Edmond tugs his hair. “It was a long time ago,” he says. “Like, years and years ago.”
“When you were a baby?”
“Kind of,” Edmond says. Then he goes pale in the dim light. “I forgot to give them my letters.” He disappears. John shrugs and wanders away through the party. The music gets louder and light effects play across the white walls. Blue, pink, gold. It’s really nice. In fact, John feels better than he has done for months. The drinks don’t seem to slow him down, but make him more alert, light him up. There is another full glass in his hand. He can’t remember how it got there. Drew and Daisy are all right, he decides. Nicer than he expected. The strange smell that had hung about them seems to be gone, now.
* * *
When John gets home his mother is sitting at the kitchen table, as always. She stares at nothing.
“Mum?” he says quietly. She doesn’t answer. Her fingers drum. There are little marks forming on the surface of the wood, where her fingernails hit the table all day long.
He goes up to his room. The door is ajar, showing the streetlight shining in. He thinks of the other empty room next door, the one they never go into. He can almost feel her, Alice, in the dark, behind the wall. He thinks with burning envy of Drew and Daisy – their easy good looks, their cool mother who lets them have parties, their white house where no ghosts lurk behind closed doors.
* * *
The next day in school Drew is beside him, all smiles and perfect skin.
“Do you want to come over for supper tonight?” he asks.
“Will your parents mind?”
“Hester won’t,” Drew says.
John says yes. He is grateful that he doesn’t have to go home and get fish fingers out of the freezer. He usually overcooks them and they taste terrible. He has to wheedle his mother into eating a few, burned morsels.
“What’s your address?” he asks Drew. “I’ve got football practice.”
Drew looks blank. “Oh, don’t worry about that,” he says. “We’ll wait for you. We can all walk home together.”
“That’s a hassle for you,” John says in surprise.
“We don’t mind.”
For a moment John wonders why Drew doesn’t know his own address. But the thought drifts off. It has been a long time since he was last happy.
* * *
Daisy cooks. She makes things John has only read about in old books; stuffed marrow followed by trifle. He didn’t even know you could get marrow anymore. He eats everything he is given.
“Where are your parents?” he asks.
“There’s only Hester,” Daisy says. “She sort of adopted us.”
“Is Hester here?” John asks, nervous. He is not good with parents. He always says something weird.
“Yes,” Drew says. “She’s asleep, just now. Right, Daisy?”
Daisy nods. John feels a twinge of sympathy. He knows what it is like to have a parent who sleeps all the time. They have a lot in common, he and the twins.
“How about you, John?” Daisy asks politely.
“It’s only me and my mum,” John says. “My dad left.” Somehow it doesn’t hurt, talking about it here, with his stomach full of trifle.
“How sad,” says Daisy. “Well, I’m so pleased that we met. Friends are important, I think.”
“I’m sorry I was rude when I met you both,” John says in a rush. “I think maybe it reminded me of my sister, Alice. Seeing you together, I mean. We were close, like you. Before the accident.”
Drew looks at Daisy. “Accident?” he asks.
“Yes.” Tears touch John’s eyelids for the first time since it happened. “I feel like half a person, now. So stupid.”
Daisy says quietly, “So your twin is dead, John?”
“Yes,” he says.
“I suppose I couldn’t tell,” Daisy says, “because you haven’t let her go.”
There comes a thump from upstairs, and then a groan, as though someone has fallen out of bed onto bare boards.
“What was that?” asks John.
“I don’t know,” says Daisy. “Cats on the roof, I expect. Better go and see about it, Drew.”
“In a minute,” Drew says.
Something moves across the ceiling above their heads. A heavy thing drags itself towards the stairs. The groan comes again, muffled, filled with pain.
“By Jove,” says Drew. “It’s late, John, you’d better be off.”
John says goodbye and Daisy says goodbye too. She is polite, as always, but it’s as if she’s listening intently to something John can’t hear.
As John goes through the hall, he quickly shuffles through some of the letters piled deep on the table. There must be two hundred, all addressed to different people in different parts of the country. He finds one addressed to an Edmond Booker in Halifax. It can’t be the same Edmond he met at the party; Halifax is hundreds of miles away. But even so it makes John feel weird. He quickly goes out of the front door.
John goes down the sparkling granite path in the purple dusk. Sounds from inside the house are carried on the still night. The person who was moaning is now crying, perhaps pleading. Drew speaks to them. Or at least it sounds like Drew at first. Then John’s not sure. It’s an old, old voice.
“Leave him be,” it says. “Get back in your hole.”
* * *
When John gets home his mum is sitting in the kitchen, streetlight playing on her still face. John goes upstairs. He pauses on the landing, before Alice’s door. After a moment he opens it and goes in. It is too warm, the air tastes stale and dusty.
He turns on the light and goes to Alice’s bookshelf. He takes down a book with a bright, illustrated cover, showing five smiling children and a dog. These were Alice’s favourites; tales of nineteen fifties schoolchildren caught up in extraordinary adventures of smugglers and robbers and secret islands. He opens the book and reads. It doesn’t take long to find what he’s looking for.
“By Jove,” said Harry. “There’s simply lashings and lashings of trifle.”
* * *
The next day, in history, the seat next to John is empty. When he cranes his neck, he sees that there is a gap in the back row like a missing tooth. Daisy isn’t at school either. John feels a moment of something – surely not disappointment? Then he feels electric. This proves that something is up. Where did those two come from anyway? He doesn’t drift off in class today. His mind is filled with thoughts of time travel, or maybe vampires.
The moment the last bell sounds, John has his rucksack over his shoulder. He runs through the shady streets towards the new white houses. He doesn’t know what he will say, but he is filled with certainty. They are doing something bad, he knows it. He is almost sure that they are keeping someone prisoner upstairs in their house. Maybe their mother, Hester. John suspects that what he’s doing is dangerous, but it is a relief to feel something, even fear.
He turns into the close where the first houses reach pale and tall against the summer sky. As he goes, he begins to falter. Was it the second left or the third after the house with the yew tree in the garden? Everything looks the same. He doesn’t see another living person. Most of the houses are empty – he can see wide expanses of pale bare boards through the windows. None of them have numbers on their gates. And he doesn’t know the number, anyway. By the time the first stars show at the edges of the sky John is lost, penned in by empty white houses.