of my voice.
‘Whine,’ it says sadly.
‘You like Simon ’cause he’s happy, innit?’ I say. ‘What’s with the rest of the kids?’
Charles takes a step into the room.
His face is several faces at the same time, not blended but superimposed like a freaky phone app – Snapchat for hive minds. I think I can see a bit of Simon’s hair, some of Goth Boy, but behind that another face. Gaunt, pale, big eyes. Younger, like eight or nine.
‘It’s nice to have friends,’ he says.
‘So what is it you want with me?’ I say. ‘Why me?’
‘Because you’re so full of everything,’ says Charles.
‘Everything,’ I say, feeling behind me for the knife.
‘Love, anger, curiosity, passion, stubbornness,’ he says. ‘You’re like a Christmas pudding. You’re my second favourite thing.’
Second, I think. Story of my life.
I feel the hilt of the knife beneath my palm and grab it. I hold it out in front of me – point towards Charles. Or the manifestation of the House . . . or maybe something worse? Christmas pudding – what if this house eats kids?
Charles looks at the tip of the knife and then back at me.
‘I say,’ he says. ‘What are you planning to do with that?’
‘Something you won’t like,’ I say, and cut my arm.
Or at least I try to.
There was a girl in my class who used to do this regularly until she got a couple of good rounds of CBT,24 and she said to use the upper part of your arm so you don’t accidentally slash an artery or sever a tendon.
What she didn’t say was how hard it is to actually make your hand press the blade down. In the end I have to look away and slice blindly. There’s a line of fire across the top of my arm and I gasp with pain.
When I look, I see there’s like a tiny pink line – not even any blood.
But Charles has taken a step back.
The second cut is easier but slightly more painful.
‘Why would you do that?’ asks Charles, sounding suitably prang – I want him to think I’m wavy.
I raise the knife again and Charles retreats into the narrow corridor they must have knocked out when they made the granny flat. There’s blood now. I can feel it dripping down my arm and smell it in the air.
I follow him out, thinking that I must be pretty clever to hold myself hostage because Charles starts retreating up the stairs. I follow him step by step until we’re halfway up and the knife fades away.
‘Let’s go and see the Hungarians,’ he says.
‘Let’s not,’ I say, and slap myself in the upper arm.
It hurts. It hurts a lot. But there’s something about the pain that sort of anchors me in a weird way. Makes me feel more solid. More like me.
Charles’s multiple face crumples like he’s going to cry, but I slap myself again and he backs up the stairs all the way to the hallway.
Now I’m stand
ing inside the bit of the hallway with the coat rack and the cracked green tiles that I reckon date all the way back. The front door is just behind me, but I can feel the Hungarian refugees pressing at my back. Charles is standing less than a metre in front of me – looking unhappy.
The deformed dog he’s holding looks at me with big eyes and says nothing.
I almost hesitate, but I’m at the limit of my heroics and my arm is killing me.
‘Sorry,’ I say to the deformed dog.
And, yanking the front door open, I run out into the . . .
*
Night. The skip and the piles of builders’ materials are shadows on either side. But it’s a straight line to the exit, and if the door won’t open I’m ready to smash right through it.
It opens. I’m out.
And suddenly face to face with a slightly overstuffed stab vest.
It’s Mr Fed from the long, long ago time of last week.
‘Hello,’ he says. ‘Where did you spring from?’
‘From the house,’ I say. ‘But never mind that. You need to take me to a place of safety, preferably Holmes Road nick. And then interview me in the presence of an appropriate adult.’
Surprisingly, he doesn’t argue with me but instead leads me over to a clapped-out navy-blue Hyundai parked along the road like an advert for Kwik Fit motors. As we go past a tree I see someone’s stuck a flyer to it with MISSING and a picture of a girl I recognise as Jessica, mainly because it’s the same picture the Feds showed me that first day. Looks handmade. There’s one on the next tree too, and on the next.
Nothing with me on it, you notice.
24 Cognitive Behavioural Therapy – in my day one was told to pull oneself together and, if that failed, thrashed by a prefect. I think the modern approach is better but part of me can’t help but be sad that a young person like Abigail has to know about these things.
31
Achieving Best Abigail
What Abigail Did That Summer Page 11