Everlasting Lane (31 page)

We sat up, startled. Wembley, the twin towers and a hundred thousand screaming fans blurred and faded. It took me a moment to remember where I was and another to locate—

‘Anna-Marie!’ exclaimed Tommie.

She was free at last but the expression on her face was grim. She pointed at me. ‘You!’ she said. ‘Kitchen!’ she said. ‘Now!’

At the kitchen table, Anna-Marie cradled her orange squash, wiping condensation from the rim. Her hair was loose and dry; her skin even paler than usual; the tinny necklace Tommie had bought her at the fair hanging around her neck.

‘So,’ she said, placing her glass on the table, ‘are you ready for your trip to the Lodge, then.’

It wasn’t a question.

‘Why?’

‘I told you, mutton-head,’ she said. ‘I think there’s someone there you might want to see.’

‘But who?’

Anna-Marie’s face rippled with annoyance. ‘Honestly, Peter, don’t you remember Mrs Finch’s ghost story?’

Ghost story? I couldn’t remember … What was that supposed to mean?

‘Didn’t you even listen to what you were telling me?’ she went on.

‘But ghosts aren’t real,’ protested Tommie.

‘Well, we’ll just see about that, won’t we,’ she said, emptying her glass with a confident slurp, ‘at the Lodge.’

‘But we’re always going to the Lodge.’

‘You’ve not been inside before.’

Inside? I shook my head. I wasn’t sure it was such a—

‘Good idea,’ said Tommie.

Typical.

Leaving Everlasting Lane we crossed the main Nancarrow Road and turned down towards the Lodge. This side road was all gravel and dust and fell with a steep curve towards the river. Very quickly I lost sense of the road behind us. Here the thick trees and bushes muffled everything but the birds and our own stony footsteps. It was calm and peaceful.

‘What if someone catches us?’

‘We’re just visiting.’

That reminded me of that thing you have to say in
Monopoly
when you drive past the jail but you’re not actually in jail.

‘You haven’t even told us who we’re going to see.’ I had this funny jittery feeling in my tummy. Not ha-ha funny but like I was going to be sick.

‘Shut up!’ said Anna-Marie. ‘It’s for your own good.’

She sounded just like Kat when she said that and that reminded me of how Kat had said that that was exactly why I shouldn’t go to the Lodge. I hoped I was wrong but I had a horrible feeling that whatever it was Kat wanted me to stay away from and whatever it was Anna-Marie wanted me to go and see might be the same thing. Then I wondered why their advice was so different.

And then I wondered who was right.

The trees grew deeper and darker as we approached the back of the Lodge. I mean the front of course. Its red brick and haphazardy walls were so familiar and I felt a shiver of pleasure when I remembered that first time I’d seen it with Anna-Marie when Tommie had been at his dad’s. On this side of the river though we were blocked by thick bushes.

Peering through the leaves, I saw Miss Pevensie, that teacher from school who was pretending to be the fortune-teller. Her frizzy blonde hair was tied back in a bunch and she was pushing at the handlebars of a bicycle in a pink T-shirt and long
skirt. Standing upright in the basket on the front of her bike were some thick books and about thirty thin ones like exercise books.

As she approached, a rustling passed through the bushes and trees like a breeze you couldn’t feel. Branches cracked and twisted, and trunks seemed to shift in the earth. Leaves, that a moment earlier had seemed too thick and thorny, faded until they were just shades of light revealing a road, a driveway, leading right to the front door of the Lodge. We gasped in wonder. Miss Pevensie mounted her bicycle and passed through the gap. Once through the sole of her sandal scraped her to a halt. We ducked under cover whilst she glanced around as if looking for someone. She didn’t see us and after a moment she pushed down hard on her pedal and went on her squeaky way.

Once she’d gone we quickly shuffled through as the leaves and branches started to creak back into shape behind us.

Having admired it so often from afar, we approached the Lodge like it was a church. It was like seeing the page of a storybook made real. The red brick though was older, less shiny than it appeared from the other side of the river. The ivy that clung to the walls made it look older still. Anna-Marie was right after all: there were ghosts here. I could tell. I could see how time had left its footprint in the air like a boot in wet cement.

Anna-Marie approached the big front door and tugged at the handle like it was her own. But it wasn’t fooled.

‘No, no,’ muttered Anna-Marie. ‘That’s not the one. Come on, there’s another one at the side,’ which was funny because I didn’t remember her ever saying she’d been this close to the Lodge before. She marched off with Tommie and me following to another door, smaller and perhaps more easily tricked. We had to go down some steps to reach it and, again,
Anna-Marie pulled at the brass knob. Again it remained unmoved. Maybe it was like a jail after all. This time, however, like a master thief, stretching on tiptoes, she ran her nimble fingers over the door-frame, and then lifted the mat and then looked under various plant pots. But there was no key.

‘Oh well,’ said Tommie.

‘No,’ hissed Anna-Marie seizing his arm. He winced. ‘I will
not
be defeated.’ She studied the wall that framed the door, tapping the bricks, head cocked to one side, listening. Eventually, ‘Aha,’ she cried, grinning. She seized the most recently tapped brick and dug her fingers deep into the clay that surrounded it. Her thin fingers wiggled the brick from side to side, slowly prising it from the wall until it came free with a sudden pop leaving a brick-shaped hole. I couldn’t help noticing that it wasn’t the only one.

Anna-Marie tipped the brick from one hand to the other, testing its weight, before gripping it firmly, shielding her eyes and propelling it against the pane of glass nearest the door handle. The glass shattered and with a few follow-up thrusts the remaining jagged edges were removed. Anna-Marie reached through the hole muttering, ‘I will not be defeated.’ And then she turned to face us. ‘Aha,’ she said, ‘a key!’

We found ourselves in a kitchen with dark wooden surfaces and a huge white sink. Apart from a few ancient kettles and toasters it appeared abandoned but, at least until Anna-Marie peered into the trembling old fridge—‘Yuk!’—clean. Buckets of sun poured through the sealed windows. The air was warm, cosy and curled up like Kitty asleep on my lap.

At least it had been.

‘Come on,’ said Anna-Marie, taking the handle of the inside door.

‘Where to?’

‘Well, we didn’t come to look at the kitchen.’

‘What did we come to look at?’

‘It’s not a what,’ she said with a smile. ‘I told you: it’s a who.’

‘We’re going to get in trouble,’ I said, ‘aren’t we?’

Tommie did that clucking like a chicken thing and Anna-Marie’s eyes widened. ‘Don’t worry, poppet,’ she said pinching my cheek. ‘Listen.’ I listened. ‘It’s as quiet as a graveyard.’

I laughed. A bit. You see, I knew she was trying to be scary.

She led us down a narrow corridor. To one side, high windows welcomed in warm sunlight, to the other we passed three or four doors and pale pictures of fields or oceans. There was dust, deep and crisp and even, on every surface and the air seemed as if it had been undisturbed for so long that the smells of damp didn’t know what to do with themselves, cowering beneath the woodwork as we passed. For all her braveness even Anna-Marie flinched at the slightest sound of a gurgled pipe or a squeaked floorboard, and shushed Tommie and me as we tiptoed in silence.

At the far end of the corridor was a wide double door, almost like it was too big for the corridor itself. Anna-Marie grabbed both handles and, with a silent ‘Ta-dah,’ flung them open. We stepped into a large, and thankfully deserted, room. It was a lounge, I suppose, with a polished floor, chairs and a telly and, to Tommie’s delight, a big piano like a grand piano. He went straight to it, lifted the lid and, before Anna-Marie could stop him, hit as many keys as he could.

‘Tommie!’ she hissed as the deafening, mishmash of notes echoed and faded away. ‘We don’t want to get thrown out until we’re done.’

Now, this was the big room that we could see from the other side of the river. From here, I could look back through the French doors across the lawn, across the river to the point
on the opposite bank where, on other days, I might have seen myself squinting with curiosity, wondering if the ghostly face at the window was my reflection or something else. Looking through from this angle, I could see where people had left their fingerprints smudged upon the window. It was odd to be there, on the other side of the mirror, face pressed against the glass.

‘Come on,’ said Anna-Marie, ‘let’s look upstairs.’

‘What stairs?’

‘These stairs.’

To my surprise, although we’d gone back through the same door by which we’d entered we hadn’t returned to the narrow corridor but into what seemed to be the entrance hall lurking behind the front door. And there, as Anna-Marie had said, was a flight of stairs. It didn’t seem quite right but Anna-Marie was already half way up before Tommie called, ‘This isn’t right.’

‘What’s your problem, Tommie?’ she snapped. ‘You need to relax. Some buildings
do
move about, don’t they, Peter?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Some buildings do. I think so.’

I didn’t really think that at all but there was no point trying to reason with her when she was in that kind of mood. Besides, I
was
beginning to relax. The Lodge seemed so pure and peaceful. Any ripples I could feel in the air didn’t necessarily mean there was someone else in the building. They were only toes wriggling in a stream.

It was a strange place, the Lodge. Walking around it, exploring, was like waking from a dream in the middle of the night. You know the moment when you’re not quite sure where you are or who you are, when you still think your dreams are real? When you’re lying there wondering where the monsters went? Well, not
that
moment. But you know the next moment when everything falls back into place like the pieces of a jigsaw and you remember who you are and that the monsters
are all in your head and that your mum’s asleep just across the landing?
That
moment. It was like falling into a warm bath of yourself.

But, it’s like, if you have a moment, an instant, any moment, how are you supposed to capture it? It’s a bit like trying to catch a butterfly. You can run and cup your hands all you like but when it’s gone, it’s gone. Your best hope of capturing it, of making that moment last, is to capture it in words, like Norman said or—what’s his name?—Craig, not a jar or a net. If you capture it in just the right words, then you can keep it forever. It’s better than … What’s it called? That yellow stuff they use? Anyway, if not, if you can’t capture it, well, it’s all pointless anyway and the moment flutters away over the cornfield and into the distance.

Because life is really just a collection of moments. Isn’t it? A crowd, a fluttering rabble of butterflies.

At the top of the stairs, Anna-Marie, who seemed to know exactly where she was going, turned down another corridor. This one was dark, lit only by cracks of light that sneaked out from behind the edges of the three or four doors that it contained. Anna-Marie was checking the door numbers. She stopped outside the door which had a big silver number four on it. She reached out and turned the handle. The door opened.

‘You two wait here,’ she said, and slipped into the room. Tommie and I squeezed into the gap and watched her. The room was neat and tidy with two beds, a chair and a desk. There was a little sink against one wall and posters and pictures for decoration. There was a perfumey smell—I mean you could tell it was a lady’s room.

Anna-Marie wandered around brushing her hand across the top blanket of one of the beds, rearranging the mugs and spoons on the little tray next to the kettle. There were a few stray biscuit crumbs on the tray and she licked her finger to pick them up and flick them into the wastepaper bin.

She sat down at the desk and began sorting through the contents like a spy in search of secret information, replacing everything just as she found it. Finally, she selected a pen from
one of those pots like they make on
Blue Peter.
She studied the nib and, to check that it was in working order, drew a thin line across her finger tip. Then, laying the pen to one side, she took a book—it looked quite new—and opened it slightly, as you do with a new book in a shop, so that you can put it back on the shelf without having to pay for it.

Having treated it so carefully, Tommie and I gasped when, having found the very first page—the one that doesn’t really have any writing on it—she tore it from the book. One quick rip.

‘Anna-Marie …?’

‘Sssh!’

She replaced the book, reassuring herself that the tear would remain unnoticed, at least until the book was opened, before taking the empty page and writing across it—not much just a few words—before returning the pen to its pot and folding the paper into a small cube. Pushing herself back from the desk she again appeared to be searching, this time finding a little gap between the desktop and the side of the drawers. Her fingers squeezed the square of paper and pushed it into the space, tapping it a couple of times to make sure it was properly wedged. She got up and pushed the chair back into its original position and, with a final glance around the room, closed the door, joining us in the corridor.