by Amy Lloyd
‘Look!’ Sean says. I look. The back wall of Mr Sampson’s house has crumbled and fallen down, leaving the big wooden gate standing in the middle, still padlocked shut even though anyone can get in now. The back garden is even worse than the front garden. There are two cars, orange-brown with rust and with all the windows broken.
Around the cars are loads and loads of old bikes, all rusty and twisted, and even more washing machines.
‘Why does he keep all this rubbish?’ I ask. Sean kicks at the broken wall and bricks clank and scrape against each other as they shift.
‘To hide all the bodies of the children he kills!’ Sean says.
‘Shut up,’ I say. ‘You’re just trying to scare me.’ But I am scared.
‘Where do you think he gets all the bikes from?’ Sean says. ‘He snatches little girls who ride past on their bikes and then he strangles them and buries them under the rubbish.’
‘Shut up!’
Sean puts his sticky hands around my neck and I squirm.
‘Look!’ he says, pointing into the garden.
I cover my eyes. I imagine Mr Sampson’s face in the filthy window, his mouth wide and eyes white with anger, his long, bony fingers tapping the glass.
‘No, look!’ Sean says, pulling my hands away from my face. ‘Look at that bike.’
All the way at the back of the garden, right by the house, there’s a bike, shiny and almost new. I cover my mouth to stop myself screaming.
‘No!’ Sean says. ‘I just made that up, about him snatching girls and their bikes. Don’t be such a baby all the time!’
‘You made it up?’ I ask.
‘It was a joke,’ he says. ‘But look at that bike!’ Sean climbs the rubble and stares at the bike. ‘We should take it.’
‘We can’t!’
‘Why not? He takes everything he finds and then he just leaves it out to rot. Why shouldn’t we take it and actually look after it?’
‘It’s probably broken,’ I say. ‘Someone was probably throwing it away and he took it out of the skip or something.’
‘It doesn’t look broken,’ Sean says. ‘We could fix it, anyway. It could be our bike.’
‘I don’t know,’ I say but Sean is already climbing into the garden.
‘Just watch the back door and if Mr Sampson comes out then yell and I’ll run.’
‘Sean!’ I whisper. He ignores me.
Sean has to climb and crawl along the mess, balancing on a bike seat, steadying himself on another bike’s handlebars. Then he jumps on to the bonnet of a rusty car and it makes a huge noise that scares me and makes me cover my ears but he just laughs and carries on. He jumps on to a washing machine and slips and I can’t look in case he falls and some rusty metal goes straight through him.
Finally he’s at the bike, right by the back window, which is piled high with pots and pans and old tin cans. Sean tugs at the bike but it’s stuck on something. I want him to leave it but I know he won’t. He pulls again and it comes loose, causing a bunch of other rubbish to slide like a rusty avalanche into the side of the house. I watch the back windows and the back door but nothing happens. Sean awkwardly lifts the bike and manages to drag it over the top of a pile of microwaves. The front wheel is broken, bent.
‘Just leave it,’ I whisper, too scared to shout. Sean can’t even hear me.
I watch him heave the useless bike over all the rubbish. His face is bright red with the effort. He even picks it up and tries to throw it forward, over the tangle of bikes and scrap before the car.
Then I see the back door shudder.
‘Sean!’ I shout. ‘He’s coming!’
Sean swears really loudly and jumps on to the car. Then he turns and tries to pull the bike after him but it’s stuck again. The back door opens. It comes right out of the frame! Mr Sampson comes out holding the whole thing up and placing it down back in front of the frame.
‘Hurry up!’ I shout. ‘He’s there! He can see you!’
‘Oi!’ Mr Sampson shouts. He’s wearing his coat and his woolly hat, which he wears all year round, even indoors during summer. He starts to climb the rubbish towards Sean and he knows the best ways to climb it and so he’s faster.
‘He’s right behind you!’ I scream.
Sean laughs and screams at the same time but he still won’t let the bike go. He just gets it loose and lifts it on to the car when Mr Sampson crawls his way to him and grabs the bike too.
Mr Sampson shouts again. When he opens his mouth wide I see he doesn’t have any teeth, just a dark hole surrounded by blood-red gums.
‘Sean!’ I cry.
‘Get off me!’ Sean yanks at the bike, trying to get it free from Mr Sampson. ‘Get off me, paedo!’ Sean says, and he pushes the bike into Mr Sampson really hard, so hard it sends Mr Sampson flying back under the bike. He howls in pain.
‘Oi!’ someone shouts from behind me. ‘What are you doing? Get here!’
Before I have time to run the man has grabbed my arm. I scream for Sean, who is still laughing and leaping amongst the junk until he reaches the back wall. He takes one look at me and the man holding my arm and starts to run.
‘Sean!’ I shout, trying to wriggle loose from the man’s grip. Mr Sampson howls again.
‘What have you done?’ the man asks, looking into the garden. ‘You’ve hurt him!’
‘He was grabbing my friend,’ I say.
‘What are you doing in his garden?’
‘We wanted our bike back,’ I say, crying.
Mr Sampson makes such a noise the man holding my arm says we need to call an ambulance. I pull away from him.
‘You’re staying with me,’ he says, trying to drag me into the garden so he can check on Mr Sampson. When I look I can see there is blood on the new bike and Mr Sampson’s face is cut and bleeding. ‘It’s all right,’ the man is saying to him. ‘I’ll get you help now, don’t worry.’
The man looks at me and back to the garden, deciding what to do.
‘Stay here,’ he says, letting go of my arm. I wait and rub the place where his fingers have dug in too tight. Slowly the man starts to climb into the garden and I run. ‘I know you!’ he shouts after me. ‘You’re Fay Patterson’s girl!’
I run all the way home. The street lights are coming on and I am so mad with Sean that I never want to speak to him ever again. At the front door I knock before opening it and kick off my shoes in the hall.
‘Hiya, love,’ Auntie Fay says over her shoulder from the living room. ‘Did you have fun?’
‘Yeah,’ I shout back. I am shaking. I want to go straight upstairs but Auntie Fay puts her crochet down and comes out.
‘Sean’s gone home, has he?’ she asks.
‘Yeah,’ I say. I’m still out of breath and my face is hot.
‘Everything all right?’ she asks. She frowns and inspects my face.
‘Yeah,’ I say again.
‘Have you had a falling out?’ she asks. She pushes my hair off my sticky forehead.
‘Yeah,’ I say.
‘Oh dear. Well, you’ve spent a lot of time together, haven’t you? It’ll all blow over by the morning.’ She smiles and I try to smile back. ‘If you want you can stay up a little later and watch some TV with me and Uncle Paul. Fancy that?’
‘Um,’ I say, looking at the stairs behind her. ‘I’m tired. I want to go to bed.’
Auntie Fay frowns again. ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ she asks. She puts her hand against my forehead. ‘You are a bit hot.’
‘I’m OK,’ I say.
‘Hmmm. Well, of course you can go to bed. Do you want me to make you a squash or a Horlicks?’
‘No thank you,’ I say. ‘Goodnight.’
I go up the stairs slowly so she thinks I’m really tired and I can feel on my back that she’s watching me the whole way. I brush my teeth quickly and then go and lie in bed. It isn’t completely dark yet and I can’t sleep. I think of Mum sitting next to my bed when I was sick. I think of the green bucket with the sticker tha
t wouldn’t come off completely and how she called it the Sick Bucket and only brought it out when I was unwell. How she would lean and stroke my hair and we’d listen to the radio at night until I fell asleep, and how sometimes I would wake up and she would still be there, in the chair, holding the bucket between her feet. I think of the place where she used to be, the space where we used to be together, empty.
Just as I am on the edge of sleep, the pillow a bit damp from my crying, there’s a banging at the door. For a second I am back there, in the house with Mum, hearing him bang to come in, waiting for the turn of the key in the lock of my door. But I am not there when I open my eyes. I’m in my room at Auntie Fay’s house and there is a lot of shouting downstairs and it’s not my mum, or him.
‘Her and her friend have sent poor Mr Sampson to A&E!’ the man is shouting.
‘Don’t be so ridiculous,’ Auntie Fay says. ‘You’ve got the wrong girl. She wouldn’t say boo to a goose, this one.’
‘I assure you,’ the man says, ‘it was her and her friend, terrorising the poor man. They said they were getting their bike back.’
‘Well,’ Auntie Fay says, ‘she doesn’t even have a bike, so you definitely have the wrong girl. Coming round here shouting at this time of night—’
‘Get her down here!’ the man says.
‘Now listen,’ Uncle Paul says, and then his voice is too quiet to hear.
‘It was her!’ the man says. ‘And if you don’t get her down then I’ll call the police and let them sort it out.’
I hold the covers over my head as I hear Auntie Fay coming up the stairs. She opens the door and light spills in. She sits on the edge of my bed.
‘Sorry, love,’ she says, shaking my arm. ‘Did we wake you?’
‘I’m scared,’ I say.
‘Don’t be scared, love,’ she says. ‘Mr Lovell is downstairs. He thinks he saw you in Mr Sampson’s garden earlier with Sean, and that Mr Sampson was quite upset and had an accident. I said it wouldn’t be you but he’s quite sure. Do you want to tell me anything? Did you go to Mr Sampson’s house?’
I hold the covers over my head and my own breath feels hot on my skin.
‘It’s better if you tell the truth,’ Auntie Fay says. She has taken her hand away from my arm. ‘Maybe you were there but Mr Lovell doesn’t know what happened?’
I stay still.
‘Come on, love,’ Auntie Fay says. ‘Let’s get this sorted. Just tell me what happened.’ Her voice is harder now and she tries to tug the covers away from my face.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she says to herself. ‘Oh God, I’m so embarrassed.’ She sounds like she will cry. Then she pulls the covers off entirely. ‘Paul!’ she shouts downstairs. ‘Paul! Get up here!’ She tries to pull my hands away from my face but I won’t move. I hear Uncle Paul come up the stairs. ‘Either you get up on your own like a big girl and come downstairs to see Mr Lovell, or your uncle and I carry you down to apologise. Come on! You’re lucky the police aren’t here.’
‘It wasn’t my fault!’ I cry. ‘It was Sean! He wanted the bike and he told me to tell him if Mr Sampson was coming so I did and then—’
‘What’s the matter, love?’ Uncle Paul says.
‘It was her,’ Auntie Fay says.
‘What happened?’ Uncle Paul asks us but neither of us can talk.
‘Up!’ Auntie Fay says. ‘Now.’
I get up and she makes me walk downstairs and I feel stupid in my nightie when Mr Lovell looks at me. He has blood on his shirt and his eyes look angry and tired.
‘That’s the girl,’ he says. ‘She ran off when I told her to stay. She didn’t care at all about Mr Sampson.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. It comes out in a sob and I grab my nightie and hold it down on my legs.
‘Mr Sampson is in hospital. He’s had stitches. They’re checking to see if he has a concussion,’ the man says.
‘Hey,’ Uncle Paul interrupts. ‘She’s only a little girl. We don’t know what happened.’
‘I saw it!’ Mr Lovell says. ‘The little boy was laughing and she was cheering him on.’
‘I wasn’t!’ I say. ‘I wasn’t! I was telling him to get out!’ I cry more and Auntie Fay holds me.
‘That’s enough,’ Auntie Fay says. ‘How dare you shout at her! Look at how upset she is.’
‘There’re no tears there!’ the man says. ‘Look at her, bloody crocodile tears.’
‘Get out,’ Uncle Paul says, pushing the man back. ‘She admits she’s done something wrong and we will punish her as we see fit but I won’t have you scaring the wits out of her, accusing her of all sorts. Get out.’
‘I will tell the police then,’ the man says, stepping out of the door. ‘Seeing as you two aren’t going to take this seriously. I’ll call the police and we’ll let them deal with it.’
‘You do that then,’ Auntie Fay says.
‘No!’ I shout. It’s too late; they’ve closed the door and the man is going to call the police.
Auntie Fay gets me a Horlicks and calms me down, then she shouts at me until I’m crying again, then waits for me to feel better before sending me to bed and telling me I’m never allowed to see Sean again.
‘We’ll sort out your punishment in the morning,’ she says.
In bed I listen to Auntie Fay and Uncle Paul murmuring downstairs. When they turn the lights off and come upstairs I can still hear them talking quietly, about me and Mr Sampson and Sean.
‘But I don’t think we should stop them seeing each other for ever,’ Uncle Paul says. ‘He’s a bit of a lad but still, when’s the last time you saw her laugh like she did at dinner?’
‘I know, I know,’ Auntie Fay says.
‘She’s a good girl. She knows right from wrong.’ Uncle Paul sighs. ‘Sean brings her out of her shell. Maybe they’ll do each other some good.’
25
Her: Now
I sleep badly, keeping the phone next to my pillow, occasionally rolling over and checking the map to see Dr Isherwood’s dot on Hawkwood Avenue, which must be her home. When I do sleep I dream of dirt: shower curtains crawling with mildew, grouting clogged with brown filth that falls in thick lines into a greying bathtub. No matter how much I scrub I can’t make it clean. Mr Sampson’s hollow mouth wails at me in the dark; blood trickles from a wound on his head; his neck is purple and his eyes bulge as if they will burst. I wake on a pillow drenched with sweat and check the phone again. Dr Isherwood is still at home.
I lie in bed for a long time, poring over every detail I can remember about Mr Sampson’s house. It’s so vivid it’s like I’m there again, feeling that same terror and the hurt when Sean left me. I want to ask him if he remembers, too. Does he remember how the police made us write letters to say we were sorry? And how two police constables came to the school to talk about being kind to our elders and even though they never said our names, everyone knew it was about us. Does Sean remember all that rust, the colour of dried blood, that throaty wail and the mouth as black as night?
Eventually I force myself to get up, even though I don’t have work until this afternoon. I shower, noticing the orange grime around each hole in the shower head, the black that rings the taps in the sink, and the long hairs around the plug hole, on the tiles, stuck to the tiles. I look in all the cupboards for cleaning equipment but all the bottles are empty and the sponges and cloths so dirty and stiff with muck I can’t bear to touch them.
I have no appetite but my stomach growls. I take a box of teabags from my wardrobe and go to the kitchen, not expecting to see anyone else, but when I get downstairs there is a lot of chatter and noise, the clinking of spoons against bowls, laughter. The long table in the kitchen is almost full and a lot of the women are smiling. The chatter quells as I enter, people twisting to see who it is, then starts up again while I boil the kettle.
‘Ooh, I’ll have one if you’re making,’ someone says.
‘And me,’ they say in a chorus, laughing. They bring mugs and various requests: ‘
Two teabags, I like it strong’ and ‘Leave plenty of room for milk’.
I stress, no way to remember it all, no way I want to use all my teabags. My eyes sting while I fill the kettle to the max.
‘I’ll give you a hand,’ a woman says, smiling. She has kind eyes, a piercing in the top of her lip, a tattoo of an angel on the back of her neck, dyed black hair.
‘Thanks,’ I say.
The woman gets out a big box of teabags from the cupboard.
‘You don’t have to squirrel your teabags away upstairs like that,’ she says. ‘We share here.’ I think she’s being cruel but then she nudges me with her elbow and winks. ‘And you can say hello, we don’t bite!’
I smile.
‘I’m Dani,’ she says.
‘Hi,’ I say.
‘And you are?’
‘Oh, yeah. Um, Charlotte.’
‘This is Charlotte,’ Dani shouts and everyone shouts hello. I wave, they laugh, but it doesn’t feel mean. Dani drops teabags into mugs and sweeteners and sugars, somehow remembering everything with ease. I tentatively pour the water into each mug, watching Dani, waiting for her guidance. ‘Bit more in that one, love,’ she says. ‘Tide’s out, is it?’ She laughs, so I laugh, too.
‘Right, you can put your own milk in, can’t you?’ she says, plonking mugs in front of people and a half-empty bottle of semi-skimmed in the middle of the table. I realise I haven’t bought my own milk. Everyone helps themselves until only I’m left.
‘Please may I borrow some milk?’ I ask Dani, quietly.
‘Give over,’ she says, elbowing me again. ‘Help yourself. It’s like I said, we share here.’
‘Thanks,’ I say. I mean it.
Normally I would take my tea back to my room but I feel like I should stay, so I do. People chat, they talk over one another and it’s hard to follow any conversation. Someone asks me about myself but by the time I start answering someone else has asked them something and they’ve turned away. As they talk their eyes flick between people and their phones.
I take my own phone out, relishing how normal all this feels. I smile as I switch it on.