Blitz Next Door

“Didn’t you hear me calling you down, sweetheart?”

The woman stood outside the girl’s door. She drummed it with the tips of her fingernails.

“I know you’re not asleep,” she sing-songed. “Heard your recorder, silly-billy.”

The woman tapped with one finger. “Please don’t be in the huff about this, pet.”

She scratched the door now. Leaned her forehead against it. Her voice was soft.

“You know I can’t go to work and leave you unless we’re pals. And nothing’s decided yet.”

She sighed.

“If we send you, it’s only for your own safety. And it won’t be for long. Daddy and I’d miss you too much. Even your rooty-tooty fluting.”

On the other side of the door, the woman heard her daughter’s bedsprings creak. “Recorder, not flute,” she heard the girl mutter.

The woman tried one last time. “Poor old Mr Rocks is walking down to see me about his bad foot. He’ll be here soon. Come and try this on quick. Cheer us both up.”

The woman turned the door handle. She opened it just far enough to wiggle the brown paper parcel she
was holding into the gap.

“All the way from Marks and Spencer in Glasgow,” she said as the parcel was taken from her hand.

“Ta,” she heard the girl say in a small voice.

The woman smiled. She listened to the rustle of the parcel being unwrapped; brown paper tearing in haste. Little puffs and grunts of someone undressing and dressing.

“Can I come in?” she said.

“If you want.”

Her daughter was standing in front of her mirror, turning this way and that to get a look at herself from different angles.

The woman had to cough away the lump in her throat before she said, “D’you not look that grown up? A proper wee land girl. Fits you like a glove.”

She came up behind the girl and wrapped her in a hug. She could see her daughter’s eyes were puffy from crying and that brought the lump to her own throat again. She kissed the top of her head.

“Sure we’re still pals, eh?” the woman said. “And you’re going to love it on the farm anyway. ’Specially now you’ve got the uniform.”

The girl whipped round, breaking her mother’s hold.

“So I
am
going then? It’s all fixed?” Her eyes flashed. She turned from the mirror and picked up the recorder from her bed. “I need to practise for the school concert now, because I’m not going anywhere,” the girl said. “And I look right daft in these baggy breeks anyway.”

When Pete first woke, he was sure he was still dreaming. Then he opened his eyes.

No. This is real
.

He was inside a sleeping bag on the floor of a strange room in a strange house.

And Jenny was crying. At least some things never changed.

Pete blinked around. The room he’d slept in was furnished with nothing but packing cartons. They were stacked everywhere, labelled in Mum’s loopy scrawl. Kitchen. Our room. Pete. Somewhere. Jenny.

Pete remembered the hasty squeal of the marker pen on box after box as the removal men waited in the hall. Pete’s old hall. While Mum scribbled and one man coochie-cooed at Jenny to try and win a smile, the other complained about how long the drive north would take.

“Ten hours if we’re lucky, darlin’,” he kept telling Mum, “and that’s not counting the traffic outta London.”

London. Only yesterday
.

Pete had woken up there. Eaten lunch. Felt like forever ago.

Much as he loved her to bits, Jenny’s cry was too much first thing this morning. Pete wriggled
back down into his sleeping bag, hands clamped to his ears. But the crying didn’t stop. It grew louder. Closer. There was no escape.

“All night she’s been like this. Place is giving her the jitters.” Mum was shoving Jenny into Pete’s arms before he could even say, “It’s OK; I’ll take her.”

“Hello, noisy,” Pete sing-songed at the tiny furious face of his baby sister while Mum scuffed out the room, mumbling about going for a shower. And, as if a switch had been turned off somewhere inside Jenny’s little body, her tears stopped. Pete felt the soft, warm weight of Jenny relax in his arms.

“Hey, monkey.” Pete brushed his lips against the downy crown of her head. “Give Mum a break. And don’t you even
think
about wobbling that bottom lip.” Pete was on his feet, Jenny nestled in the crook of his arm. “Or you don’t come exploring with me.”

The floorboards Pete crossed rubbed rough and chilly under his bare feet as he left the room he’d slept in.
Sitting room
, he decided, coming out into a long narrow hallway that faced the bottom of a staircase. The only other downstairs room, apart from a toilet he half-remembered using last night, was a large sunny kitchen.

But Pete was impressed so far. A proper house.

“With an upstairs, Jen. And look: a kitchen with cupboards big enough to walk into. Or hide. Mum’s got to like this too,” Pete said. He really hoped so. The kitchen even had a back door. Which meant…

“Wow!” Pete held Jenny up to the window over the sink so she could share his view of the wild-looking
garden outside. He was even more impressed now.

“This place is massive compared to our London flat, Jen. And we’ve not even seen the top floor yet.”

There was a half-landing before that, opening into a corridor with two rooms leading off it. Pete heard the shower running as he passed by the first room and into the second. It was a good-sized bedroom. Morning sun streamed through its emptiness catching so many motes of dancing dust that the whole space looked as if it was in soft focus.

Pete took in this room – two windows, old-fashioned fireplace with a mantelpiece, a high ceiling – and knew it had to be his.
Lean my guitar there
, he planned,
and my bed can go against that wall
. If Pete’s desk fitted under the window he realised he’d be able to look down into the garden daydreaming instead of doing his homework.

Best of all, there’d be more than enough room for all his mates to sleep over.

“We can have midnight feasts, Jen. Play guitar till Mum yells down we’re keeping you awake, then tell ghost stories, spook ourselves awake, so we’re up all night same as you,” Pete whispered his plans. Jenny stared back at him, her eyes blue and unblinking. Not returning his smile.

“Alright, Smarty Pampers. I know.” Pete sighed. “What mates?”

Pity. It was well big enough for a decent game of footy out there, even if the garden looked more like a jungle. Grass and overgrown flower beds tangled and jumbled their way from the back of the house down to a funny ramshackle outbuilding with a curved
corrugated-iron roof. Behind this the boundary of the house was marked by a deep thicket of untended shrubs and bushes. And beyond everything – “Wow, Jenny!” – Pete couldn’t help noticing, the humps of soft green hills met the sky to form his new horizon.

Bonnie Scotland
.

Pete leaned his forehead against the glass. Not too shabby so far. And as for that crazy garden – Pete could just see himself: dribbling, dodging, dummying, scoring…

Good pass, Pete.

Nice one, Pete.

Back of the net, Pete…

“Pete?”

Mum’s tone cut through his daydream.

“You shouldn’t’ve brought her into this dusty room. You’ll just set her off coughing, and you know how that always ends.” Mum did her impression of Jenny vomiting over Pete as she lifted the little bundle from his arms.

But I was just keeping her from crying because I’ve got the magic touch
, Pete had to bite his tongue from saying. Mum looked so… so…

Pete didn’t like thinking the words that described Mum ever since Jenny had been born… Didn’t like thinking about any stuff like that. How glum, how snappy, how different Mum was made his tummy twist and tighten.

“Sorry,” he said instead. “Been showing her around. We like this room best so far.”

“You have it, then. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to sleep in a bedroom.” Mum was already outside the
door. Before she’d reached the foot of the stairs, Pete heard Jenny wailing again, Mum groaning, “What’s wrong now, petal?”

The kitchen door was slammed so hard the whole house shook.

The sound of wailing seemed to grow louder and louder. It morphed into sobbing.

Miserable.

Wretched.

Weird
, thought Pete.

Not the actual sobbing itself. Pete was used to that. Jenny. Sometimes Mum. Sometimes both at once. But this couldn’t be either of them. Impossible. Because it was coming from somewhere far closer than the kitchen. And this stuttery, breathless sobbing was different from Jenny’s sharp hungry cry.
A wee kitten in pain
, as his dad described it. Pete could hear that kitten-cry now from way downstairs in the kitchen when there was a break in the other sobbing. Until, that is, Jenny’s mewl was drowned by a new voice.

“Nooooo. Please. Don’t make me go. I want to stay here. Mummy…”

The sobbing built up again, growing hysterical. “You can’t make me.”

Perfect, thought Pete.
All I need. Some spoilt girl kicking off. Better check out my other bedroom choices before I’m stuck with the next-door neighbour from hell
. Because that’s where the voice was coming from. When Pete pressed his ear to the wall nearest his door he actually heard this weeping girl sniff and gulp and snuffle as if
she was only centimetres away.

“Give over,” Pete’s voice bounced off the walls of the bare room.

He’d his hand on the door handle, about to leave when he heard, “Wh-wh-what if something happens to you, Mummy?
Please
don’t send me away.”

The girl’s plea was so desperate it gave Pete goosebumps. Instead of leaving the room he froze, ear cocked. Listening.

And then Pete heard the second voice. A woman this time, speaking so low he couldn’t make out any of her words. Pete only caught her tone – shushing and soothing and patient and kind – until he heard nothing but the occasional hiccup from someone who was all cried out. There was something about the way the woman spoke that reminded Pete of times – times before Jenny – when if he was sick or unhappy, he used to cuddle up to Mum, drifting off to sleep knowing that everything was fine because she was there. And would still be there when he woke up.

Pete guessed whoever was on the other side of his bedroom had fallen asleep like this too, because after a time he heard a door being eased shut. Footsteps clipped downstairs in the house next door. Faded.

Pete kept his ear pressed to his bedroom wall. At first he could still hear an occasional hiccupy breath. Then nothing but silence…

“Hang on.” Pete stepped back from the wall and stared at it. “Silence like there’s
meant
to be next door,” he whispered. His words made him shiver. That’s because Pete was remembering Dad telling Mum something during their car journey up last night.
Something about how there’d be no more complaints from the neighbours about the racket Jenny liked to make day and night.

“Because,” Dad had said, “our new place is the last house in the street. Madam can yell all she wants.”