 
AURELIA

Six ghost stories

by

David Bramhall

Copyright 2013 David Bramhall

First published 2013 by Walnut Tree Books

Smashwords edition 2015

### Table of contents

Dedication

Aurelia

Bobbing

The Model Husband

The Girl Who Wasn't There

Doo dah, doo dah day

Daisy-Jane and Lip-Lip

About the author

###  Dedicated to the novelist Rosemary Timperley, who died in 1988.  I was never quite the same after reading her sad book "The Listening Child", and its influence will certainly be seen in two of these stories. 

# Aurelia

The bell rang for lunchtime, and he went to stand at the door of the Music Room.  The classrooms further down the corridor released a flood of chattering, laughing girls.  Pushing and shoving, poking and teasing, they celebrated their release from lessons in high-pitched confusion as they hurried (no running in the corridor, of course, as Miss Haversham was wont to remind them, because we are young ladies, are we not?)  to a hot lunch in the dining hall, or sandwiches in the playground. 

Fighting against the flow, a few girls were making their way towards him.  He greeted each one with a smile, and murmured their names as they passed for it was one of his tricks to be sure he knew them and regularly spoke to them as individuals, to let them know that each of them mattered.  They slipped past him and found the desks already pushed aside, the chairs arranged in three neat semicircles.  They dumped their coats and bags round the sides of the room, collected their folders of music and flopped into their seats, always the same seat at every choir practice, for routine was important above all. 

When he had arrived at Belvedere Road Girls' Secondary School, or "Belvedere" as it was most commonly known, he found he had inherited a school choir of only ten or twelve girls.  His first choir practice had been discouraging; they sang, quietly and with little enthusiasm, their heads down and feet fidgeting.  He had wondered why they bothered to come, for they didn't seem to enjoy it. 

Now, three years later, there were forty or so, and he had nurtured them, teased them, amused them, entertained them and created a host of little routines which they enjoyed, for children love routine because it lets them feel comfortable to know what's coming next even if they don't particularly like whatever it is.  So comfortable were they that attendance at lunchtimes was excellent, not just the original one day a week, but on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays as well. 

As the last girls slipped into their places, he went to his desk and quickly ran down the register. " No Alison?"  he asked. 

"Away, sir!"  replied Natalie, the choir clown. " Run away to America to be a supermodel, sir!" 

"No she hasn't," answered one of the more sensible girls, "she's got appendicitis.  She had to go to the hospital, in an ambulance and everything." 

"Oh, all right.  Then she's running away to America to be a supermodel."  Natalie always had an answer to everything. 

Trevor said nothing, but went to the piano and played an arpeggio from the bottom of the keyboard right up to the top.  Obedient to the routine, they stood, dropping their folders on the chairs behind them.  He faced them, and placed his feet apart.  They copied him.  Then he put his hands on the front of his thighs, and they did the same.  Then he stretched his head up tall on his spine, and let his chest rise a little.  Suddenly they looked like a choir, poised, alert and ready to sing. 

Moving back to the piano, he began the warmup routine as usual with gentle humming, down and down into their chest voices, reminding them with pursed lips to do it quietly and make no effort.  Then they opened their mouths and sang upwards in great octave leaps, raising their eyebrows and smiling as their voices rose, as he had taught them. 

"Natalie," he called without a pause in the music, "who told you to take a breath there?  Do it all in one, girl!"  She grinned happily at him and kept singing.  He was proud of the fact that he could criticise any girl to her face, in front of her friends, and she would not be embarrassed or resentful.  They knew they were a team, a team they were proud of, and they accepted correction in the spirit it was meant.  If you'd asked them, and if they could be bothered to articulate it, they'd probably say 'Yes, old Lightfoot's a fussy old bugger and he won't let you get away with anything, not even the tiniest little thing, but he's always fair, and besides, whatever he says you know he still likes you!' 

Now he took them through the new exercise he had introduced last week, a swooping melody with a crescendo and a pause at the top, then a downward relaxation. 

"Remember, this is a smiling exercise," he said. " As you go up, smile with your mouths and eyes, so your cheekbones rise and sharpen the sound, and as you come down again, relax your faces – not, Natalie, not as much as that, you look like a bloodhound – and let your voices settle into your chests!"  And up they went, and hung at the top with their faces alight, and then settled gently down. 

"Now, same again, but this time use your right hand to trace the shape of the tune on your body.  It starts down near your belly button ..."

"Ooh, sir, you shouldn't talk dirty, we're only little girls!"  muttered Natalie ...

"... and by the time you reach the top the sound's somewhere up in your forehead!"  He pressed on, ignoring the humorist. 

"Excellent!  Now ..." he stepped away from the piano, "... stretch your arms up .... wiggle your fingers ... wiggle your heads ... wiggle your bottoms ... wiggle everything you've got!  Now, sit down and find The Water of Tyne ...."

There was a burst of subdued chatter as they rustled in their folders, but by the time he was ready to start, so were they, and the beautiful melody rose sweetly to the ceiling. 

They worked solidly for fifteen minutes, learning the three parts, following the written music as best they could because not all of them could read music by any means, and helping each other by singing not just their own parts, but all three in turn.  He believed that if they knew what the other parts were doing, they would hold their own more securely and sing more in tune.  Then with a final singthrough with everyone on their own parts, he moved on to something they knew thoroughly. 

"Panis angelicus!"  he announced, and their faces brightened.  It made little difference to them, he found, what they sung.  They just loved to sing anything they knew really well, and were not fussy about style or content. " And we'll do it from memory this time, and before we start ... push the chairs away!" 

Excitedly, for this was a game they loved, they scraped the chairs to the sides of the room and gathered in the centre. 

"Now," he said, playing the introduction, "go for a walk!" 

As they sung, they began to move round the room, weaving slowly in and out in a random pattern.  Each would find herself passing someone singing the same part, and then someone else on the alto part, say, and then a couple of second sopranos, and all the time she must keep singing her own part. 

Reaching the end of the first verse, he called "Freeze!"  and they faced him and began the second verse from where they stood, the three parts all jumbled up round the room.  The sound was immediately richer and smoother.  This was known to Trevor and other choir trainers as "singing scrambled", and the choir that can do it without nervousness or fuss is a good choir indeed.  Audiences like it, because they hear a broad, homogenous sound with no one part sticking out.  And it's always more in tune, too. 

He listened with pleasure, his fingers automatically finding the accompaniment.  This was what it was all about, really, this beautiful, fresh, accomplished sound.  And they were sounding better than usual, too, he thought.  There was an edge, a depth in the middle of the sound that he couldn't quite put his finger on, but which he had never noticed before.  Suddenly a choir of twelve and thirteen year old girls was sounding mature, and forceful.  Where had this come from? 

They reached the end, and he felt he had to say something. " That was really beautiful," he said, standing up, "the best I've heard you do it.  If you're not careful, I'm going to have to enter you for a choral competition, put you up against some other choirs so you can see how you measure up." 

"Will that mean a day off school?"  said Natalie eagerly. 

"Hmm.  Maybe." 

"Mrs.H won't let us, sir!" 

"That's Miss Haversham to you, cheekypants.  And she will if I butter her up enough.  Okay, see you Wednesday as usual.  Go and get your lunches!" 

Once again he stood by the door as they filed out, saying goodbye to some, exchanging a comment or two with others, or at least just meeting their eyes as they passed. 

"'Cheekypants' indeed, bloody nerve!"  grinned Natalie, "see yer, sir!" 

"Not if I see you first," he replied. 

The staffroom was quiet when he entered, but three or four other teachers were clustered round the noticeboard.  He got himself a cup of tea and wandered over to see what was interesting them. 

"See this, Trevor?"  said Miss Throat, one of the games mistresses. " Bit of a bombshell, this!  By the way, can I have Zoe and Natalie out of your choir practice next Friday?  Got a netball match." 

"Yes, sure," he said, and looked at the notice.  A single sheet of A4 paper, typed but with Miss Haversham's signature at the bottom, said that discussions with the local authority were going ahead about the possible amalgamation of Belvedere with the boys' school down the road. 

"Argh, boys!"  said Miss Throat, flinging herself into a chair. " I've spent the last twenty years avoiding the crude little buggers, and now we're going to have them thrust upon us!" 

"What about our jobs?"  asked Mrs.Meakings. " Will we still have jobs?  Will there still be any call for Domestic Science teachers?" 

"'Course there will, Dillys," comforted Miss Throat. " Boys can learn to cook, can't they?  Why shouldn't they?" 

Trevor felt stirrings of unease. " What's the point of it?"  he asked. 

"Money, of course.  This is an old building, been here since the 1880s.  Schools nowadays don't have all these shiny tiles and a staircase at each corner.  It costs a bomb to heat, and the windowframes are all rotten, and the labs are like something out of Noah's Ark. We're talking about a brand new school here, all on one level with a swimming pool and two gyms and all sorts of luxuries.  The foundations are already laid, you know.  It's on the site of the old brush factory by the railway." 

"What'll happen to this building, then?" 

"Knock it down, I should think.  Or turn it into flats, studio flats with great high ceilings.  The yuppies'll pay hundreds of thousands for 'em, and the council will be laughing all the way to the bank." 

"And not a penny will come back to the school," said Mrs.Meakings cynically. 

"And Miss Haversham?  Will she be the Head?" 

"Well, her or the head of the boys' school.  Mind you, she's not far from retirement, so perhaps she'll take the opportunity to bow out." 

"That reminds me," Trevor said, "I thought I'd try and have a word with her before the end of lunchtime.  Do you know if she's in her office?" 

"Either there or in the dining hall.  What's up?" 

"I thought I'd enter the choir for a competition.  It'll mean a day off school." 

"Oh, right.  Good luck with that, then!" 

Miss Haversham was in the dining hall, sitting at a table with a couple of other senior teachers, their lunch finished. 

He slid into a seat opposite her. " Could I have a word, Miss Haversham?" 

"Of course.  Two if you like."  To the girls, Miss Haversham liked to maintain her reputation as a frosty-faced old bitch straight out of the last century, but to her staff she was known as a firm but kindly soul with a quiet sense of humour. 

"The school choir.  They're getting rather good, I think.  You'll hear them at the school concert at the end of term, but I was also thinking that we should enter them for a choral competition.  There's the county music festival early next term, they have a class for school and youth choirs." 

"Well, let's get straight to the point.  What's the downside?" 

"We'd need a coach to get them there.  The entry fee, but I don't suppose that's very much, just a few pounds.  And a day off school, of course.  And I should think the previous afternoon off lessons for a good long final rehearsal.  So my classes would need covering." 

"Mm.  Sounds do-able.  You haven't been particularly demanding so far.  Yes, go for it.  Keep me informed.  Ah!  Just thought; you can't go alone, not one male teacher with all those girls.  You need at least one female member of staff." 

"Oh.  Yes, I should have thought.  Any ideas?  That'll be more cover, of course." 

"Not if the female member of staff is me." 

Trevor thought.  The girls wouldn't be overjoyed, but on the other hand if the Headmistress was on board, none of the other teachers would think of objecting to the girls missing their lessons.  It would be a sound move. 

"I'd be delighted, Miss Haversham!" 

"Good.  So you should be," she twinkled. " Let me have the date as soon as you can." 

Wednesday's choir practice was even better than Monday's.  The girls sparkled, and once again he felt a thrill as they sung with the strength and depth he had noticed last time.  They worked on an unaccompanied piece, and as he stood in front of them he watched their eager faces.  He knew many of their voices individually, and could pick them out of the overall sound without difficulty.  Conducting like this, he found he could tell when one was running out of breath, or which one was stretching up for the high notes and tightening their jaw, making a scratchy sound, instead of dropping their chin and singing through the top of the head as he had taught them. 

They were singing The Night Walker, in the usual three parts, and he found himself perplexed to know where the rich sound was coming from.  He moved his eyes slowly along each of the three rows, looking at each familiar face in turn.  There was Eleanor, stolid and unimaginative, doing everything exactly as he had taught them.  Then Poppy, bright and flighty, her attention inclined to drift away, but a sweet, thin little voice.  Then Maddy, too loud as usual, her mouth open far too wide. 

He stopped them. " Maddy, sweetheart, I don't want to know what you had for breakfast!" 

She grinned at him. " Sausages, sir!" 

"Lucky you.  But you can't articulate the words properly with your mouth too wide.  Everyone, try this: imagine you've popped a ping-pong ball into your mouth, so the inside of your mouth is big ... now, take the ping-pong ball out, but keep it big inside ..." several girls did mime taking a ball out of their mouths, as he had expected, "... but sing through a small mouth on the outside.  About big enough to put two fingers in, go on, try ..." more miming. " Good, now sing again, from "trees around us gather dark", and keep that shape, big inside, small outside ..."

Ah, much better.  Less edgy, more rounded.  But still that sharp, incredibly sweet voice cutting through slightly.  Not so much as to be unpleasant, but as a beautiful tenor can ride over the top of a big choral society, enriching the whole sound.  He looked again along the rows, trying to pin it down.  Not Sarah, or Juliet, nor the other Sarah, nice girls, bright eyes, loving what they were doing, but not them ...

For a brief moment he felt another pair of eyes on him.  They were all watching, of course, he had taught them to watch all the time without fail.  But there was something ... extra, some extra intensity to their gaze.  He looked quickly along the row, but saw just the usual faces.  But still there was that tone, penetrating, lifting, nailing down the intonation so that they all sang perfectly in tune.  Not Beattie, not Maggie who always made that rather broad sound on her 'a' vowels that annoyed him, not Janet who made almost no noise at all, but still he felt the eyes on him, and heard that warm, strong sound in the second sopranos ...

They reached the end, and he went through the motions of ending the rehearsal, feeling mystified.  Someone in the choir was doing an outstanding job, and he didn't know who it was.  He felt it was certainly one of the second sopranos, and there were more of them than either of the other two parts, because the strength of a choir must lie in the middle.  But which one, he could not think.  And he remembered the force of that gaze, almost as though there had been a pair of hungry eyes fixed on him.  There had been forty pairs of eyes on him, of course, but hungry wasn't the usual word. 

The County Music Festival sent him the information and the dates, and he set about planning the adventure.  Not more than four songs, total ten minutes, two copies of the music to be supplied in advance.  Festival accompanist available if necessary, but he thought he would play himself.  They would have to present some variety, he thought, something fast, something slow, something old and something modern.  And the last one should be a real show-stopper, so either something complicated and quick, or something slower but really beautiful; Panis angelicus might come in that category.  He could tell easily what three of the songs should be, but was in a bit of a quandary about the fourth.  Perhaps there was something they didn't know yet, as they had time to learn something new? 

After school that day he shut himself in the stock-cupboard at the back of the Music Room and began a thorough search through the piles of old music left by his predecessors.  That the school had always, or usually, had an active choir was obvious.  There were very many sets of song-sheets, mostly tied up with string but some in old-fashioned cardboard folders.  He put a few on one side for consideration. 

After an hour or so he was dusty and rather tired of the smell of old paper, but he had narrowed it down to three possibles.  Of these, he liked the look of Song of Shadows by Armstrong Gibbs.  Nice chording, it would have to be beautifully in tune, but not overly difficult for the girls to learn, and very atmospheric.  But the piano part was a bit tasty.  He'd need to practise it seriously.  He counted the copies – 32, so some girls would have to share.  Not a problem.  He put the pile on top of the piano, and took one home to practise. 

They took to it well, and had the main thrust of the piece under their belts in a couple of weeks.  The voice was there again, leading and nudging the rest.  It was plainly a girl who read music well, for the voice made never a mistake whichever part it was singing.  They all sang the alto part with the real altos, and then did the same for the seconds.  Then the altos sang their own part while everyone else sang second.  Then everyone sang the first part, and lastly the three parts went together nicely.  The piano accompaniment was easier than he had expected, the notes falling easily under his fingers, shaped by a composer who knew his job. 

One Friday towards the end of term – the school concert only two weeks away – after rehearsal he found a sheet of music on the floor.  He picked it up, meaning to find the right folder and put it in, for one of the girls must have dropped it.  It should have her name written on it in pencil.  Ah, yes, there it was – 'Aurelia James'. 

But there was no girl in the choir called Aurelia James.  He looked at the register just to make sure, but he knew those forty names well enough.  No Aurelia.  He left the music on top of the piano and went down to the school office. 

"Mrs.Thatcher," he said to the school secretary, "do we have an Aurelia James?" 

"No," she said crisply.  She was a crisp woman. 

"A past pupil, perhaps?" 

"Not in my time, no, and I've been here eight years." 

"Is there any point looking in the registers, or in the computer?" 

She fixed him with an icy stare. " Mr.Lightfoot, I know the names of every child in this school.  I deal with lists and registers and forms all day, every day.  There is no Aurelia James." 

He thanked her and left, feeling chastised.  But he could not get the name out of his head.  At Friday's rehearsal he called the register for once instead of filling it in from memory.  When he got to the right place in the alphabet he called "Aurelia James?" 

There was no reply. " Sir, we ain't got no Aurelia James," said Natalie, "what you talking about?" 

"Doesn't she come to choir any more?" 

"Sir, there ain't no one in the 'ole school called that." 

"Anyone else know Aurelia?"  he asked.  Blank faces told him no.  But the voice was still there, and the copy he had left on the piano had disappeared. 

Towards the end of the rehearsal he made them put their copies and chairs away, and they did the walking about exercise again.  They sung an unaccompanied piece this time, and he walked round with them himself, not singing, but listening to the voices as they came past him and receded again.  It was interesting to hear which of them were firm on their parts, and which were wandering slightly – very few, fortunately.  It gave him the idea of which bits to practise next time, and how he might improve matters by carefully placing a weak girl alongside a strong one.  And the voice was still there, sweet, powerful, rich and demanding, and he could hear it moving round the room but somehow it never came near him, and still he couldn't fit it to a face. 

But he knew it had a face, and he even thought he knew what that face was like.  It was thin and pale, with enormous hungry eyes, and it sung like an angel.  It was making his little school choir into something unique, and he did not know which girl owned it. 

At the end of the rehearsal he dismissed the girls, but as they picked up their belongings and made for the door he called out "Oh, Aurelia, could you wait behind, please?" 

They stopped and looked at him, puzzlement in their faces, then made for the door again. 

"You're goin' dotty, mate!"  said Natalie, shaking her head as she slipped out of the room. 

He watched them one by one as they left, calling over their names in his head.  He knew every one, and when they were gone the room was empty.  Natalie, I think you might be right, he said to himself, then spoke to the empty room. " Aurelia?"  he said softly. " Are you still here?" 

There was no reply. 

The school concert engulfed him in activity, and he had little time to think about the voice.  There were instrumentalists to be rehearsed and cajoled and encouraged, there were posters to produce, extra rehearsals to be arranged, not without some moaning in the staffroom from teachers who felt they owned the pupils who sat in front of them twice or three times a week, there was the caretaker to be flattered into arranging the stage and putting out the chairs, there were tickets to be sold and interval refreshments to organise, which meant some serious butteringup of Dillys Meakings.  The choir was the least of his worries – they knew their stuff and he felt confident that they would give a good showing. 

And a good showing they gave: they sung once in each half, and their item in the second half was the four songs he'd selected for the competition, ending with Song of Shadows.  Young, fresh they sounded; but through it all there was that sound, that unique, penetrating sweetness that delighted the ear and pulled at the heart.  There was quite a long silence when they finished, and then the applause was heart-felt and enthusiastic.  The choir stood on the stage and beamed, basking in glory, and he rose from the piano and bowed, and waved the applause towards the girls, and clapped them himself while scanning to see if this time he could spot the thin face and enormous eyes. 

How would they look now?  Would that sad face be wreathed in smiles like the rest?  He bowed again, and then it was over.  As the choir clattered off the stage he noticed how much noise they made.  That was something to address next term, in the week or two before the competition.  How a choir got on and off the stage must surely be important, he thought.  If they can do it neatly and quickly and quietly, wouldn't that make a better impression on the judges? 

So it proved, and practising the entry and exit from the stage proved quite good fun.  Children like repetition, and they did it again and again, until every girl knew exactly where she was to stand, who was next to her and who in front and behind, and what order she would go on and off in.  He taught them a system that ought to work whether the steps up onto the stage were in front, or on one side or the other: so long as the shortest girl in the back row, the unimaginative Eleanor who could be trusted not to make a mistake, went on first and stood exactly in the centre, the rest would flow round her neatly. 

On the afternoon before the competition he was freed from teaching, and the choir spent a happy two hours going through and through their songs, and practising their movements on and off the stage, varying the routine according to whether the steps were this side or that, or if they had to come on from the back, or whatever might confront them when they arrived. 

Trevor knew from the documents he had been sent that there were a dozen competitors in the School and Youth Choir section.  Most he did not recognise, but he saw the names of at least three well-known grammar schools, and one famous public school. 

At the end of the afternoon he sat them down and gave them a little pep talk. " You know your stuff," he said, "as well as I can teach you.  But what I haven't said is that you are going to hear some other choirs who are older than you, more experienced than you, singing more complicated music than you, and probably doing it better than you." 

"Come on, sir, tell it like it is, we can take it," said Natalie sarcastically, "don't sugar the pill!" 

"Natalie, I'm not trying to put you off.  I think there will also be some choirs who aren't as good as you, and it will be marvellous for you to realise just how good you are.  Look forward to that!  But just don't be disheartened when you come up against stronger competition.  Let's face it, this is the first time you've sung outside the school, and the first time you've put yourselves up to be judged and criticised.  For that matter, I've never entered a competition before either." 

"Cor, sir, are you a beginner, then?  There was us thinkin' you knew it all!" 

"Well, I don't!"  he laughed. " Just look at this as a first attempt.  Next time we'll know what we're up against, and ... well, we can only get better, can't we?  You're all young yet.  You'll be better next year, and better the year after.  And so will I, with a bit of luck.  Now, let's just have one last run through Water of Tyne before the bell goes.  Then it'll be tomorrow morning at break, downstairs clean and shiny for the coach.  Stand up, please?" 

"Oh sir, I don't like this one.  I always forget to come in at that funny bit in the second verse," moaned Natalie. 

Her friend Zoe leaned over from the second row. " That's because you're crap, Natalie Parsons!"  she said sweetly. 

They sang, and it was the same, strong, sweet and rich.  But will it be the same tomorrow?  he thought.  Tomorrow, will you be there, Aurelia? 

The coach was fun, for the girls, anyway.  They trooped aboard with their coats and their sandwiches.  Miss Haversham stood nearby, looking down the list he had given her and living up to her frosty reputation, and they walked past with straight faces.  Then when they had passed they looked at him, and some smiled, and one or two winked, and Natalie was about to utter some piece of cheek until Zoe elbowed her in the ribs.  On the coach, the two girls made a beeline for the back seat and spread their possessions over it so they kept it for themselves. 

"No one wants to sit with you anyway, Natalie," said Beattie, "so I don't know why you bother!" 

"It's for Mr.Lightfoot," said Natalie, unabashed. " He's going to come an' sit with us!" 

He didn't though.  He sat at the front opposite Miss Haversham, and worried.  There must be something he had forgotten, some obvious piece of elementary preparation left undone.  But mostly he worried about the sound, the magic sound.  Would it desert them now? 

He felt better when they arrived.  The competition was held in a College of Further Education, and they were shown to a large lecture hall which was to be their dressing room.  Girls spread themselves, chattering and screeching, and there was soon a lively procession backwards and forwards to the toilet.  Trevor walked down the corridor outside.  In each lecture room there was a different choir, and he was surprised to hear that most were seizing the opportunity for an extra rehearsal.  He heard some truly excellent singing, and his heart sank. 

Still, he could see little point in grinding away at stuff they already knew inside out and backwards.  They would sing it like they always sang it, and no extra practice now would alter that.  He looked round the room; they were full of excitement, laughing and noisy.  They were going to have to sit in a crowded hall, listening patiently to other choirs for a good hour and a half before they were on.  How were they going to last out, in the state they were in now? 

He made a decision: he called them together, and stood in the middle of them as they worked through their usual warmup routine.  Then he made a sign for silence, and led them out and down the corridor.  Outside he had spotted a large empty carpark; he produced the tennis ball he had confiscated from Natalie earlier, and said "Right!  You've got fifteen minutes to run around and make a noise.  When I come out again and clap my hands, you'll come to me and line up ready to go on – in silence.  Yes?" 

Nods all round.  Then they burst in all directions, Natalie grabbing the ball from him, and a loud and energetic game of ... something he didn't recognise was immediately in progress. 

"I hope you know what you're doing," said Miss Haversham beside him. 

"So do I," he said. " But we'll soon find out, won't we?" 

Following him in a slow crocodile into the hall, the girls managed well, their eyes large as they looked round at the massed ranks of other children, many much older, and the slabs of maroon and blue uniform where the posh schools were, and on the far side a large contingent of girls in long blue gowns, who he thought, looking at his programme, must be The Chantelles Girls' Choir. 

The afternoon began with a short address from the Festival Chairman, who introduced the expert panel of judges.  Then the singing began.  His heart thumping, Trevor listened as the first choir began.  They took a long time to get onto the stage, and once they were there their lady conductor spent several more minutes making little adjustments, pulling a child this way or that so they could all see her.  As she did so, she glanced at the judges, hoping they'd be impressed by her thoroughness. 

When they began, Trevor's heart lifted.  This was accurate singing, but totally lifeless and frankly rather boring.  He looked round at his own girls.  They were still wide-eyed, but behind it he could see the realisation dawning that perhaps they weren't going to make fools of themselves after all.  The second and third choirs came and went, and still the standard was much the same – creditable but lacklustre.  These were school choirs, their sound thin and rather childish.  They looked twelve years old and sounded like eight. 

The next choir was the large girls' choir in the blue dresses, and his heart sank.  They looked professional, and poised, and every one of them about thirty years old with immaculate make-up and carefully piled hair.  They surveyed the audience with hauteur, smiled graciously at their conductor as he came to stand in front of them, and opened their mouths to sing. 

It was ... very good.  He had to admit it, they were very good indeed.  They were in tune, and the parts were well balanced, and there was a great deal of attention to dynamics, to louds and softs and crescendi and long, careful diminuendi, there was an accelerando section where they got faster and faster towards the end of the piece ... it was well prepared and ... almost perfect.  He could sense the girls around him gazing with their mouths open.  This was how it should be done.  Yet ... yet, it was all a little too ladylike, he decided.  Not one of them looked as though she ever went to the lavatory.  Was this what children should be like? 

Clearly it was, if the applause was anything to go by, but as the Chantelles processed slowly off the stage, Natalie leaned over from behind him and poked him on the shoulder. " Coo, sir, did you see?  One of 'em had enormous great bovver-boots on under 'er posh frock!" 

Miss Haversham frowned at her, but as Natalie put her hand over her mouth and sat back, the Head Mistress glanced at Trevor.  He was sure she was grinning slightly. 

There was now just one choir before their turn.  It was a youth choir, most of them about eighteen, with a hefty contingent of boys singing tenor and bass.  They sung a confident selection, the boys with big bass voices but rather strained tenor ones, the girls suave and assured.  Trevor thought they were probably going to be the winners, and he thought they looked as if they thought so too. 

Now it was the Belvederes' turn.  He rose, gathered them all up with his glance, and walked down to the piano.  Behind him he heard ... almost nothing.  Were they there?  Had they got stage fright, and were standing frozen to the spot?  No, there they were, trooping lightly past him as he sat down to the piano, spreading across the stage in an instant, turning and facing the audience, smiling happily, their feet apart, their hands lightly on their thighs as he had taught, heads proud.  He did not even wait for the very last girl to stop moving before he began the introduction to the Panis angelicus. 

He looked up and breathed with them as they took their own breaths for the first note, their chests rose together, their eyes came alight and ... it was there.  She was there, the voice, driving them, leading them, she was in the heart of them and they responded to her and sung with their own hearts.  A great wall of sound rose into the auditorium, sweet and strong, with colour and richness in it that surrounded the ear and pinned the audience in their seats, with perfect intonation, every word crisp and clear, with meaning and emotion that made you want to weep. 

There was no applause at the end.  On these occasions it is normal to clap only at the end of the set.  He went immediately into the introduction to Water of Tyne, and they sung, clear and sweet and sad.  Then the complete contrast of I'se the B'y, a rapid tongue-twister, rollicking and rowdy and then faster and faster at the end.  The piano part was demanding and he scarcely had time to notice how they were doing, but had a sense of the music unrolling flawlessly, choir and piano forming a faultless symbiosis.  The final accelerando left him breathless as he felt his fingers drawn along by the choir with irresistible momentum; he was not in control, the music was. 

And then Song of Shadows, rich and soulful, the gorgeous harmonies flowing effortlessly and riding over the arpeggios of the piano, and all the time that sound lapping at the ear and pulling at the heart.  This was beauty.  This was music. 

At the end of their set you could have heard a pin drop.  The girls stood, breathing deeply, smiling slightly with satisfaction.  They knew they had done well.  They knew they were good.  This was their stage.  One of the judges rose to his feet, and began to clap slowly, and then the audience rose too, and there were cheers and whistles and a roar of clapping that went on and on while he motioned to the girls and Belvedere Choir filed off the stage as quickly as they had come. 

Back in their seats, eyes bright, they sat and wallowed in the applause that had followed them all the way back.  Trevor looked at Miss Haversham, and thought he saw a tear in her eye.  She smiled, and nodded at him, but said nothing. 

Trevor did not really pay attention to the performances of the last two choirs.  They came, and they went, and he was still wrapt, lost in the glory of that singing.  He looked round, seeking the small pale face with the enormous eyes he knew, now, was there, but still could not find her.  But that she was there, he did not doubt for a minute. 

The result was almost a foregone conclusion.  Third, the Chantelles Girls' Choir; second the Levergate Youth Choir; and the winners, Belvedere Road School.  What Trevor would have liked was for his choir to make their way out of the building quietly and with poise, looking as though this was something they did every day.  They did not, of course; they chattered and laughed and teased and generally behaved like little girls who are very pleased indeed with themselves.  On his way through the foyer he was buttonholed by one of the judges, who said it had been a wonderful experience, and were they entering for the National Choir Championship at Peterborough in the summer?  Trevor, who had never thought of it – indeed, had hardly heard of such an event – managed to be vague and polite, and thanked him, and fled for the coach. 

At school the next day, the news was received with quiet and friendly approval, but no amount of praise and congratulation from Miss Haversham in assembly could really convey just how glorious it had been.  And besides, there was other news that overshadowed even the deep joy Trevor still felt.  Belvedere Road Girls' School was to close at the end of the summer term, and would reassemble as part of the new co-educational Charles Widdowson High School, named for a former mayor, in September. 

"You do realise, I hope," said Miss Haversham, "that although your teaching post at the new school will be safe, you will have to do things a little differently?" 

"In what way?"  he asked. 

"You won't be able to run a girls' choir in a mixed school.  The council has a strict and all-embracing equal opportunities policy.  Boys and girls must have the same opportunities, so any choir you run will have to be mixed.  The new Head – for I'm afraid I won't be there, I'm taking the chance to retire a couple of years early – is a stickler for all the latest educational policies." 

"Well, I've never run a boys' choir, or a mixed one," he said, "but ... well, lots of people do, so how hard can it be?  I'm sure it'll be fine." 

But it wouldn't, he said to himself as he walked back to the Music Room.  It won't be the same.  He closed the door behind him, and looked at the chairs arranged in three neat semicircles.  It won't be the same, and where will you be, Aurelia?  No one answered. 

Mrs.Meakings had been in the school as long as anyone, and had decided that she would also take the opportunity to end her career. " I'm too old and too lazy to learn a new job," she said. " I bet there'll be loads more paper, and new syllabuses and stuff.  I can't be bothered.  I'll sit at home with the telly and my old man can support me for the last few years." 

"Don't blame you," Trevor said. " But there's something I need to ask you.  Who's Aurelia James?" 

"Aurelia James?  Aurelia James ... that seems to ring a bell, but ... someone to do with this school, you mean?" 

He nodded. 

"No ... can't seem to recall.  I've a good memory for names and faces, and I've been here for almost twenty years, you know.  Was she a pupil or a teacher?  Perhaps she wasn't here very long?" 

"I think she was a pupil, but ... actually, I don't even know that.  Is there anyone else I could ask?  I think it must have been a long time ago." 

She thought for a moment. " Miss Buttle!"  she said triumphantly. " That's the person!  Miss Buttle.  When I first started here, she was one of the oldest teachers.  Then she retired.  She'd been here since the war ended, I think.  And I happen to know she's still alive, though she's a very old lady now.  She lives in the Meadow View Care Home up on Manchester Road, and I'm told she still has all her marbles!  Why don't you ask her?" 

"Thank you.  I will." 

"You haven't said, though, what this is about?" 

"Oh ... I can't really explain.  I found her name on some old music in the stock cupboard, and ... I have a particular reason for wanting to know about her, that's all.  Sorry, I can't say more." 

Mrs.Meakings sniffed. " Well ... try Miss Buttle, that's your best bet." 

The term wore on, and lessons went on, and choir practices went on, and the singing went on.  There was another, smaller, local competition towards the end of term.  They entered, and won easily.  The effect of their two successes on the choir was tangible.  When they stood to sing now, there was a confidence, a poise, almost a swagger about them that had not been there before, and is not common in schoolgirls.  They looked the audience in the eyes, almost as if to say "Now hear us, we're good.  That's all.  You think you know good?  You ain't heard nothin' yet!" 

Trevor kept them busy, learning new music, and they still had the sound.  The voice was still there, week after week, and they powered themselves through music like a voracious herd.  Where once they would take a month to learn a new song, now he found that after one rehearsal they would have the bare bones of the notes, and could begin polishing it and working on the subtleties.  And it was the voice's doing, for she was always there, singing whatever part was necessary.  If one group was in trouble, there she would be, guiding them along.  Sometimes Trevor thought she was singing all three parts at once, though of course that would be impossible. 

And it was not just the voice, either.  The whole choir had changed.  Children are natural mimics, they copy each other without thinking, and they were all, the whole lot of them, gradually taking on the voice. 

Towards Easter, with just one term of life left for Belvedere Road Girls' School and for the choir in its present form, two important things happened. 

One was that Trevor received a letter from the judge at the County Festival who had spoken to him.  It was the same one who had stood up and led the applause.  He was invited to apply for the post of Choirmaster at one of the country's most prestigious boarding schools, a school famous for its specialisation in music, at a salary approximately twice what he would receive at the Charles Widdowson High School. 

The other was that he found out who Aurelia was. 

Miss Buttle was a tiny, birdlike woman with beady eyes behind her thick glasses, and sat wrapped in a plaid blanket in the window of a sunny common room in the care home.  She had wispy white hair that hardly covered her pink scalp, and she shook slightly.  Her hands when she picked up the cup of tea were like little talons, brown spotted with every blue vein clearly delineated. 

Trevor had phoned the home and asked if he might see her. " Oh yes," the nurse had said, "she gets hardly any visitors any more.  She's ever so old, you know.  She's still bright as a button, but you mustn't stay too long.  She gets tired quickly, poor thing.  And bring her some chocolate biscuits.  She does love her chocolate digestives.  Get the plain ones, not the milk chocolate." 

Clutching the biscuits, he had been shown to the common room, and Miss Buttle had chirped at him happily. " What can I do for you, young man?"  she piped. " No one comes any more, 'cause they're all dead, you see!  This is a treat – ooh, and you've bought me some biscuits?  Good boy, I shall like you.  Let's have one now, shall we?" 

Trevor explained why he had come. 

"Aurelia?"  she said, her eyes distant. " Ah, yes, poor little mite.  I remember her, all right.  She was in my class." 

"What can you tell me about her?" 

"Not much to tell.  Why do you want to know, anyway?  You can't be family, not after all this time?" 

"No.  I can't explain why.  It's just ... I've come across her name at the school, and ... there's something ... I just need to know about her." 

"Well, she was an orphan.  Her dad was killed in the War, and her mother followed him when Aurelia was just six or seven, I think.  So she was on her own, poor child.  Her aunt took her in, Mrs.James, but she wasn't a loving person.  I met her a couple of times, a severe, busy woman, hard as nails.  I don't think she could be bothered with little Aurelia." 

"What was Aurelia like?" 

"She was twelve or thirteen when she came to me.  Thirteen, I think.  A little thing, she was, pale and thin.  A puff of wind would have blown her away, and she had these big dark eyes that would look at you ... sort of wondering, as though she didn't really understand what you were about.  That was her, really.  She just didn't understand what the world was about." 

"Did she have any ... particular interests?" 

"Well, she wasn't a bright child.  She did her homework and everything, and it was good enough, but she was no bright spark.  She tried, and kept up, and that was all.  And she didn't seem to have any friends.  She was so shy, you see, she hardly spoke, although as time went on I managed to get a few words out of her." 

She reached for her cup, and slurped noisily. 

"Always shabby, she was.  I don't think her aunt bought her any clothes, she just had hand-me-downs.  I spoke to one or two of the mothers, and got them to give me some things for her, a raincoat and a skirt because her old one had got so short.  And she used to carry everything around with her in this great big bag with a strap.  It pained me to see her lugging that great thing around.  I think all her school books were in it, because she didn't dare leave anything at home or her aunty would have used it to light the fire." 

Another slurp. " Shall we be naughty and have another biscuit?  I know she had her own room, but what it was like I couldn't say.  I think she spent a lot of time in it, on her own, because her aunty didn't like her downstairs cluttering up the place, and wouldn't let her go out to play."  She gazed into the distance, remembering. " Not that I ever saw her play, not ever.  The other girls would run around and play with a ball at playtime, but not her.  She'd just sit and watch, almost as though she didn't understand what they were doing." 

"Were they nasty to her?" 

"No, not them.  Oh, girls can be nasty, it's true.  But she was just so ... not there ... that they didn't seem to notice her at all.  The only thing she had, was the singing." 

"Singing?  You know, I thought there would be something about singing ..."

"Oh yes.  That was the one thing she could do, and the one thing she loved.  She had such a voice on her!  A great big, golden voice, and she used to shut her eyes and sing fit to draw your heart out!  Where she got it from I don't know.  Not from her aunty, that's for sure.  And she loved the choir.  Old Mr. ... oh damn, I forget his name after all this time ... he was a funny old stick, he taught English and Music, and he ran a little choir at lunchtimes.  The girls used to muck about, I think, but there were a few who stuck at it, and she was always there.  Never missed a choir practice, Aurelia.  As though it was the one thing she lived for." 

She paused, and dreamed for a moment. " She'd gather up that great big bag of hers, if it was choir day, and she'd run out of that door at lunchtime ... "It's choir practice, miss!"  she'd say, "got to go, it's choir practice!"  and out of that door she'd be in a flash!" 

"So what happened to her?  Where did she go when she left the school?" 

Miss Buttle looked at him for a long time, and he thought there were tears in her eyes. 

"She never left, dear.  She died.  It was terrible. " Got to go, miss, it's choir practice!"  she said to me, and out she went, and next thing there was screaming and crying downstairs, and when I went out, there she was at the bottom of the stairs.  They reckon she'd got that damn bag tangled in her legs, and she'd fallen down the stairs and hit her head on the wall at the bottom, and broke her neck!" 

Trevor found his heart beating hard.  He said nothing. 

After a while, Miss Buttle stirred again. " The funeral wasn't much.  A few of the other girls went, and some of the teachers, and the aunty, looking as though she'd rather be somewhere else.  But that was all.  No other family.  She had no one, poor girl, just her singing, and the choir." 

She sniffed, and seemed about to cry. " Now, I'm sorry to be rude, but ... do you think you could go, because I think I need a sleep?  Don't last long, these days, and the days do fly past so quick." 

He rose, and thanked her. 

"That's all right, dear.  You come again.  I don't get many visitors.  And next time, we'll talk about something more cheerful, shall we?  But you never did tell me why you wanted to know about her?" 

"Well ..." he hestitated. " I think ... I think she's still there." 

The old lady looked at him sharply, her lips moving, but said nothing.  Then she put her handkerchief to her eyes, and waved him away, so he left. 

Somehow the glow seemed to have gone out of choir practices.  Trevor used the excuse of the approaching end of term and end of the school, and cancelled practices for the last three weeks.  He spent much more of the lunch breaks in the staff room, and wrote to the specialist music school and said he would be very interested in a post there.  He took a day off, visited the school and was interviewed very informally by the Principal and two of the Governors, and accepted the offer. 

The last few days dragged by.  The corridors, increasingly bare of posters and decoration, seemed grey and lifeless.  In the Music Room the choir chairs remained where they were, and his classes used them.  He gathered together the choir folders and put them in one of the skips that infested the playground now. 

He cleared the walls of the posters of musical instruments and the layout of the symphony orchestra, and emptied the stock cupboard, throwing away all the old choir music and making neat bundles of text books to go to the new school.  Then he changed his mind and put them in the skip too.  The new school was going to be fitted out with new stock.  His classes trooped in and trooped out, and he taught them in a lacklustre way.  This was an end, for him and for them, and he couldn't find it in him to make much effort for them.  They seemed to feel the same.  They were all just passing time. 

The last day of term arrived.  The last classes ground to their close, many teachers electing to keep the girls amused by showing videos or playing games as it was the last day.  They trooped to their last assembly in the hall, sung a hymn and listened to some quietly congratulatory speeches from Miss Haversham and the Chair of Governors, then trooped out to clear their lockers and burst into the real world, chattering and light-hearted at the prospect of six weeks' holiday. 

The teachers went to the staff room and drank sherry and ate pieces of cheese and pineapple on sticks, but their holiday was beginning too, and soon there was a chorus of slamming doors and revving engines as the car park emptied. 

Trevor was one of the last to leave.  He went to the Music Room for one last time, and stood in the fading light looking at the choir chairs.  The piano had been taken away the previous day.  He sat down in the front row of the choir and listened to the darkness gathering. 

"Are you here, Aurelia?"  he whispered, but there was no reply.  He felt for a moment that if he turned round he might catch a glimpse, just a vague shadow of a little girl sitting in the row behind him, her big eyes looking at him. 

But he did not turn. " You could come with me, if you want," he said quietly.  Then he got to his feet, went to the door and closed it behind him.  Soon the sound of his car could be heard, accelerating out of the playground and up the road. 

Quietly whistling and rattling his keys for company, the caretaker walked the corridors, turning off the last lights as he went.  Soon the sound of his footsteps faded, and there was a distant crash as he locked the front doors for the last time and went home.  The heating had been switched off and the pipes ticked quietly as they cooled, and the cold of brick and stone settled in the classrooms.  As the last of the evening faded from the tall windows and the shadows gathered in the corridors, the building forgot a hundred years of cheerful tumult, a hundred teeming classes of noisy adolescence, and relaxed into its last long twilight. 

Had there been anyone to listen in the darkness, a keen ear might just have made out soft footsteps on the stairs, the scuff of a heavy bag dragged down the steps, then a patter along the corridor, and a door opening and closing, then silence. 

In the dark Music Room, her shabby raincoat wrapped round her and her bulging schoolbag at her feet, Aurelia James waited patiently.  The other girls would be here soon, and choir practice would begin. 

# Bobbing

The kitchen was the largest room in the house so it was natural for people to congregate there.  It was L-shaped, the smaller leg of the L being a little dining area with a wood-burning stove and a table and chairs, and, incongruously, the piano.  There was also room for a small sofa, one of those rustic-style things with bright cushions and spokes for a back, and here the children sat, pale and quiet, each with a glass and a biscuit in hand, watching the people with large eyes.  As Derek watched, Will, at seven years the older of the two, put down his biscuit and reached for Abby's hand.  She took it, and they sat holding on to each other, wondering what was going on. 

The room was quiet, but full of people talking in hushed tones, and women moving in and out of the lounge with plates and cups, keeping busy because when you were busy you didn't have to talk about anything serious.  The men wore dark suits, and the women mainly black dresses.  No one took any notice of the children, though, and this was wrong.  Derek wanted to call out to them, but knew instinctively they would not hear.  But someone should be sitting with them, someone should give them a cuddle.  They were little.  They didn't understand. 

Abby was whispering in Will's ear.  He nodded, and they stood up together and wove their way hand in hand towards the bathroom at the back of the house.  People made way for them, and one or two patted them as they passed, and one woman stroked Abby's hair.  It was Vera, the old lady next door.  And there was Mark, his best friend, and Mark's wife Julia busy at the teapot pouring more cups of tea.  And Mags's parents, Dot and Bernard, talking to someone Derek didn't recognise.  What were they all doing here? 

Mags, his wife, came in from the lounge, smiling wanly.  He called out to her. " Hey, what's going on, darling?"  but no sound came.  All that happened was that he found himself bobbing slightly.  Then it came to him; black dresses, suits, black ties – this was a funeral.  There had been a funeral, and here they were in his house drinking tea and talking in subdued tones.  But who had died?  His children were here, his wife, Mark and Julia, and Mags's parents.  Where were his own parents?  Was it ...?  No, there they were.  His mother was here in the kitchen, and through the lounge door he could make out his father's burly form, talking to someone out of sight.  They were all here, so ...

Then it struck.  He wasn't there.  He was up here, bobbing near the ceiling like a forgotten party balloon, up in the corner of the kitchen.  Right beside his ear there was a spider sitting calmly in its web.  He was the one missing.  They were down there, talking, and he was ...

The memory suddenly flooded his mind, the wet road, the lights of the cars on the slick surface, the red lights of cars in front, the blazing headlights of the traffic coming the other way, and he racing up the outside impatient to get home and put his feet up with the kids, and the lorry appearing in front of him filling the road, and there was no space for him to pull in.  He hadn't felt scared, there hadn't been time.  All he remembered was the frenzied grip on the steering wheel and the painful force of his right foot on the brake and then ... nothing. 

Now he was here, bobbing near the ceiling, and he had no voice.  He was the one who was dead.  It was his funeral they had all come from.  He tried again to call out, but just bobbed a little more, and drifted out from the corner in the room's gentle air currents.  Below him there was movement.  People were getting ready to leave.  One by one they made their way through the crush to Mags, and spoke softly to her, and kissed or shook hands, and she smiled gently as they moved towards the lounge and the front door.  He couldn't quite make out any words, but knew she was thanking them for coming, and they were saying nice things, comforting things, about him.  And her pale face was set, the smile not reaching her eyes as she said goodbye to them. 

The room thinned, and her mother and his mother and Julia bustled quietly, clearing up.  Mark stood at the sink, washing cups and plates.  Mags's father picked up a tea towel and began drying – now that was a first.  Derek had never seen him help in the kitchen, not once in his life. 

His life.  Goodness, there was a thing.  His life was over, it seemed, and his family were busy mourning him.  The children had returned from the bathroom, still holding hands.  Derek's father came into the kitchen, and picked Abby up, and she clung to him, looking over his shoulder with big, serious eyes.  Will stood alone for a moment, and then returned to the sofa, sitting on the edge, not certain what he should be doing.  Presently Julia came and gathered up both children and led them out.  She was evidently going to take them upstairs and get them ready for bed.  Who was going to read them their story?  He, Derek, that was his job.  He always read them a story at bedtime.  He hoped Julia would do it.  They liked Julia, they knew her well and were always comfortable with her.  She was like a second mum. 

It seemed no time at all before the kitchen was almost empty.  Mags had gone out to the lounge to say the last farewells, and their parents followed.  He heard the distant sound of the front door closing, and tyres on gravel as cars pulled out onto the road.  Mags came back, and sat alone at the table, her head in her hands.  He could tell she was crying, and wanted to reach down and comfort her. " I'm not gone," he would say, "I'm still here, I'm with you, it's all

right.  I love you."  He hadn't said that often enough.  Her shoulders were heaving, and it wrenched at him to see her grief and not be able to comfort her. 

But she was a strong woman, and presently she gathered herself together.  Still shaken by the occasional shuddering breath, she got up and fiddled round the kitchen, putting things straight, tidying things that well-meaning hands had left in the wrong places.  Then she looked round the room once more, standing at the door with her hand on the switch, put the lights off and moved through the lounge towards the stairs. 

Derek bobbed, and drifted, and bobbed as the room cooled.  He wanted to cry, but could not.  He wanted to speak, but could not.  He wanted to move, to go up the stairs to his wife and his children and hold them, but could not.  He stared into the darkness and bobbed gently. 

It was a quiet breakfast the next morning.  The children sat on either side of the table eating eggy bread and drinking milky tea, not speaking but watching their mother moving round the kitchen.  When they had finished, she kissed them and sent them upstairs to play in their rooms, and they went obediently without a word. 

She sat again at the table, and drank her own tea, and cried quietly.  Then she wiped her face, and tidied up, and went up to the children.  Presently he heard them all come downstairs again, and some quiet commotion as they put hats and coats on, and the front door closing.  He wondered where she had taken them.  It was too late in the morning for school, and they had not taken the shopping bags from the kitchen cupboard.  Perhaps they were going to Mark and Julia's.  He hoped so.  He bobbed and bobbed, and watched the spider which had decided to put in an extension and was busy spinning more web, waving its legs. 

They returned towards the end of the afternoon, and Mags gave the children their tea which was beans and fish fingers.  She was still quiet, but the children had a little more colour, and spoke softly to each other.  When they had finished tea they went into the lounge, and he could hear the sound of the television.  Mags pottered about, and made herself a pot of tea.  He hoped she was going to eat something herself, but she just sat at the table, staring into space. 

He tried once again to speak to her.  He wanted to tell her that he loved her, and that he loved the kids, and that he was here watching, but no sound came and somehow the kitchen seemed to have grown bigger, or he had got slightly further away or something, because he was looking down at her from a greater height than before.  Presently she sighed, and went to put the children to bed, and did not reappear afterwards. 

The next morning the ceiling had once again got higher, and he watched from a distance as the children ate and then got ready for school.  They were still quiet, but Abby had a smile for her mother, and ran in front of her when they went out to the car.  When Mags returned from the school run she drank more tea, and then had a long conversation with someone on the telephone.  Later on there was a visitor, a man Derek did not know, who sat with Mags at the table and pulled papers from his briefcase, spreading them on the table and explaining them to her.  She nodded and smiled wanly.  Derek wondered if this was something to do with the insurance.  He had insurance with the car, of course, and there was also a life insurance policy that he had kept up to date.  The house was almost paid for, with only a year or two remaining in the mortgage, so Mags should not be too badly off, he thought.  At least that had been his plan, back when it had seemed inconceivable that there would be any need. 

The man left, and she made another telephone call.  Presently Julia and Mark came, and they talked for a long time.  They were quite a long way off now, for the kitchen had grown still taller.  From his height in the top corner above the piano their heads seemed very far below, and he could hear no words, just the murmur of their conversation and the occasional laugh at one of Mark's witticisms. 

Mark left, and evidently collected the children from school, for they soon came in still wearing their raincoats.  Abby ran excitedly to tell her mother what had happened at school, but Will was less easily distracted, and his soulful eyes still stared round the room as he perched on the edge of the sofa.  Derek wondered where Mark and Julia's own girls were, Imogen and Hester who were practically the same age as Abby and Will.  Perhaps a neighbour was looking after them, or Julia's mother.  He wished they had come with their parents.  Will and Abby would have liked that. 

They did come the next day, which seemed not to be a school day.  The four children played in the garden, and Derek could hear their shouts and laughter in the distance.  It made him feel more cheerful to think that they were putting things behind them.  They were little, they should not have to grieve very long.  Children's memories are mercifully short, so they don't have to dwell on things they can't understand.  Julia was not there, but Mags and Mark stood by the sink while the children played, talking quietly.  Mags cried again, and Mark put his arms round her and held her for a long time, her arms round his waist and her head buried in his shoulder. 

The next day they came again, and all went out somewhere.  Derek imagined the seven of them cramming into Mark's big station wagon.  That had never been possible, travelling all in one car, when Derek had been there.  Now he wasn't, and it was.  That was a good thing, probably, under the circumstances.  He bobbed and drifted, and looked down at the distant floor. 

They all returned much later, after it was dark, and brought with them a takeaway meal and sat round the table, the children laughing and chattering.  He thought Mags had a little colour in her cheeks too, but she was so far away it was hard to tell.  He could make out her head bobbing and turning as she chatted to each in turn, and by the time Mark and Julia and the girls took their leave the little scene far below him was almost normal, the kind of evening they had shared many times.  When Mags returned to the kitchen and began to clear away the débris she was humming.  Then she watched television in the lounge for a while, and then put the lights out. 

More days passed.  Derek bobbed and drifted, never very far from the corner.  The spider had completed his extension and was looking as though he might consider an adventure in the other direction as well, towards the piano.  Derek did not feel hungry, or thirsty.  He did not feel anything very much, in fact.  He was calm, up here by the ceiling, looking down at his old life.  It was very far away now, like looking through the wrong end of a telescope.  The pretty little blonde girl and the pale, serious little boy who were his children moved in patterns across the kitchen floor, from the lounge to the bathroom at the back of the kitchen, to the table, to the door into the garden, weaving a net of traffic that delineated their little lives.  They went off to school each day and seemed happy enough, Abby especially eager to tell her mother the news of classroom excitements and playground intrigues.  Once or twice they had friends to tea, and the garden rang to shouts and rushing feet. 

Mags went out most days, but he did not know where.  He wondered if she had taken a job.  She smiled at the children, and talked to them and cuddled them when they needed it, but she was still quieter than he remembered her, and once or twice he thought she wept as she sat at the table in the evenings.  But she was now so far away that it was hard to tell what was happening.  He no longer tried to speak – he imagined himself like that tiny fly in the horror film, a man accidentally transformed in an experiment gone wrong, clinging to the wall and squeaking "help me!  help me!"  in a tiny voice that no one could hear.  Down the end of the telescope she sat with her head in her hands, herself accidentally transformed into a tiny, grieving woman. 

Derek felt as though the ties that bound him to his family were weakening.  He no longer yearned to speak to them, and could not remember very well how it had felt to hold his children.  He knew he should remember vividly the wholesome smell of their hair beside his cheek, and the knobbly inconvenience of their knees as they scrabbled for a purchase, or their hot little arms round his neck.  He longed to conjure up the softness of his wife in bed, the warm smell of her breath and her sex, but could not.  He was far away now, far above, and drifting and bobbing further and further. 

One night Mark turned up, alone, after the children were in bed.  He and Mags talked in the kitchen, leaning against the sink, and then she turned and put her arms round his neck, and they embraced for a long time, he stroking her back.  Down the end of the tube Derek watched as a tiny Mags lifted her head and a tiny Mark bent his, and their tiny lips met in a long kiss.  Somehow this was not surprising.  This didn't feel like something clandestine.  It was probably Julia's idea, in fact.  She had been ... no, he chided himself, she was ... a generous, loving person.  She would not mind lending a little comfort where it was needed.  Indeed, there had been a time before he ... before, when they had flirted a lot as a foursome, and the idea of something more had been in their minds.  But that was ... before. 

The long embrace went on, and the tiny lips stayed glued, and the minute little hands wandered while he bobbed and bobbed a thousand miles away.  He might squeak "No!  Stop!  That's my wife you're handling!"  but they wouldn't hear from this distance, and besides, he didn't really want to.  It didn't matter.  Mags finally pulled away, and led Mark towards the lounge.  At the door she put the lights off, and he knew they were going through the lounge towards the stairs. 

He bobbed a little more, and looked down the long tube now dark at the end, and felt as though a long, thin strand of silk had just snapped.  He bobbed once more and, like the last ember in the fire, glowed briefly and winked out. 

The spider looked into the darkness and waved two legs, then settled down to wait.  Some day a fly would come. 

# The model husband

"Arnold!"  she called from the back door, and went back into the kitchen.  She laid out two plates, and the two rounds of cheese and pickle sandwiches, and two little pots of strawberry yoghurt from the supermarket, and switched the kettle on.  She looked round the room with satisfaction, seeing the clean surfaces, the stainless steel sink unit that shone, the spotless top of the cooker and the neat, ordered rows of spices on the shelf.  She bit into her first sandwich and opened this week's Good Housekeeping magazine. 

Presently there was a step outside, and her husband came in from the garden.  She didn't look round, but listened to make sure he was taking his shoes off and putting his house slippers on, and she heard him shrug out of that disgusting old sports jacket and hang it on the back of the door.  She didn't look up as he sat opposite her and took a sandwich.  He opened his own magazine, Steam Railway or The Railway Modeller or something. 

They munched in silence only punctuated by the turning of pages, and then by the rattle of his teaspoon in the yoghurt pot.  She got up and made tea.  When she handed him his mug he grunted his thanks, then pushed his chair back and carried it to the door.  Pulling his jacket on, he put his feet in his outdoor shoes and vanished.  Glancing through the window she saw his bald head disappearing into the shed, and the door closing behind him.  That was him for the afternoon, then. 

She washed up the plates and spoons, and picked up his magazine from the table where he had left it.  Irritably she threw it on the corner of the worktop near the back door, so he would remember to take it out to the shed with him next time.  She didn't see why she should have those silly comics in the house.  Looking out she could see the narrow windows of the green-painted shed, and just make out his head, bent over the workbench.  The shed was immaculate, fresh painted every year, and he had fitted a little porch over the door so the rain didn't blow in, and screwed some enamel advertisements to the outside, advertisements for things you hadn't been able to buy for years, Epps's Cocoa, and Player's Navy Cut.  And there was the blue lozenge of a station sign which she knew he had paid far too much money for at one of those railway exhibitions he went to, almost the only thing he would leave the house for these days. 

He had been normal once, she thought to herself, a normal man who went to work every day and sometimes went to the football on a Saturday, and drove their Ford Anglia for Sunday lunches with her family.  But most of the family had moved away now, her parents and his were long dead, and he had retired from the brush factory twelve years since.  He no longer went to football, and had few friends, just one or two oddballs like himself with whom he went to railway exhibitions, coming back with plastic bags full of lengths of track or tiny goods wagons. 

They didn't talk much.  There didn't seem to be anything to say, really.  She found his hobby silly, and boring, not the sort of thing a real man would be interested in.  Real men went fishing, or played golf, and spent their days on decorating the lounge or putting shelves in the pantry, or growing vegetables.  But at least he kept out from under her feet.  He was never in the way while she was hoovering, or dusting, and he raised no objections when she made alterations in the house.  He had no opinions, it seemed, about colour schemes or soft furnishing.  Nor was he around when her friends came over to drink tea and gossip, which was a good thing since the main topic of their discussions was husbands, and what was wrong with them. 

He did take her to the supermarket once a week.  The old Ford Anglia was still reliable, and he drove it with patient care and didn't get rattled when other drivers hooted at them or made rude gestures because he wasn't driving fast enough.  He'd push the trolley for her, always keeping to the left and looking both ways when they reached the junctions between the aisles, as though he was still on the road.  She was surprised he didn't give hand signals as well.  They'd patrol the aisles, always in the same order, picking up much the same items every week.  He waited patiently while she read the minute printing on the labels, or dithered between this washing powder and that.  Then when they got home she would go inside and put the kettle on while he quietly carried the bags, two at a time, into the kitchen.  He'd once or twice made movements to put things away, but she wasn't having that.  She knew where everything went.  She'd hand him his tea and shoo him out to the shed, and wouldn't see him again until supper time. 

After supper they'd sit in the lounge and watch television.  If he wasn't interested in the programme he'd read one of his magazines, and when that palled he would sometimes put his sports jacket on and go back out to the shed, not returning until bed time.  In the bedroom, he would change into his pyjamas, shuffle to the bathroom to clean his teeth, then get into bed and lie facing away from her.  He would grunt good night, and fall asleep almost instantly.  She would usually read one of her romantic novels for a while before switching off the bedside lamp and lying down to sleep, her back to his. 

It was not that they never talked, or that they disliked each other.  They had just fallen into comfortable habits, really, a routine that suited them both.  Once in a while he'd come in from the shed, and she'd look up and say "How's it going, then?  Finished yet?"  and he'd smile and say "Getting there, getting there!" 

He'd been getting there for the last twelve years.  She had only been in the shed two or three times in all those years, but she knew perfectly well what was in there.  High baseboards lined the walls, with gracefully curving fronts and shelves underneath packed with boxes and materials and old magazines.  It was lit with fluorescent tubes and heated by a little electric radiator, and his workbench was in the middle with his lathe in pride of place. 

And round the baseboards was the railway.  There was a terminus with a complicated arched roof of fretted brass and clear plastic sheet for glass, and several long platforms where trains stood, red and cream coaches with green steam locomotives at the head, ready for departure.  From underneath the station throat appeared red tube trains which ran out of a tunnel, stopped at a station lined with tiny passengers waiting, and then disappeared again into another tunnel.  Above them the mainline trains curved round the end of the shed, across a swinging bridge that filled the doorway and could be lifted out, and then out into green countryside, with little woods and cuttings, sheep in a field, a farm, then over a viaduct with a river at the bottom, and on into rocky cuttings leading to tunnel mouths where they plunged into the unknown, to appear somewhere else and travelling in a different direction. 

Behind the station was a little town, grey slate roofs blending into a backscene painted cunningly on the wall.  Tiny shoppers looked in the bright windows of tiny shops, little cars and lorries filled the road, and in the square at the station entrance, buses and taxis waited for passengers.  And it all worked, too.  The colour-light signals would change from red to green, and at the turn of a knob a train would ease itself slowly out of the station, chuffing realistically but emitting no smoke, and its carriages would snake behind it over the points and round the curve, over the bridge and off into the country, passing another train coming in from its journey.  And underneath the station the underground trains would appear, pause, and disappear into the tunnel with automatic precision. 

"Goodness knows what you'll do when it's finished," she'd said to him once, but he'd only smiled.  He never let anyone look at it, not even his railway friends.  She presumed that he would invite them in when it really was complete.  There seemed no end to it.  Although he bought most of the little wagons and coaches, he then worked on them, making new wheels from metal instead of plastic, and then painting them carefully with his airbrush, making them look dirty and well-used.  Even the little engines had soot marks, and streaks of oil down them, and if you looked very carefully you could see where tiny hands had polished the paintwork.  Many of the buildings looked deliberately down-at-heel, with soot on their chimneys and green algae on the walls, and the station footbridge and the water-tower had patches of rust. 

As the railway neared completion, Arnold got quieter and quieter.  Never a talkative man, he now went for days without saying anything beyond "please" and "thank you" and "good night".  Then one day he didn't come in for his lunch. 

She called "Arnold!"  from the back door, and sat down to her own ham sandwiches and peach yoghurt, but he didn't come.  She shrugged, wrapped his sandwich in cling film and put the yoghurt back in the fridge.  When he finally appeared at supper time she didn't mention it.  He must just have forgotten, been so wrapped up in his work that he didn't notice the time. 

The next day he didn't come in for lunch or for supper, and now she felt rather annoyed.  She called from the door three times, but he took no notice so she swept his lasagne into the bin and clattered the plates irritably.  She had read her book, and switched out her light, before he came to bed.  She hunched under the bedclothes in a mood, and didn't reply when she felt his weight on the bed and heard his grunted good night. 

The next morning he was up and out before she woke.  Looking from the kitchen window she could not see his bald head at the work bench, though the shed lights were on.  For once she made her way down the garden path and rapped on the door of the shed.  After a moment it opened, and he stood peering out at her. 

"What about your breakfast?"  she snapped. 

"Oh, I had some cornflakes earlier," he said mildly. 

"Well, try and pry yourself away for lunch this time, right?"  she said, and went back to the house. 

He did not appear at lunchtime, though, despite her call, and he didn't come for supper either.  She put on her outside shoes and stomped down the path.  When she knocked there was no reply, so she pulled the door open and looked in.  Right in front of her nose an express train swished over the bridge, and then a goods train rattled past in the opposite direction, going very slowly.  Then his bald head rose over the bridge, smiling at her vaguely. 

"Don't you want any supper, then?"  she demanded. 

"Oh, sorry.  Er, not very hungry, dear," he said. 

"Well, it's going in the bin again!  And I'll not cook tomorrow at all, if you can't be bothered to come and eat it!  And by the way, you're taking me to the supermarket in the morning, don't forget!"  and she stamped back up the path.  She did not hear him come to bed that night, and when she awoke his side of the bed didn't look as though it had been slept in. 

By twelve o'clock he still hadn't appeared, and she was fuming.  He knew they always went to the supermarket on Fridays.  She ate a solitary lunch, and by two o'clock she thought she'd had enough.  She put on her coat, gathered together her shopping bags, locked the house and went down to the shed. 

When she knocked there was no answer, so she opened the door.  Trains were running, but she could not see Arnold.  She craned in over the bridge but still couldn't see him.  She didn't know how to lift the moving bridge out, and was frightened one of the trains might run off the edge and fall to the floor, so she crouched down and crawled under the bridge and into the shed.  A goods train chuffed slowly over her head as she went. 

Straightening up, she looked round.  The signals changed, and another train, a passenger train this time, began to gather speed round the curve.  She bent and peered under the shelves, thinking that he might be searching for something on the floor, but there was no sign of him.  She leaned over the countryside and looked out of the window, into every corner of the small garden.  Finally she went back to the house, unlocked the door and searched from top to bottom.  He wasn't downstairs, he wasn't in the bathroom, he wasn't in the spare rooms, he wasn't even in the airing cupboard.  Downstairs again, she looked in the cupboard under the stairs, and went out to check that the car was still in the front garden. 

Then she went round the side of the house and back to the shed.  Crawling in again, she watched the trains running and the signals changing, and heard the click as the points changed electrically.  She wondered how to turn the thing off.  There must presumably be a master switch somewhere, but she didn't know where. 

The lights changed again, and this time it was a crack express that began to move, a long train of ten or twelve magnificent carriages, with a gleaming dark red express locomotive at the head.  Chuff, it went majestically, and chuff, chuff, and the wheels squealed as it clattered over the points, gaining speed, and headed for the curve.  She looked at it closely.  In the cab there was a tiny figure, one arm raised to the controls.  It had a bald head and what looked like a moth-eaten brown sports jacket.  As the train gathered speed and leaned into the curve, she looked down at the underground platform, where a red train was just pulling up.  The platform was lined with tiny figures, and there at one end was a little man, his feet glued to the platform, with a tiny painted bald head and a brown jacket. 

She walked slowly to the far end of the layout, and looked at the station approach where the buses waited.  On the step of one bus was a little conductor, looking out for fares.  He was bald, and wore a brown jacket.  Another bald figure sat at the wheel of a taxi. 

At the back of the station, just in front of the street with the little shops and the little shoppers, were the goods roads.  A goods train was just pulling in and stopping.  At the back of the train was a guards van, with a red light on the back, and over the rail of the van, leaning contentedly with his arms folded, was a tiny Arnold, bald head gleaming in the light reflected from the signals, and his old brown coat wrapped around him. 

# The girl who wasn't there

I used to run a girls' choir.  There were about thirty of them, aged from ten to thirteen or so, and they came once a week after school to the Music Centre where I worked. 

One week I was in my office getting ready for the choir practice.  My office was in the corridor that led to the classroom where we held the practice, so the girls arriving had to walk past my door.  As I left the office to go to the photocopier, one of them was just arriving. 

"Hallo, Anna," I said. " Hallo, Mr.B," she said.  She was a big girl for a thirteen year old, plump and pretty with very long dark hair which she was proud of.  I imagine she had walked from her home to the Music Centre, for she lived not far away and there were no major roads to cross. 

Choir practice started.  I marked the register by glancing round the room as usual, for I have always prided myself on knowing every pupil's name.  Then we warmed up as we always did, and then began work on the repertoire.  After an hour we usually had a fifteen minute break, and the girls would go to the lavatory, or run across to the Sports Centre and get chocolate from the machine there.  After break they returned, and we started work for another hour. 

After twenty minutes or so I spotted that Anna wasn't there. " Where's Anna?"  I said. 

There was silence. " Don't know," said one girl, "she was here in the first half."  A couple of other girls agreed with her. 

"Did anyone see her during the break?" 

No one had.  I thought for a moment, and decided that the most likely thing was that she'd felt unwell and had gone home during the break.  I would phone at the end of the rehearsal and check. 

The two hours soon went, and so did the girls.  I put the room straight, gathered up the music and went back to my office.  I looked up Anna's number and dialled.  Her mother, a woman I knew slightly, answered. 

"Good evening," I said, introducing myself. " I was wondering – is Anna all right?" 

"Oh yes," she said. " She couldn't come this evening, she's got something on at school." 

"So she's been at school all this evening?" 

"Oh yes.  She didn't come home for tea, they were having something there." 

I thanked her and hung up.  I never found an explanation. 

(This is not a story, but completely true.  And I haven't even changed the names, because we told Anna about it when we saw her the next week, and she was baffled too.) 

# Doo dah, doo dah day

Suddenly Terry was awake, and lay staring into the darkness, wondering what had disturbed him.  He could hear nothing but the ticking of the alarm clock by his bed, and presently turned over and pulled the covers round his ears. 

Then he knew.  Over his head there were footsteps, heavy footsteps.  Someone was in the loft. 

He lay for a moment, astonished.  No one lived in this house but him.  It was his house, and there was no one else here.  It was his loft, so what could someone be doing up there?  Could it be the next-door neighbour?  The houses were joined together, so presumably the lofts were too, but on the three or four occasions he'd been up there he could not remember seeing any gap through which the neighbour might gain access.  The party wall went right up to the top, didn't it, bricks all the way with the chimney breast in the middle?  Perhaps it was a mouse or a rat, running about?  These were old houses, a rat or two wouldn't be surprising. 

No, there it was again.  This was no rat, these were heavy footsteps, right over his head.  He jumped out of bed and stood on it, and rapped sharply on the ceiling.  He was about to shout something, he didn't know what, perhaps "Keep it down, will you?"  when a thundering noise drove him off the bed.  He fell quivering on the floor as great blows crashed on the ceiling above him, making the house shake.  He gazed up in horror, expecting to see cracks racing across the ceiling, the plasterboard bulging under the weight of colossal blows.  The noise went on for what seemed an age, crushing him into the carpet, crash, crash, crash, with a malevolence and stunning force that filled his lungs and stunned his heart, then stopped abruptly. 

The ceiling was unmarked.  He fought for breath, then crawled defeated to the bedroom door and ran downstairs.  In the kitchen he stopped and leaned on the gas stove.  Around him the house was preternaturally still.  As his heart stopped thumping and the shock subsided, his anger rose.  This was his house, that was his loft.  How dare anyone be up there?  And when he protested, how dare they launch that violent attack on his ceiling?  He took a torch from the kitchen cupboard, and found the big lump hammer he had left by the back door after using it in the garden.  Putting all the lights on as he went, he climbed the stairs and stood on the landing, staring at the trap door to the loft.  He listened, but the sounds had stopped. 

The hammer firmly gripped in one hand, he reached up with the other and nudged the trap door.  The latch clicked, and the door swung down towards him, the rope that pulled the ladder down falling with it.  He shone the torch up into the dark space, and wished he'd had the sense to fit an electric light up there, but it was a space he'd hardly ever needed to use.  There was nothing up there, just cobwebs and dust, and a few odds and ends left by the previous occupants, a roll of carpet and some cardboard boxes.  He'd looked in them once, hoping for some forgotten treasures, but there were only old candlesticks, and magazines and a few bits of crockery, so he'd left them there. 

In the light of his torch, motes of dust drifted and swirled as though disturbed by something passing.  He grasped the ladder rope and pulled.  The ladder poised and swung down towards him, coming to rest on the landing floor.  Holding the hammer in one hand and the torch in the other, he climbed slowly up, one step at a time, listening.  There was still no sound.  His head reached the opening, and he looked up warily.  If there were someone there, they could hit him on the head now.  He held the hammer up, and looked all round.  Seeing nothing, he took the next step and his head was now in the loft itself.  He shone the torch round, not knowing what he expected to see.  There was nothing, just the rafters sloping above, and above them the tattered felting under the roof tiles, cobwebs festooning them.  The joists just below his eye level were dusty, the gaps between them littered with bits of felt and scraps of rubbish. 

He took another step.  There were the cardboard boxes, just where he'd left them, and the roll of carpet, and some bits and pieces of more carpet and carpet underlay, and the curved body of an old pram without its wheels.  He shone the torch round slowly, passing over the chimney breast and the party wall, the old bricks cobweb-hung and white in patches where the salts had leached out. 

"Doo dah, doo dah day, sonny!"  said a loud voice right in his ear.  With a startled shout he fell back down the ladder, grazing his shin in his haste, and fell back on the landing carpet.  He had dropped the hammer, but still held the torch.  His heart thumping in his ears, he pointed the torch at the opening.  There was no one there.  The voice had been deep, as though it came from a large man, and slightly hoarse.  And the accent had been Scottish, but it sounded more like somebody practising a Scottish accent, not a genuine Scot. 

"Who's there?"  he called.  His own voice sounded thin and scared by comparison.  There was no reply.  The torch showed nothing, only the darkness and a glimpse of the rafters high above.  Nothing moved.  He took hold of the bottom of the loft ladder and shoved it upwards, hard.  It shot up into the space and fell into its place across the joists.  Then he slammed the hatch upwards.  The latch clicked loudly and the hatch stayed shut. 

He went downstairs again, and made a cup of tea and lit a cigarette to still his racing heart.  He stood at the kitchen door, smoking and looking up the stairs at the loft hatch, but it did not open.  No face stared down at him, no one pushed the ladder down and climbed down into his house.  Everything was still and quiet. 

Terry stayed at the kitchen door for a long time, perhaps an hour he thought, and nothing happened.  He began to feel very sleepy, and eventually gave in.  He went into the living room, put the gas fire on, and dragged the heavy sofa against the door for a barricade.  He laid the sofa cushions on the floor in front of the fire, and lay down.  Almost at once he was asleep. 

When he awoke, it took him several minutes to remember what he was doing on the floor downstairs instead of in his bed.  Then it came flooding back, the footsteps, the thunderous banging, and that dreadful, nonsensical voice right beside his ear, "Doo dah, doo dah day, sonny".  What did that mean, anyway, "doo dah, doo dah day"?  It was rubbish, that.  It was just gibberish, silly words that children might say. 

He listened for a long time, then pulled the sofa away from the door and peered out.  The morning sun shone through the glass above the front door, brightening the narrow hallway and illuminating the bottom half of the stairs.  Up above, the loft hatch stayed resolutely shut.  The house was silent except for the odd passing car.  He looked at his watch.  Seven o'clock, just about.  Time to be up and moving. 

He made more tea and drunk it, and then made toast and ate that in the kitchen, but eventually he couldn't put it off any longer.  He climbed the stairs, looking warily about him and with one eye on the loft hatch above.  His bedroom was silent, the bed clothes still half on the floor where he had left them.  He went to the bathroom and did what he usually did, then back to the bedroom and dressed for work. 

At a quarter to eight he opened the front door, took one more look up the stairs, and closed it firmly behind him.  He crossed the road and stared at his own roof.  There were no holes, no tiles out of place.  Everything looked normal.  Feeling sheepish, as though he had acted like a coward, he started to walk to work. ' I wasn't a coward, though,' he thought. ' I went up there, didn't I?  It was surprise, that's all, I fell down the ladder because he surprised me.  It wasn't because I was scared.' 

That evening after work he opened the front door and listened.  Then he went inside, but left the door open.  Nothing moved, he could see nothing out of place, and there was no sound save the swishing of tyres from the road.  He went out again, closing the door behind him, and went round to the house next door. 

Terry's next-door neighbour was an older man, a factory worker like himself, but one of those dour, grumpy men who seldom smile or even acknowledge those around them.  He answered the door in his shirt-sleeves and braces, holding a piece of bread and butter in one hand. 

"Yes?"  he said, scowling. 

"Mr.Satterthwaite, sorry to interrupt your tea," said Terry. 

"I was wondering ... were you in the loft last night?" 

"Last night?  When last night?" 

"Oh, late.  After midnight, I should think." 

"What the hell would I be doing in the loft at midnight?  What are you going on about?" 

"Did you hear any noises, then?  Anything unusual at all?" 

"No, I didn't.  Is there anything else you want, or can I go back in?  The news is coming on." 

The door closed in Terry's face. 

That night he took the big carving knife to bed with him, and the torch.  He put the torch by the bed, and the knife under his pillow.  He lay awake for a long time, waiting for the noises to start, but they didn't, and eventually sleep overcame him. 

Whether he actually woke during the night, or if he simply dreamed that he had woken, he wasn't sure.  But when the alarm went off the next morning he had a distinct memory of hearing the footsteps again, and then the sound of the hatch falling open and the loft ladder sliding down.  He had grabbed the knife and held it out towards the bedroom door, waiting for it to open and the light to stream in, for he had left the hall light and the landing light on all night.  But the door didn't open.  Instead the footsteps had gone down the stairs, and came up again a few minutes later. 

That was all he remembered.  It would hardly be surprising, would it, if he had dreamed something like that, not after the fright he'd had?  And when he got up and dressed and went downstairs, there was nothing out of place.  The house was exactly as he left it.  He wasn't the tidiest person, true, but he did his best, and it all looked neat enough. 

He left for work, his mind resolute.  There was only one thing to do, and that was to go up in the loft again.  He didn't want to, but it was the obvious thing, and he had to do it.  He wondered if he should try and recruit one or two of his work mates to come with him, but how would he explain it? ' I want to go up in the loft but I'm scared because there's a nasty man up there, so would you come with me?' 

Oh yes, that would go down very well, that would.  He'd never hear the last of it.  No, this was something he must do for himself. 

On his way home he went into a hardware shop and bought one of those torches with a strap to go round your head and leave your hands free.  It had lots of those bright little LED bulbs in front, and gave a brilliant white light.  Then he walked straight home, took the big knife from the kitchen and put the torch on his head, climbed the stairs and without stopping to think, opened the loft hatch and pulled the ladder down.  Up he climbed, the knife held in his right hand ready, the torch casting bright light wherever he looked.  As his head rose above the level of the hatch he swept the knife round him, slashing viciously at the darkness.  He kept climbing and stepped out onto the joists, glaring round, daring anyone to be there. 

The loft was empty.  Just the carpets, and the boxes and the pram.  He quartered the entire loft, looked in every box and into the pram, and prodded the carpets with his knife.  There was nothing.  There was no one here. 

Feeling pleased with himself, not just because he had found nothing but because he had mastered his fear so well, he closed up and went downstairs.  In the kitchen he heated a ready-meal as a treat for himself, and had two cans of beer and several cigarettes, and watched the television until bed time.  Then he locked the back door, turned the lights out and went upstairs with a light heart. 

This time he did not dream it.  He pinched himself to make sure he was awake, and lay listening.  The footsteps were making their way down the stairs, and he heard that peculiar creak the kitchen door made.  He did nothing, just listened in the dark, almost forgetting to breathe.  There were some other noises down there, indistinct, but perhaps the sound of a cupboard door closing, and a clink of crockery, then the heavy tread up the stairs again, the creak of the loft ladder, and the soft swish as the ladder was withdrawn and the click of the hatch closing.  Then nothing. 

Terry put his new torch on, and took the knife, and went down to investigate.  If this person had been raiding his kitchen ... well, he didn't know what he'd do, but he had a bloody big knife.  But the kitchen was undisturbed, and so far as he could see nothing was missing.  He paused there, thinking.  Either he could repeat his earlier exercise, rushing up the ladder and leading with his knife, or he could do nothing. 

He did nothing.  He reasoned to himself that nothing was missing, nothing was disturbed, so nothing could have happened.  He knew the loft was empty.  He must have imagined it – who knew what tricks the mind could play? 

So began a pattern that lasted for several nights.  He certainly heard, or dreamed that he heard, the footsteps overhead, and he certainly heard or dreamed that whoever it was, the man, went downstairs and walked about.  But there was never any sign of disturbance. 

"The house is haunted," he said to himself. " That's all there is to it.  It's haunted.  Live with it.  It's not done me any harm."  But he kept the knife under his pillow all the same. 

The change took him by surprise.  He had been to the Carpenters' Arms for the evening with some of his mates from work, and when he got home and opened the door of the living room, a man was sitting in the armchair by the gas fire.  Terry pulled the door shut again with a bang.  Then he opened it again, slowly, and peered in.  The man was still there, his legs spread out towards the gas fire which was turned on.  He was a big man, but he didn't seem to be a threat.  Terry opened the door all the way, and stood in the gap and looked. 

The man was bulky and tall, taller than Terry and much heavier.  His legs were thick, and his feet in big working boots were enormous.  His barrel chest hung over his belt, and his muscular forearms lay on the arms of the chair.  He looked completely relaxed.  His head was round, and large, the grey hair unkempt and the face coarse and fleshy, a shapeless nose and broad cheeks with several days' stubble.  The mouth was thick-lipped and hung slightly open. 

"Who are you?"  Terry said, "and what are you doing in my house?" 

The man took no notice.  His lips did not move, and his eyes remained staring contentedly into the distance. 

"Look, don't bloody ignore me!  This is my house, and you can't just walk in and make yourself at home.  I want you out, you hear?" 

The man did not move.  It was as though he was in a very slightly different world to this one, just a tiny shift sideways so that although you could see him clear enough, the other senses just didn't connect.  For instance, he did not smell.  He looked like the rough kind of man who would probably have a strong body odour and might not wash quite as often as he should, but Terry could smell nothing. 

Terry wondered what would happen if he walked over and kicked one of the man's feet, for instance, but his courage failed him.  For a start, the man was twice his size.  And Terry already knew he had a temper – hadn't that great barrage of blows on the ceiling showed it? 

He withdrew, closing the door behind him.  He shut himself in the kitchen and smoked nervously, wondering what to do.  Then it came to him – he should phone the police. ' There's a man in my house, and I don't know who he is or what he's doing there, and he won't leave.'  Yes, that should do it. 

Before he phoned, Terry went back to living room just to check that nothing had changed, but it had.  The chair was empty, and the fire was off.  The man had gone.  Up the stairs, the landing was empty and the loft hatch securely closed. 

Terry went to the pictures the following evening, a pizza straight from work, then the film, then a quick pint on his own in the Carpenters'.  While he sat at the bar, Lean Hilda came in.  Lean Hilda was a well-known fixture at the Carpenters', frequently to be seen propping up one end of the bar, drinking a succession of rum and blackcurrants.  She was skinny and black-haired, and usually dressed in black as well, black tights and a tiny black skirt, with lots of jewelry.  She had a sharp, pale face and studs in her eyebrows and nose.  She could be found there most nights, accepting drinks from anyone who offered, and would occasionally go home with someone.  So far as Terry knew, no money changed hands.  In fact, he had once taken her home himself.  It had been a fairly dismal experience, but she had been willing enough, and noisy too.  In the morning she had looked at least ten years older, and twenty years older than he did. 

Terry bought Lean Hilda two rum and blacks for old time's sake, and then went home.  When he got in, the man was sitting beside the fire again, smiling lazily.  He looked content, Terry thought, yes, 'content' was the word. 

"You still here, then?"  Terry said.  The man took no notice, but just sat and smiled into the distance. " Well, I'm putting the kettle on.  Do you want one?" 

Still no reply.  Terry, amazed at how calm he felt, made two mugs of tea.  He carried them to the living room, put one on the low table beside the fire, and sat with his own mug on the sofa.  He turned the television on, but sat so that he could keep an eye on the man as well.  The man made no movement, and after ten minutes or so Terry got up and went to the kitchen for his cigarettes.  When he got back, the man was gone.  And the mug was empty. 

The following night Terry went straight home.  The chair by the fire was empty, but by the time he had cooked some supper in the kitchen, his guest was back again, still smiling.  Terry ate calmly on the sofa, then made tea for them both.  He watched the television, and when he got up to go to bed the man was still there, and so was the tea.  He closed the door behind him, and went up.  In the bathroom he looked at himself in the mirror. ' God, you're putting on weight,' he said to himself, 'getting quite porky round the middle.  And for Christ's sake,' peering harder at the mirror, 'is that a grey hair?  You need to shape up, mate!' 

As he went back to the bedroom he heard a noise from downstairs, and looked quickly over the banisters.  He had never seen the man moving.  The doors were still closed, but he thought there was movement in the kitchen.  He crept down and quietly opened the living room door.  The fire was out and the mug was empty again.  Moving to the kitchen door, he opened it a crack.  There was no one there. 

He went to bed.  As he lay, half asleep, there were quiet footsteps over his head.  It was almost as though the man was trying to be considerate, he thought.  Thank the Lord for that.  He scratched at a sudden itch on his chest, and wondered at how hairy he was getting.  He hadn't noticed before.  His eyes closed. 

He obviously didn't sleep well, for when he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror the next morning his face looked puffy, and his eyes bleary.  He cleaned his teeth, feeling his mouth dry and foul.  His lips felt rubbery, and his nose was bunged up.  He peered at himself, and hardly recognised the face that looked back at him.  When he dressed, his t-shirt was tighter than usual.  He was gaining weight.  It must be the beer, he thought, and perhaps he should cut back on the ready-meals, eat more greens and stuff.  Not a cheerful thought to start the morning as he closed the front door behind him. 

On the way home from work that evening he called at the police station. " Something living in your loft?"  said the plump sergeant behind the desk. " Well, you can't have that, can you?  When you say 'something', what do you mean?  Rats?  Squirrels?" 

"No.  A man." 

"Goodness.  Well, you want to get rid of 'im, that's what you want to do.  Immigrant, is 'e?" 

"I don't think so.  He looks like a workman.  How do I get rid of him?  Can't you do it for me?  Can't you send someone?" 

"Oh no, sir, 'fraid not.  It's a civil matter, see.  You got a squatter. ' E's got no right to be there, but it's not a criminal matter so we can't intervene.  Squatters 'ave to be dealt with by due course of civil law.  I suggest you consult a solicitor." 

"But isn't he trespassing?  It's my house!" 

"Yes, he is, but it's private property.  If 'e was making a nuisance of 'imself in the street, we could deal with it.  But on private property, you need to get a court order telling 'im to move.  You go to a solicitor, sir." 

Terry was dismayed. " Oh, right.  Well ..."

"Of course, sir, I should warn you ... what you mustn't do, is use force.  If you evict someone by force, that's assault.  And assault definitely is a criminal offence.  We'd have to arrest you." 

"Arrest me for chucking someone out of my own house?" 

"'Fraid so, sir.  That's what the law says, whether we like it or not." 

At home the man sat by the fire again, still smiling distantly. 

"I went to the police about you," Terry said. " They won't come and chuck you out, I have to go to a solicitor." 

The man sat, and smiled.  The gas fire hissed.  Terry no longer felt afraid of him.  He was becoming familiar, and even seemed to have shrunk as the memory of his massive anger faded, no longer quite so barrel-chested, and the arms along the chair sides less muscular and threatening. 

"I will, you know," Terry said, "go to a solicitor.  I'll get a court order, and the bailiffs'll come and kick you out.  This is my house, and you weren't invited." 

He rose and went to get himself some supper.  He cooked bacon and eggs, and thought about fried bread but looked down at his taut waistline and made toast instead.  Then he put the kettle on and made tea.  Just because the man was uninvited, there was no point in being churlish.  He put only one spoonful of sugar in it.  His jeans felt tight, he would have to go shopping at the weekend. 

As he lay in bed that night, listening to the darkness and waiting for the footsteps overhead, he heard the front door opening and closing, and the sound of voices in the hall. 

Indignant at this new development, he got up, pulled his jeans on with some difficulty, and crept down the stairs.  The living room door was open a few inches, and he peered in. 

The fire was hissing cheerfully, and in front of it on the sofa – his sofa – sat the man.  Beside him was Lean Hilda, smoking a cigarette and stretching her skinny legs out.  Her eyes looked vague as though she had drunk a great many rum and blacks that night, but she was smiling and talking in a low voice.  Terry couldn't make out what she was saying, but there was a murmur as the man replied.  For once he was not sitting and smiling and saying nothing, but was behaving like a normal person, leaning towards Lean Hilda, one thin hand on her thin arm, stroking it. 

Terry was furious.  He wondered whether to burst in, shouting.  Surely this time the man must take notice?  And now he had a witness, Lean Hilda – she could see the man, she could hear him talking, she must even be feeling his touch on her arm.  He peered in again, and this time the hand was on her thigh, stroking up and down.  She didn't seem to mind. 

But anyway, what sort of witness would Lean Hilda be?  Everyone knew her for a lush, she spent half her nights off her face, and she would famously spread her legs for anyone with a good line in chat and the cash for a few drinks.  Whatever she said, no one would take any notice. 

He went to the kitchen, and smoked a cigarette sitting at the kitchen table.  Then he heard the door of the living room open, and feet on the stairs, and a muffled laugh.  The man was taking Lean Hilda upstairs.  But there was only one room with a bed up there – his own room.  Surely ...? 

He waited a few more minutes, smoking and fidgeting, then stubbed his cigarette out and walked firmly up the hall.  He climbed the stairs two at a time, and opened his bedroom door.  Lean Hilda's skinny bare legs were waving in the air, and between them the man's buttocks rose and fell.  The pale body on top of Hilda's own pale body was not so massive after all, quite slim in fact, but it was certainly doing the business.  Hilda grunted with each thrust, and in between wailed in a voice that Terry remembered from his own time with her.  Her skinny arms were wrapped round the man's shoulders and her feet bobbed.  She still had her boots on. 

Rage overwhelmed Terry.  It was bad enough that they were there, doing it on his bed.  But that she should be on his clean sheets with her filthy boots, that was the final straw.  It was time to put up a fight, and a fight was what they were going to get. 

He leaped up and pushed the loft hatch, unclicking the latch so the door swung down.  He grabbed the rope and pulled it gently so the ladder slid down, ran up it, clambered onto the joists, and then quietly pulled the ladder up and reached down to close the hatch.  Surprise, he thought, that's what we need, surprise.  Something to shock them out of their rutting in his bed. 

He crept across the joists till he judged he was right over their heads, bent his legs and began to jump up and down, raising his feet high, stamping on the joists as hard as he could.  It made a satisfyingly loud noise, and he was aware that the sounds of lust below him had stopped.  Then the bedroom door burst open and footsteps clattered down the stairs, and the front door opened and shut.  Lean Hilda, presumably, scared out of what remained of her wits.  Terry thundered on, shouting and raging and not bothering whether his feet hit the joists or the thin plasterboard in between.  It was his ceiling, it was his plasterboard, he would put his feet through it if he wanted.  He jumped and jumped, and then suddenly stopped and stood still, breathing heavily and feeling good. 

There was a small noise as the loft hatch was unclicked from below.  An unseen hand pulled the ladder down, and the rungs creaked slightly as someone climbed.  Terry moved softly towards the opening.  A head appeared, tentatively, and swivelled round, looking.  Then it rose another step, and peered again. 

Terry planted his great legs one either side of the trap door, rested his massive hairy forearms on his knees, and put his mouth close to the head's ear.  Putting on his best Scottish accent he said in a deep voice "Doo dah, doo dah day, sonny!" 

With a squawk of shock the man tumbled down the steps, and Terry pulled up the ladder and slammed the trap shut.  Then he leapt up and down on the joists a few more times for good measure, his great feet thundering and the house shaking as though the ceiling would fall through.  Then he stopped and went over to the makeshift bed of old carpet remnants in the corner of the attic, and lay down. 

"Doo dah, doo dah day!"  he whispered to himself, smiling. " That's the stuff to give 'em, doo dah, doo dah bloody day!" 

# Daisy-Jane and Lip-Lip

These days the A11 is a dual carriageway that carves its way through the flat Norfolk countryside, heavy with supermarket lorries and the hurrying cars of businessmen with appointments in Norwich. 

Thirty years ago, though still busy, it did not swoop above the fields on flyovers or burrow through cuttings.  Then, it was an ordinary road past houses and farms.  In the summer the Cortinas and Marinas and other cars with foreign names ground slowly, nose to tail, and clogged the villages and towns on the way to the beaches at Hunstanton and Cromer. 

A couple of miles north of Attleborough, between the main road and the railway, a house stood behind a high brick wall.  It was a spacious, foursquare brick building with neat columns either side of the front door and the same number of windows on either side.  Despite the sunshine it seemed a sad house.  Behind it lay a large bedraggled garden stretching to the fence at the foot of the railway embankment, and near the front gate was an outhouse with fading double green doors.  Today it would be a garage, but when it was built it would have been called a coach-house.  Above it was a loft, and over the double doors a little window was festooned with cobwebs and dead moths, long desiccated. 

On the way to the coast on a baking summer morning, the kids bickering in the back and the wife fractious in the front, as one nursed the clutch and watched the temperature gauge while the traffic crawled beside the brick wall, one could see that dark window.  Behind the dirty glass were two tiny chairs, and in the chairs were propped a doll in a grubby frock, and a large toy rabbit with floppy ears and yellow check trousers.  Somehow one knew that they had been there for many years, forgotten by a child long-gone or long-grown, left to keep a patient vigil over the narrow front garden and the hot sun winking off the roofs of the cars. 

Another thirty years before that, the cars were few and far between.  Hitler's War raged in Europe, many of the men were gone away, and even those who could afford a car had little petrol.  Between military convoys the dusty road slept in the sun and bright flowers bloomed on the verges. 

The house was alive, then.  The garden was cared for, a cat drowsed on the front step and there was a fire in the kitchen even in summer.  In the garden behind the house, two children played.  They had laid a table with crockery and cutlery begged from their Aunt, and dragged old chairs from the coach-house so their toys could have a tea-party.  From her deckchair Nanny Abbs alternately watched and dozed while Peggy poured water from an old teapot and fussed over her guests who had a distressing tendency to slip sideways. 

"Oh, Lip-Lip," she scolded, "you naughty boy - your ears are in the jam!  Alec, smack him, he's naughty". 

Her brother, older by two years, good-naturedly chastised the floppy rabbit and settled him on his chair again.  He was a kind, patient child and plainly adored his little sister. 

The other toy, the doll Daisy-Jane in her gingham dress, looked on with a bored expression.  Because her legs could be pulled apart she didn't fall off the chair so often. 

"You got to have some tea too," Peggy offered, and her brother took the cup and drank. 

"Lovely!"  he said. " Have we got sandwiches?" 

"Of course we have, silly.  This is a picnic, isn't it?  We've got mus'n'cress an' jam".  She handed him an empty plate. " You have to eat mus'n'cress 'cos Daisy-Jane don't like 'em". 

"Listen!"  said Alec, straightening in his chair.  From the road came the distant sound of engines. " Mericans!" 

His sister clapped her hands and crooned to Daisy-Jane in a baby voice, "Mericans comin'!  Mericans comin'!" 

She grabbed Lip-Lip with one hand and her brother by the other, and they rushed round the side of the house.  As they reached the front gate and clambered onto the second bar, the deep roar of engines approached.  Up the road came great high-wheeled lorries, led by a jeep with a white star on the door. 

"Wave, Peggy!"  said Alec.  As the lorries passed, grinning faces looked out at them.  The men waved, and shouted things the children couldn't understand.  Some of the faces were black, and their grins were the biggest of all.  The lorries were on their way to one of the airfields, Deopham or Hethel or Shipdham, where the big bombers were.  To the children it was as if the gods swept past in triumph. 

Later that summer some Mericans came to the house.  The children's father was away at the war, which was why they'd come to live with Auntie May and Nanny Abbs, but their idea of what he was doing was hazy.  Alec imagined him riding a horse, with scarlet banners.  Peggy thought he was probably being very kind to all the poor soldiers who had hurt themselves.  Aunty May said he was a sergeant, but the children thought that was unlikely as they knew a sergeant in Attleborough.  He had a policeman's helmet and rode a bike very slowly.  He was fat, and rather old.  They didn't remember their father like that at all. 

The Mericans who came to the house were young, and loud, and laughed a lot, throwing their heads back and putting their feet up on the furniture.  At first the children liked it when they came, because it made Aunty May happy, but Peggy liked it less when one of them picked her up and threw her into the air. 

"Leave my sister alone," Alec said. " You're not our Daddy". 

The Merican just grinned and tousled Alec's hair. " Feisty lil' pup, ain't he?"  he said, and the others laughed.  Alec took Peggy into the coach-house, and they went up the wooden ladder into their loft. 

The loft was a special place, and it was theirs.  No one else came here.  The window at one end looked out across the front of the house, and you could see down the road a long way.  Inside the air was hot and heavy and fragrant from the apples that someone had stored in rows on the shelves and forgotten about, so that they had become mummified and wrinkled.  Here the children kept their private things – pretty bottles they found at the foot of the railway embankment, some favourite books, a matchbox full of hedgehog prickles, a shoe-box of conkers from the churchyard.  Here were boxes of crockery and ornaments banished from the house, here suitcases full of old clothes and curtains which could be plundered for dressing-up, there pictures of sepia and fly-speck, an ancient stag's head, two violins without strings, hundreds of empty jam-jars and the front wheels of three bicycles.  Here Daisy-Jane and Lip-Lip lived when they weren't required for playing with, one at each end of an enormous old sofa made of saggy red velvet.  In the middle a spring had burst through, but the ends were

comfortable enough. 

This sofa played an important role in the children's lives, especially when it rained.  This sofa was the pirate ship they sailed to far-off islands, the bus in which they rode with the Queen and the little princesses, the horse that carried them to battle and the enormous royal bed Alec died in when he had been honourably defeated, while his sister mopped his brow with Daisy-Jane's handkerchief and wept real tears so that he soon had to resurrect himself and cuddle her to make her stop crying.  It was on this sofa that, late in the drowsy afternoon when outdoor things had tired them, Alec would read to Peggy while she lay with her head in his lap and dandled Daisy-Jane or Lip-Lip.  It was here he sat and counted marbles while she took off all her clothes and danced naked in the slanting sunbeams.  It was a marvellous sofa, and a good retreat from daunting Mericans. 

As the summer wore on and the bombers flew over the house every day, the Mericans came more often.  Aunty May made them tea and sandwiches, and they played ball on the lawn and tried to get Aunty May to dance with them.  She didn't seem to mind, and laughed a lot, but Nanny Abbs was quiet when they came and soon went to her room.  The most frequent visitor was called Arnie.  He was tall, and had a wide mouth with rather more teeth than everyone else. 

He liked Peggy to sit on his knee, but she would wriggle and run away to find Alec.  Then they would sneak through the fence at the bottom of the garden.  There was a secret tunnel in the bushes where the cats and rabbits made their way along the railway line.  Beyond the bushes was the long grass of the embankment, full of nodding fireweed, and at the top was the railway itself. 

The children were used to the trains, for several passed every day.  They knew the difference between the black goods engines, which went slowly and clanked, and left thick strands of smelly smoke behind them, and the passenger engines which could be heard whistling as they passed through Attleborough station in the distance, and rushed by with long trains of teak-coloured carriages full of troops.  If you waited until the train had passed, you could hear the hot steel rails singing to themselves, and smell the creosote of the wooden sleepers.  On the far side of the double track the embankment fell away again, and beyond that was a wood where pheasants clattered. 

Nanny Abbs was a taciturn but kindly old lady who had grown up on a farm ten miles away near Watton.  When Aunty May went out with Arnie to a dance at the airbase, it was Nanny Abbs who looked after them, gave them their tea of bread-and-marge and an unrationed boiled egg from the old man down the road, and saw them off to bed in the lofty room they shared at the top of the house. 

One day they got up for breakfast and Aunty May wasn't there.  When they asked Nanny Abbs where she was, Nanny said nothing but made them eat up their porridge.  Then she sent them out to play and went to her room. 

Without discussing what game they would play, Alec and Peggy went to the railway fence and crawled through the hole.  Under the bushes it smelt damp and airless, so they fought their way out and up the embankment.  They had heard the morning goods train clank past during breakfast, so the line was quiet as they scurried across, being careful not to touch the high steel rails.  Down the other side and into the trees, they held hands and panted with their own temerity. 

They spent the morning happily exploring the wood and following the course of the little stream that ran through it.  Little blue flowers grew in the water.  They gave names to each place.  A deep defile between the tree roots where the stream rushed beneath sparkling ferns was Daisy-Jane Gorge, and the sandy, shallow place where it broadened out and ran over beds of watercress became The Crocodile Pond.  As lunch-time approached and they grew hungry, they made their way back towards the railway. 

"Will a train come?"  Peggy asked. 

"Yes.  But if we wait until it's passed, it'll be safe to cross.  They never come two at once.  And we can look at the signals." 

They crept up the embankment and lay in the long grass where the ballast began.  They could hear the rails singing quietly to themselves, and presently the signal-wire on its rollers like big cotton-reels twitched and shook, and the signal thirty yards away clanked and pointed upwards. 

"That means there's a train coming," Alec told his sister. 

"Listen, you can hear it now." 

"Can't hear nothin'," she said. " Oh yes, I can now.  It's like dragons". 

And it was like dragons, indeed.  First there was a bloom of white smoke above the cutting where it curved away to the north, then a distant chuff-chuff which came and went as the wind blew.  Now the rails began to sing more loudly.  The children wriggled lower into the grass.  Beneath the pall of smoke and steam they could see the front of the engine.  It was a black one – a goods train, the engine working hard to bully its load of coal wagons up the slight gradient. 

"It'll hurt us.  Don't let it hurt us," Peggy implored.  Alec held her hand, and told her it couldn't get them, and she relaxed.  Her faith in her brother was total, but she still screamed as the panting locomotive reached them in a storm of steam and squealing wheels.  Raising his head Alec could see the rails bend beneath its weight, and then it was past.  The clack-clack, clack-clack of the wagons seemed to go on for ever.  Alec counted over forty wagons.  At last the brake van slid past, and as Alec got up he could see the guard leaning comfortably on the rear verandah, smoking. 

Down the line the signal clanked down again so that another train couldn't come.  Alec pulled his sister to her feet and they scampered across the tracks and down the opposite bank for their lunch.  In the afternoon they played in their loft, and Alec took pencil and paper and drew a map of the stream, and wrote the names in.  Aunty May came home at tea-time, but didn't want to talk.  After tea they went into the garden and watched the bombers flying overhead.  They thought that Arnie might be in one of the planes.  Perhaps he was waving, but it was too high up to see. 

The next morning it rained, and Aunty May went out again with Arnie in a jeep.  The children waved her off from the gate, and then went up to the loft to play.  After a while Peggy said she was tired and wanted a cuddle, and they both fell asleep on the sofa until Nanny Abbs called them for their lunch. 

After lunch they escaped through the fence again, climbing the embankment with difficulty because the grass was wet and slippy.  There were no trains in sight so they crossed the tracks and descended into the wood.  The stream was swollen, but the sun came out hot and glittering and steam rose from the leaves.  Peggy paddled in the crocodile pool and sang to herself while Alec listened to some small creature snouting through the leaf-mould but couldn't see it. 

When Peggy was bored with the pool she put her shoes and socks on again, and they went on to the further edge of the wood.  Here the fields began again, their dividing hedges heavy with leaves and young blackberries.  The corn was beginning to ripen, and they plucked the seed heads and tried to crack the hard seeds between their teeth.  Along the edge of the field they came to a wire fence, and beyond it a crouching nissen hut.  It wasn't an airbase because there were no bombers, but there was a Merican lorry which they knew by the white star.  Nothing moved, but high in the blue sky there were white trails of aeroplanes very high up, tangled in knots and circles. 

"P'raps this is where Aunty May comes?"  said Peggy. " With Arnie?" 

Alec said "I don't think so.  He has a jeep, not a lorry.  And he lives where the bombers are.  I expect this is just somewhere they keep things." 

"What things?" 

"Bits to mend the bombers with, I 'spect." 

Peggy thought about this. " How can a bomber break?"  she mused. " They're big.  Bigger'n an engine, even.  Only little things break". 

"It's the Germans.  They shoot at the bombers, and bits break off.  Then they mend them when they get home". 

They walked along the fence and came to a narrow road between tall hedges.  There were still puddles along the side of the road, and a lot of water in the ditch. 

"Where's Father?"  asked Peggy. " Does he shoot at the Germans?" 

"I don't know". 

"But, but," she turned to him and pulled at his hand, "but, he's got a gun, hasn't he?  To shoot the Germans with?" 

Alec felt miserable, suddenly. " I don't know," he muttered.  His father hadn't been to see them for a long time.  Neither of them could remember the last time they had seen him.  Alec had a picture of someone tall and red-faced, in a khaki uniform. 

Peggy looked at him, knowing his mood without being told.  She put her arms round him and said "Don't be sad.  Father's got a gun, and when the Germans try to shoot him, he'll shoot them first.  He's big."  She reached up and kissed him on the cheek. " He's bigger'n the Germans.  I 'spect they've only got little guns".  She kissed him again on the other cheek. " Peggy'll look after you". 

He laughed. " I'm s'posed to look after you," he said. 

"We'll look after each other," she said confidently. " Listen, train comin'!  Let's go an' see!" 

They ran down the lane.  Shortly it met another lane which led under a narrow archway beneath the railway.  They slipped through the fence and climbed the embankment until their heads were level with the tracks.  The rails sang, and they could hear the steady beat of an approaching train moving quickly.  With a roar it was upon them in a rage of steam and hammering steel.  The great wheels only feet from their faces were exhilarating, and they laughed for joy as the coaches went clack-clack, clack-clack into the distance towards London. 

This was not the right place to cross.  Their fence was a quarter of a mile down the line, so they walked along the sleepers.  Alec balanced on the rail like a tight-rope walker with his arms outstretched.  It was easy.  He knew they would hear if a train came.  The top of the rail was hot, even through his sandals. 

"Listen!"  he said, stopping. 

"Is it a train?"  asked Peggy.  There was a low grumbling sound.  Alec looked anxiously up and down the line. 

"No, I don't think so," he said.  The rumbling grew louder, coming from the direction of the cutting.  He reached for Peggy's hand, poised for flight.  Suddenly over the hedge at the top of the cutting, shockingly near and shockingly loud, it burst upon them – a great silver plane, screaming in agony, black smoke pouring behind it, its great wheels spinning.  It was flying almost along the railway line, and the noise seemed to press them down into the ballast as it passed overhead.  In a moment it was gone and its anguish became a drone, fading away to the north. 

The children took to their heels and ran helter-skelter along the track, then tumbled and skidded down the slope and through the fence, not stopping until they could scramble up the ladder and throw themselves into the safety of their sofa.  Then they giggled helplessly with relief and excitement, clutching each other until the tears came. 

As the summer wore on and the corn ripened in the fields, two bomb-shells dropped.  The first was when Aunty May called them into the kitchen.  She was often not at home these days, but this evening she sat with them at the kitchen table and told them their father was not coming back. 

Alec sat numbly and wondered why he didn't feel anything.  He knew that this news ought to be shattering, and that he should feel sad, but he felt nothing.  Peggy slipped off her chair and sidled round to stand beside him, so he put his arm round her waist.  She was looking at him, wanting to see what her own reaction should be, but he felt nothing. 

Aunty May sat, staring at the wall.  He wondered if she wanted to say anything else, and thought perhaps he ought to try to cry.  But if he did, Peggy would cry too, not because she was sad about her father but because of him.  After a while, as Aunty May didn't move or say anything else, the children slipped quietly from the room and went to bed.  As he lay on his back and stared at the squares of the window waiting for the light to fade and the stars to appear, Alec heard the familiar sound of a jeep pulling up in the road outside, and Aunty May's footsteps in the gravel as she left the house. 

For Peggy the second bombshell was a far greater shock.  When school began again in September, instead of going with her to the village school, Alec had to go to big school in Attleborough on the bus.  And he'd have to go all day, not just in the mornings like Peggy because of the Vacuees.  The Vacuees were children from London who had come to the country because of bombs.  The village school was not very big so the local children went in the morning and the 'vacuees went in the afternoon.  People thought that half an education was better than none at all, especially in a war.  The children didn't complain. 

The big school in Attleborough had plenty of room, so Alec would stay all day and get a whole education. 

"Why?"  she demanded when Nanny Abbs told them. " Why does he have to go?  He knows everything already." 

"Everyone has to go to big school," Nanny said. " You'll go too, in a couple of years." 

"Why can't I go now?  I want to go with Alec". 

"You can't, dear.  You have to wait.  It won't be long, you see." 

The last week before school began, the children made a point of revisiting all their haunts and playing all their games just one more time.  They crossed the railway line and explored the stream again, they roamed far and wide across the fields, they ran down the narrow lanes, they lay in the grass by the bridge as the trains thundered a few feet away.  In their loft they got out every toy and played every game, they took the sofa on every last voyage, and Peggy lay with her head in Alec's lap as he read to her from every book they had ever enjoyed. 

On the first morning of term Peggy fought back the tears as she watched Alec depart.  The bus stopped for him right outside their gate, and he climbed up the step in his new jacket, carrying a bright new satchel with sandwiches in it.  She ran up the ladder and watched the roof of the bus until it disappeared into the distance.  Then it was time for her to set off by herself.  She didn't have a satchel, just a biscuit for playtime in the coat pocket.  She let herself out of the gate and walked along the road before turning left down the lane towards the village.  Walking alone, she felt empty and thought she might cry, but an old lady smiled at her from the door of a cottage, and she felt better. 

School was just the same as she remembered, and because they'd always been in different classes she didn't miss Alec until it was time to go home at lunchtime.  Playtime was difficult.  Normally she would have run straight out to find Alec, and stay with him until the teacher came out and rang the bell.  Today she sat by herself and ate her biscuit until two other girls came and said she could play with them. 

When she got home Nanny Abbs gave her bread-an'-marge and an apple for lunch, and then it was time to think about Alec's return.  Big school ended at half past three, and the bus took twenty minutes to reach their door, but by three o'clock Peggy was watching and waiting at the loft window for her first glimpse of the bus.  She had carried up from the coach-house two tiny chairs Arnie had made from scraps of wood at the airbase.  Arnie had meant them for the toys' picnics.  It had been a kind gesture, but had not been a success with the children.  They thanked him nicely, but Peggy still wouldn't sit on his lap, and neither of them would call him "Uncle Arnie" as he would have liked. 

Peggy arranged the two little chairs on the window-sill, and sat Daisy-Jane and Lip-Lip in them. " There," she said, "you watch out for Alec.  You'll see the bus coming soon." 

Lip-Lip suddenly slipped sideways and fell to the floor. " Oh, for goodness' sake," she scolded, "can't you sit still f'r a minute?"  and wedged him more securely into place. 

Outside the sun shone in the west, lighting the corn where the wind made shifting patterns.  Peggy pulled up an old tea-chest and sat behind the toys.  The dusty road stretched into the distance towards Attleborough where Alec was.  Away to the left she could just make out the roof of the village school, where another forty children were having their lessons.  She wondered if they had the same books and the same teacher as her, or if the teachers took turns as well.  A jeep came past with two black men in it, but they didn't stop.  Some of the Mericans who had come to the house had been black men.  Peggy had liked their big smiles and white teeth, but couldn't understand what they said to her. 

A sudden flash in the sky told where one of the great Merican bombers was circling high up, the sun catching its wings.  In the loft it was quiet, the dust-motes sifting through the sunlight and a drunken fly butting against the glass.  Peggy watched the road, smelling apples.  The tea-chest had splinters which dug into her bare legs, so she fetched an old cushion and made herself more comfortable.  Daisy-Jane's gingham dress, sewn by her mother years before, was tattered and grass-stained.  Their mother had been gone a long time.  For as long as Peggy could remember there had only been their father, and Peggy's memory of him was fading as well.  She found a handkerchief in one of the suitcases, and tied it round the doll's shoulders for a shawl. 

"Bus comin'," she whispered in Daisy-Jane's ear, "bus comin'!" 

The fly butted the window, not really caring whether it got out or not.  Lip-Lip's glass button eyes stared down the road, and Peggy sat patiently on her cushion.  Nothing mattered but the bus. 

At last it appeared, crawling between the hedges and dragging a little plume of dust behind it.  She left the toys and rushed down the ladder to the gate.  The bus pulled up, and she could see a row of faces staring at her.  The other girls and boys knew who Alec was by now, but they didn't know about her.  The door opened, and Alec jumped down, looking just the same as he had in the morning.  She said nothing, but opened the gate, her heart full.  She was afraid she'd cry and the other children would see, so she kept back, holding the gate until the bus crashed its gears and ground away up the road. 

That was an exciting evening, that first one.  Peggy demanded a complete account of the day's events.  Obligingly Alec described the bus journey and his arrival at the school.  He accounted for every teacher, whose grimness made Peggy shudder deliciously, and every boy and girl in his class, all of them new like himself.  Some were Vacuees.  They had a strange accent.  Many of the local children already knew each other, but the Vacuees were quiet and aloof.  Alec and Peggy weren't Vacuees because they lived with Aunty May and Nanny Abbs, who were family of some distant sort. 

Alec described the playtimes, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and how the teacher blew a whistle at the end and you had to quickly get into the right line, and the lunch-hour when you had to sit on a form in the hall and eat your sandwiches.  Peggy was captivated by the idea of two playtimes.  She wanted to know everything, and would happily have listened to the details of every single lesson, but Alec had homework to do.  Also, although he didn't say it, he was worried that if he told Peggy everything he had learned at big school, she would know it all when it came to her turn, and would be bored.  Keeping Peggy happy was important to him.  If she wasn't happy, how could he be? 

Peggy stayed close to him while they ate their tea, and then watched raptly as he sat at the kitchen table and pulled out his homework books.  After some time watching him write and do sums, she ran to the loft and brought back her colouring book, and sat with him doing her own homework.  Afterwards there was time left for play, so they visited the wood again.  It seemed, under the circumstances, still wonderful and yet somehow smaller.  Alec thought that his map and the names they had invented were a little mundane and childish.  But he knew that to Peggy they were as fresh as ever, which made them just as important. 

As autumn progressed and the evenings began to draw in, this became their daily pattern.  Each morning Peggy would see him off, wanting desperately to hug and kiss him but knowing instinctively that she must not do so in sight of the bus.  She passed each afternoon after school feeling empty, but consoled by the knowledge of his return. 

Each evening she would watch with Daisy-Jane and Lip-Lip, reaching out with her mind and willing the bus to appear. " Bus comin'," she told them, "bus comin'!" 

This even tenor of their lives was seldom disturbed.  Aunty May now had a job at the airbase, so the Mericans stopped coming to the house except for Arnie.  Peggy found things to do in the loft, and even when it was too cold to spend the afternoon there she would still put on her Wellingtons and overcoat and join Daisy-Jane and Lip-Lip at the window when it was time for the bus. 

One awful evening the bus appeared and stopped as usual, but though Peggy was waiting with the gate open, Alec did not appear.  With a chill in her heart she saw the children looking at her as the bus coughed and gathered speed.  She went out into the road.  Nothing moved.  A thin wind eased across the fields and through the hedge, stirring her hair.  She pulled her coat around her and set off down the road towards Attleborough.  There was no-one to tell – Nanny Abbs was in her room and Aunty May would be at the airbase until after bedtime. 

Bleakly she trotted down the road, not daring to wonder what had happened to him.  Once a lorry came past and she stepped into the bushes, fearing the men might recognise her and take her home.  The dusk was well advanced, but the moon was already out.  The trees and bushes made sinister silhouettes on her right where the sky was lighter. 

Once, feeling tired, she sat down on a stone and allowed herself a few tears, but soon felt cold and carried on.  Foremost in her mind was the fact that she wasn't even quite sure where the school was.  No doubt she could find someone to ask.  But even when she found the school, she wouldn't know where to go.  And suppose she arrived to find the place in darkness, everyone having gone home hours ago? 

But no matter.  Alec was there, somewhere.  That was the only important thing.  Alec was there, and she had to find him. 

Just as it was getting truly dark and she was beginning to be frightened of the shadows, she heard footsteps ahead of her, and stopped.  It was Alec, trudging wearily with his satchel over his shoulder.  Weeping with relief she flew at him.  His class had been naughty, he said, and the teacher had kept them back so that he had missed the bus and had to walk all the way.  They linked arms and turned homewards, footsore and cold but happy.  That night at bedtime, Peggy did something she hadn't done for a long time, and crept into his bed.  Contentedly she fell asleep with his arm over her shoulder. 

One day in spring the bus appeared with hands waving at the windows.  Peggy leapt from her place at the window and dashed to the gate.  The war was over.  Hitler was defeated.  The world could get back to normal.  Peggy knew this was a good thing, but in a way it did not touch her.  For her, the world was normal already. 

But there was to be a consequence for her and Alec anyway.  The Mericans were going home.  Aunty May told them one morning as she left for work.  Her job would soon come to an end, and Arnie and the other boys would be flying their bombers back across the Atlantic.  The children thought this must be good news, but Aunty May didn't seem very happy with it.  Alec had already guessed that the days of the Mericans were numbered – at school the boys had talked of nothing else, mostly with sadness.  With no bombers in the sky, the world would be a duller place.  Alec thought they would have to pay more attention to the trains.  The railway would still be there, war or no war, and engines were nearly as interesting as bombers. 

He and Peggy recommenced their visits to the embankment and the wood beyond.  Down among the trees there were bluebells and yellow celandine, and on the embankment itself the foxgloves were out.  They greeted the stream as an old friend, but when they passed on through the wood they found that the nissen hut and its gates had been taken away, and there were no lorries there any more. 

When they got home for supper they found Nanny Abbs in tears, and Aunty May pale and determined. 

"Alec, Peggy, I've got something to tell you," she said.  Her voice sounded rough, as though she was forcing something out that she'd rather not talk about.  The children stood close together, and Peggy's small hand crept into Alec's.  This didn't sound good. 

"You know that the Americans are leaving, now that they've done their job," Aunty May went on. " Your Uncle Arnie's flying out tomorrow". 

Neither child dared point out that Arnie was not their uncle, and that they didn't want him to be.  Aunty May turned and looked pointedly at Nanny Abbs, who refused to meet her eye. 

"We," said Aunty May, moving her hand as though to embrace herself and the children, but not the old lady, "we are going to America as well.  In a couple of week's time, when I can get steamer tickets.  We're going to live with your Uncle Arnie in Utah".  She folded her arms on the table, as though to say that was that. 

"What about Nanny Abbs?"  asked Alec. 

"Nanny's staying here.  She doesn't want to come."  Nanny sniffed, and went to her room, slamming the door.  They heard her turn the radio on really loud. 

"Couldn't we stay here?"  asked Peggy. " Nanny could look after us". 

"Nanny's too old," said Aunty May. "God knows it's hard enough for me..."

"But...." began Peggy, but Aunty May cut her off. 

"There's no buts about it.  We're going, and that's all there is.  Now I've got to go to work.  Your supper's in the larder." 

The next day was Saturday, and Arnie was flying out.  They wondered if he would fly over the house, and wiggle his wings goodbye.  They had not discussed the move to Utah.  There was no need – both of them knew instinctively that this was a disaster, that they didn't want to go, and each knew the other felt the same.  Sometimes you didn't need words. 

Nanny Abbs was sad all the time, so in the afternoon Peggy said they should go to pick a bunch of bluebells to cheer her up.  There seemed to be more trains passing than usual at the weekend.  Alec said they were probably troop trains taking the Merican ground-crews away.  He said there were hundreds of airbases all over England, so there would have to be hundreds of trains to take the men home. 

They waited a long time until they were sure it was clear, and scampered quickly across and down into the wood.  Peggy wanted to paddle with the crocodiles, so Alec said he'd pick the bluebells.  By the time Peggy's feet were dry he'd gathered a big bunch, which he tied together with his shoelace.  As they climbed up the bank towards the railway, aircraft engines were droning towards them.  Emerging onto the ballast at the top, they could see a wedge of silver bombers flying low over the railway line towards them. 

"It's Arnie," cried Peggy, "I bet it's Arnie.  Do you think he'll waggle his wings?" 

The planes were really low, and the noise was overpowering.  The children danced and waved their arms.  Even though it was only Arnie who they didn't really like, it was quite something to know anybody in an aeroplane, and it would be even more of something if they waggled their wings. 

"Arnie, Arnie!"  they screamed, "Goodbye, waggle your wings, oh please, waggle your wings!",  and glory be, the leading plane with its great silver belly only just higher than the roof of a house did indeed tilt gracefully from one side to the other as it thundered overhead and the children jumped up and down feeling like the ancients when the gods ascended back to heaven and Alec turned just in time to see the train they hadn't heard sliding swiftly with its steam cut off down the gradient.  All Peggy could remember in that chaos of thunder and glory was the hand that shoved her off her feet and down the bank, tumbling head over foot in a shower of bluebells. 

The old woman found Peggy sitting mutely in the loft on a tea-chest by the window.  In front of her were Daisy-Jane and Lip-Lip, and round her feet were strewn dozens of bluebells.  Her face was blank, and there was blood on her dress. 

Aunty May did not go to Utah.  She stayed at home, and got a job in Attleborough in the shoe-shop. 

Every morning Peggy would come down stairs and ask bleakly "Where's Alec?" 

When they explained, she would nod wanly, and go out to the coach-house.  When Nanny Abbs went to see her off to school, struggling gamely up the steep ladder, Peggy would most often be found sitting quietly in a corner of the sofa holding Daisy-Jane or Lip-Lip or sometimes both, not doing anything but stare into the shadows.  At three each afternoon she would take her place at the window, placing the toys in their little chairs, and watch for the bus. 

After the bus had been, she would go into the house and quietly eat her tea and go to bed.  In the morning she would ask again, "Where's Alec?" 

In due course it came time to send her to big school in Attleborough.  She expressed no opinion about this, but quietly put her sandwiches into her satchel – Alec's satchel, now hers – and waited for the bus.  Before she left she would make sure that Daisy-Jane and Lip-Lip were in their proper places.  Now they had to watch for her each evening. 

At school her teachers said she was a quiet child, though intelligent.  She could read well, and seemed to learn her lessons easily.  Her homework was always completed neatly and on time.  When spoken to, she answered politely.  But she had no friends, and didn't seem to need any.  At playtime she would sit gently by herself.  Other girls made overtures, and she would smile briefly and answer softly, but they soon gave up and left her alone.  They said among themselves that even when she answered you, it didn't really seem as if anyone was there.  It felt as though she was somewhere else, somewhere very quiet. 

When she was twelve, one evening after tea she went up to her bedroom and did her homework as usual.  Then she packed her books into her satchel, left it at the foot of her bed ready for the morning, and went to the coach-house.  She climbed the ladder.  Daisy-Jane and Lip-Lip sat at the window.  She watched for a moment, then moved the two chairs closer together and placed Lip-Lip's floppy paw on top of Daisy-Jane's curled plastic fingers. 

Outside in the garden it was growing dark.  Aunty May was out somewhere.  The only light in the house was where Nanny Abbs sat in her room, listening to the radio.  Peggy walked quietly down the garden, ducked through the fence and climbed the embankment. 

Up the line the signal lantern gleamed green, and a pheasant clattered in the wood beyond.  Peggy took off her cardigan, folded it neatly and laid it over the rail.  She lay down on the ballast, rested her head on the cardigan, and waited for the train. 

It's gone now, bought by a developer and bulldozed to make room for a close of executive houses with double garages and a patio at the back. 

But thirty years ago, between the main road and the railway north of Attleborough, a house stood behind a high brick wall.  It was a spacious, foursquare brick building with neat columns either side of the front door and the same number of windows on either side.  Despite the sunshine it seemed a sad house. 

Behind it lay a large bedraggled garden stretching to the fence at the foot of the railway embankment, and near the front gate was an outhouse with fading green double doors.  Today it would be a garage, but when it was built it would have been called a coach-house.  Above it was a loft, and over the double doors a little window was festooned with cobwebs and dead moths, long desiccated. 

On the way to the coast on a baking summer morning, the kids bickering in the back and the wife fractious in the front, as one nursed the clutch and watched the temperature gauge while the traffic crawled beside the brick wall, one could see that dark window. 

Behind the dirty glass were two tiny chairs, and in the chairs were propped a doll in a grubby frock, and a large toy rabbit with floppy ears and yellow check trousers.  Somehow one knew that they had been there for many years, forgotten by a child long-gone or long-grown, left to keep a patient vigil over the narrow front garden and the hot sun winking off the roofs of the cars. 

And sometimes, as you drowsed behind the wheel and wished to be home with a cup of tea, and wound the window down in the hope of catching a cooling breath of air, and lit yet another cigarette, your glance would fall idly on the window and its patient watchers. 

And if you should happen to look just out of the corner of your eye, in passing as it were, not looking properly, you might notice something else.  Behind the dolly and the rabbit, another dim shape.  A pale face in the shadow, wide-eyed, watching and waiting. 

About the author

David Bramhall is a former musician, teacher and choir-trainer.  His book Training Your Young Choir sells slowly but steadily all over the world, as do two classroom text books on music. 

He lives in the East of England with his wife, also a musician, and plays with historic steam locomotives in his spare time. 

Works of fiction by David Bramhall

The Greatest Cape

1 The Black Joke

2 The Bernadette

3 Rio Sagrado

4 Turnstone

www.greatestcape.co.uk
