Like most teenagers I was a late retirer, never in bed before midnight. But that night I went to bed early, I didn’t know what else to do. Before going to bed I did one more thing. I took the key Selina had put on my tray, unlocked the door at the end of the passage that led to the outdoors and found myself on a stone-flagged floor, seemingly at the bottom of a tank with mossy walls over which trailed long-stemmed ivy-leaved plants. But the sky was up there and the open air at the top of the iron staircase. I went up it and into the front garden, marveling that I’d noticed nothing of the “area” when I arrived.

It was a mild night and windless. I’d been used to darkness and starry skies. No stars were visible here in the smoky purplish redness above me. Street-lamps were on, amber-colored cubes like fruit gums. The huge pale glimmering facade of the houses opposite was punctured by squares of light. I looked up, of course, I always do look up to top floors and gables and peaks and chimneys, and saw that on the fourth floor, on the very top, there were as many lights, all shining from windows tucked under those dizzyingly high roofs. Who lived up there? Who had the luck to live there? In those days, I don’t believe I ever considered that for those who fear depths and enclosed spaces there are just as many who are afraid of heights, who would die rather than go to the top of a tower or look over the edge of a precipice.

I never thought of it but went indoors again and crept, struggling for breath as if the place were full of gas, toward the bearable place, the bedroom.

Chapter 3

3

I’M NOT AS SELF-INDULGENT as I used to be. I don’t suppose you want to know the details of the trapped-in-an-underground-cell dream I had early the next morning and from which I woke up screaming, so I won’t go into it. In fact, one very seldom actually screams in those circumstances. What comes out is a feeble squeak. I didn’t make enough noise for Max and Selina to hear me, even if by that time they were down on their ground floor. It was late for anyone but teenagers, past nine. I had slept for eleven hours and if anything had come out of the wardrobe, I’d missed it.