No good.

Another key.

No good.

But the third key delivers a satisfying CLUNK inside the lock.

Once the door is open and a smear of light falls into the murky half-lit space, Jess appears ready to step into an old photograph more than a dim, brownish room. The furniture, and every item upon the walls and shelves and bookcases, remains in a pristine arrangement.

Jess goes inside and unscrews the dead bulb from the ceiling shade. She replaces it with a new bulb from her pocket and returns to the chunky Bakelite light switch.

The refreshed ceiling light shines on a veritable time capsule of a girl’s bedroom, perfectly preserved from the 1970s, equipped with a record player, a Bay City Rollers poster, another of Gary Glitter and Alvin Stardust, a crochet blanket, a transistor radio, yellow, brown and orange wallpaper, posters from magazines taped onto the wardrobe. And all of it lightly peppered with dust. But the room is not that dirty, as if it was cleaned until recently.

In places, relics from an even older childhood are visible. A doll house, a stack of antique board games, stuffed toys. A stratum of an even younger girl’s existence, its place in history preserved. All part of a life captured in this evidence of its amusements and fascinations, maintained for decades then sealed away.

Jess bends to read the name on the array of gymnastics medals and certificates arranged around the mirror of an antique dressing table. Charlotte Gardner. On all of them.

‘Your little girl.’

* * *

After carefully descending the stairs and sliding around the newel post in the hall, Jess pulls up in surprise. Then readies herself to race into the living room on red alert.

She changes her mind and remains still, silent and watchful. At a distance, without Flo and Izzy knowing, Jess observes the interaction in the living room.

Izzy now kneels before the footplates of Flo’s wheelchair within easy reach of those old hands, still so capable of swiping fast. Head down, Izzy sketches furiously while nodding her head as if receiving instructions. Flo is leaning forward and smiling sweetly. But also whispering, though her frail voice is too low for Jess to make out words at this distance.

Before Flo’s eager face, Izzy briefly pauses her sketching to draw a small imaginary circle in the air. ‘Like that? No. Even bigger!’ Izzy fashions a much bigger circle before her face with her fingers. Together, in perfect synchronicity, Flo and Izzy criss-cross the air-wheel with spokes, giggling once the action is complete. Gently, Flo then extends one withered hand and touches the graze on Izzy’s face.

Which breaks Jess from her trance. She races into the living room and as she moves she hears Izzy say, ‘Mean girls done it.’

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