What Abigail Did Tha Summer, Ben Aaronovitch [if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud txt] 📗

It’s a boy, a white boy my age. The face is familiar. It might be Simon, but it could be Nerd Boy or Long Hair. Either way, it’s radiating happiness in exactly the way a clown doesn’t, and going up the stairs suddenly seems like not a very clever idea at all. There’s a rectangular shadow in the wall – the door to the front room. I decided to risk it and, still holding Indigo, get off the stairs and head for the doorway.

‘Let’s hope this is better,’ I say and step through into gaslight.

*

The telephone is an extremely curious thing, and looks like a very surprised face with the bells as eyes, the speaking tube as a nose and the maker’s plaque a squared-off mouth. Mama refuses to touch it, but Papa is fascinated by the machine and held forth at dinner on how it would revolutionise the practice of business in the Empire. You can always tell that Papa is having a grand vision about the future when he brings up the Empire. The trouble is, the beastly contraption never rings, and today Papa spent the whole morning, once we were back from church, glowering at it. How shall we know it’s working? he cries suddenly. Silly Papa, I say, we must make an outgoing call to someone we know. But it is Sunday, says Mama. It would be scandalous to interrupt another family’s Sabbath. Then we must call Ezra, says Papa. Since his Sabbath was yesterday. Then do let us make a call, I say. And how do we do that? asks Papa, so I show him by picking up the listening tube and turning the handle. There is a crackle and the operator on the other end asks what number I require. Papa beams and I am so happy. Hello, operator, I say. Get me Scotland Yard. There are pops and crackles and a strange repetitive trilling sound and a woman with a coarse common accent asks which emergency service I require. Help, I say, I’m being held prisoner. Putting you through to the police, says the operator, but then, curiously, I am lying on the floor with a stinging pain in my cheek and Papa is standing over me with a scowl I have never seen before. Why did you make me do that? he cries, and I squirm away from him. He is so suddenly frightening and not like Papa. He steps towards me with his fist raised but Indiana, bless his little red-headed terrier heart, is barking furiously, bravely putting himself between me and my enraged parent. There is an acrid smell like the outside privy that makes me . . .

*

Gag . . . and I’m scrambling through a connecting door into another room with Indigo at my heels. For a second I think I’ve escaped the stories, but the room only stays real for a moment before the wallpaper changes and the furniture turns dark and overstuffed. A globe hangs from the ceiling – the gas mantle a soft yellow blaze at its centre. A hand reaches up and pulls the chain and the mantle becomes too bright to look at.

*

I love my new upright piano delivered by Frederick Reogh this morning, and tuned by an old blind Jew recommended by Henry’s funny little friend Ezra. It really does finish the parlour, and I know Henry loves to show my playing off to all his friends. Isabella, he says, I married you for your beauty, your wit – and the happiness you bring when you tickle the ivories. He always uses that term to remind me of his low birth, to test me I think, that I do not hold it against him. As if I would. For he is my rough Henry, who speaks his mind and never withholds his love. I stretch my fingers and hold them over the keys, but something is wrong. I can’t remember where they go. I stand and reel back from the piano in a swoon . . .

*

Well, duh . . . Where would you even fit a piano in my flat? And I had a choice way back in year 7 – laptop or a keyboard. And I said laptop. I’m heading for the door back out into the hallway, but suddenly I realise that Indigo isn’t with me. I turn around and see her standing in the centre of the room, looking up at something I can’t see, and she says – ‘Woof!’

*

Sunlight and dust and Henry sweeping his hand around the room and saying that this will be the parlour and we shall have music – as much music as we ever wanted.

*

And I am in the hallway, brushing up against the memory of a girl chasing a model aeroplane while the rain beats on the windows. I slip and I fall and my hand lands on something the right shape and size and I’m scared that it might be too late.

29

Abigail Down the Laundry Chute

I’m back sitting against the wall under the dumb waiter, only now there’s no Indigo. I’m still in the real ting house, but I can feel the stories pushing at the edges of my perception. From somewhere below I can hear a grandfather clock ticking in the downstairs hall and posh voices fading in and out on a wireless in the parlour.

But all I can smell is Indigo’s wee – interesting.

I know what I’ve got to do, but I reckon that it’s my last chance. And if I cock it up – what then?

I hold the door wedge I picked up in the last room. A bit of hard grey plastic with a black rubber strip along the bottom for grip. Either it’s left over from the last owners, or the builders used it while they were stripping the house. The plastic is rough and comforting under my palm – it’s sharp enough to get me through the first stage.

Not sharp enough to get