The door of number five opened and a boy my age appeared. He walked down his driveway and looked in one direction only. Straight at me. This time I didn’t duck away but stood my ground and stared back. Stopping in front of our house, he tipped his head back and made a grotesque, gagging noise before launching a great lump of phlegm onto our path. I gave him a slow handclap through the window, ignoring how sick I felt. He frowned when he saw my hands, and I quickly put them behind me. Giving our wall a good kicking, he turned and headed off down the street.
10:03 a.m.—Jake Bishop—still an idiot.
Once Jake had gone there wasn’t much to see. Mr. Jenkins returned from his run, his white T-shirt dark with sweat. Penny and Gordon Sullivan unloaded eleven shopping bags from their trunk. Melody returned from her walk holding Frankie under one arm; the dog looked rather pleased with himself.
And then the cul-de-sac was still.
Until the Rectory door slowly opened.
10:40 a.m.—Old Nina is on her step looking very nervous. She has her little silver watering can in one hand.
The elderly lady was dressed in a black skirt, cream blouse, and peach cardigan. She trickled water into each pot for a count of five before moving on to the next one. As she did this her eyes flickered around the neighborhood. She’d just begun to water the final pot when a car turned onto the street. Leaving the watering can on the step she slipped back inside, slamming her heavy front door behind her.
The car driving slowly down the road was one of those that Dad would say costs “a small mortgage.” It certainly didn’t belong to any of the neighbors. It was so shiny our houses were reflected in its black doors as it circled the cul-de-sac, coming to a stop outside number eleven. I grabbed my notebook as I watched, waiting for the doors to open.
10:45 a.m.—There is a really posh black car on the close. I’ve never seen it before and it’s parked right next door! Does Mr. Charles have a visitor?
I knew my neighbors’ schedules inside and out; they didn’t surprise me much. But this was something new. I tried to see inside the car, but it had heavily tinted windows so I couldn’t make anything out. It hummed quietly for a while and then the engine was turned off. The driver’s door opened.
A woman, wearing sunglasses that were so big they covered most of her face, got out and looked around the cul-de-sac. She brushed her hair from her face and then slammed the door shut. Mr. Charles appeared and walked quickly down his path, wiping his hands on the front of his shirt.
“Darling!” he said, stretching his tanned arms toward her.
“Hello, Dad.”
She held him at a distance and turned her cheek for him to kiss, then she went to the car and opened the back door. A small girl of around six or seven climbed out carrying a porcelain doll. I stood closer to the window but could only catch a few words.
“… must be Casey! And who’s this? Is she coming to stay?”
Mr. Charles went to stroke the doll’s hair, but the girl twisted around so it was out of reach. It looked like something from an antique shop, not a kid’s toy. The woman in the big sunglasses emerged from the backseat of the car with a blond-haired boy who she plonked down on the pavement. Mr. Charles held his hand out to the toddler.
“Pleased to meet you, Teddy. I’m your granddad.”
The boy cuddled a pale blue blanket, rubbing a corner against his cheek as he stared at the crinkly hand reaching toward him. The hand dangled there awkwardly between them, and then Mr. Charles gave up and went to help his daughter with the luggage. They talked for a while, but their backs were to me so I couldn’t hear what they were saying.
The woman put two black suitcases by the gate and then held each child’s face in her hands, saying something before giving them each a quick kiss on the forehead. Squeezing Mr. Charles on the arm, she got back into the car. The engine purred to life and the dark, shiny car drove slowly to the end of the road. The three of them stood there watching until it was out of sight.
“Right! Let’s get you two inside, shall we?”
Mr. Charles flapped his arms at the kids and herded them like sheep toward the house, his face a mad grin. The little boy stopped, still rubbing the blanket to his cheek as he reached for one of the roses next to the pathway.
“Ah, ah, ah, no touching!” said his grandfather and he waved his arms again, steering them in through the front door.
A minute later he was back, dragging the two black suitcases behind him. He glanced up at me and I quickly stepped away, but not before noticing his wide smile had vanished.
Under my bed I had a secret box.
I would have liked to say it was a mysterious old wooden box that I’d found buried in the garden, smuggled upstairs, and hid behind the folds of my duvet. It would sit there patiently, keeping its treasures locked inside. Once I knew I could trust you, I’d let you kneel beside me as I carefully opened the crumbling lid. Clumps of mud would fall onto my carpet, but for once I wouldn’t care. Your mouth would drop open, your eyes getting wider and wider as you gazed at the riches inside.
I wished my secret box was like that.
But it wasn’t.
My box was clinical. It was made of white and gray cardboard and was the size and shape of a small shoebox with an oval hole in the top. The manufacturer’s name was printed around the sides, and in the bottom corner at each end it read, in bold, black type:
CONTENTS: 100
I’d say there were probably around thirty-two left.
When I say probably I mean exactly. There were exactly thirty-two left.
Mum knew all about my secret box, but Dad didn’t. He’d be upset if he knew. Not so much at me, but more at Mum for “encouraging” me.
“It’s not right, Sheila. What’re you doing giving him stuff like that for, eh? You’re just making him worse.”
That was how Dad would react.
He wouldn’t understand that at the moment life without that box was impossible for me.
I lived, with my secret box under the bed, at number nine, Chestnut Close. It was a very ordinary duplex house with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen/diner, and an oblong backyard (mostly grass) with a shed and a conservatory. Until recently the conservatory had housed a wicker sofa and matching armchairs, but they’d been replaced with a new pool table. I had watched from my bedroom as the delivery men struggled to fit it through the front door a couple of weeks before, and every day since, my dad asked if I was up for a quick game.
Which I never was.
If I looked down from my bedroom window, and if the blinds on the conservatory roof were in an upright position, I could see Dad playing pool, all by himself. The day before, he had glanced up and caught me. I’d ducked behind the curtains, but within about fifty seconds he was banging on my bedroom door:
“Why don’t you come down, son? Give your old man a game?”
“Not today, thanks, Dad.”
He went away after that. I knew what he was trying to do, but honestly—pool? Where did he come up with that one? And I was determined I would never, ever, ever go into the conservatory again. Our cat, Nigel, had vomited up endless bird and mouse guts onto those cold, white floor tiles; can you imagine what would be crawling around in there? In the summer heat the whole room had to be boiling with disease. And as if to crush any tiny urge I might have had to join Dad in potting a few balls, Nigel had decided to adopt the pool table as his favorite place to nap. Every day he stretched across the green cloth as if he were being sacrificed to the Gods of Pool. The only way to clean that table now would be to smother it in disinfectant, and I wasn’t stupid enough to try. That table must have cost Dad hundreds.
My bedroom was the best part of the house. It was safe. It was free from germs. Out there, things were dangerous. What people didn’t seem to understand was that dirt meant germs and germs meant illness and illness meant death. It was quite obvious when you thought about it. I needed things to be right, and in my room I had complete control. All I had to do was keep on top of it.
Spending so much time in my room meant that I’d gotten to know the place well. For example:
1) The front right-hand leg of my bedside cabinet was loose and at a slight angle.
2) The paint on the underside of my windowsill was flaking—definitely made worse by my cleaning.
3) High in a corner above my bed there was a piece of wallpaper that, when you considered it from a certain angle, looked like a lion.