They didn’t leave him to find his own way up through the dark shrouded house; they went with him, turning on lights, touching each other’s fingers on the switches; floor after floor they drove the night back; they spoke softly among the covered chairs; they watched him undress, they didn’t make him wash or clean his teeth, they saw him into bed and lit the night-light and left his door ajar. He could hear their voices on the stairs, friendly like the guests he heard at dinner-parties when they moved down to the hall, saying good night. They belonged; wherever they were they made a home. He heard a door open and a clock strike, he heard their voices for a long while, so that he felt they were not far away and he was safe. The voices didn’t dwindle, they simply went out, and he could be sure that they were still somewhere not far from him, silent together in one of the many empty rooms, growing sleepy together as he grew sleepy after the long day.

He just had time to sigh faintly with satisfaction, because this too perhaps had been life, before he slept and the inevitable terrors of sleep came round him: a man with a tricolour hat beat at the door on His Majesty’s service, a bleeding head lay on the kitchen table in a basket, and the Siberian wolves crept closer. He was bound hand and foot and couldn’t move; they leapt around him breathing heavily; he opened his eyes and saw Mrs Baines was there, her grey untidy hair in threads over his face, her black hat askew. A loose hairpin fell on the pillow and one musty thread brushed his mouth. ‘Where are they?’ she whispered. ‘Where are they?’

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

PHILIP WATCHED HER in terror. Mrs Baines was out of breath as if she had been searching all the empty rooms, looking under loose covers.

With her untidy grey hair and her black dress buttoned to her throat, her gloves of black cotton, she was so like the witches of his dreams that he didn’t dare to speak. There was a stale smell in her breath.

‘She’s here,’ Mrs Baines said, ‘you can’t deny she’s here.’ Her face was simultaneously marked with cruelty and misery; she wanted to ‘do things’ to people, but she suffered all the time. It would have done her good to scream, but she daren’t do that: it would warn them. She came ingratiatingly back to the bed where Philip lay rigid on his back and whispered, ‘I haven’t forgotten the Meccano set. You shall have it tomorrow, Master Philip. We’ve got secrets together, haven’t we? Just tell me where they are.’