“Huh? Oh, that.” He sniffs dismissively. “I thought it was something, but it was nothing. There’s a point where Tamsin says something like ‘I’m scared of Bert’s basement’ so I thought it might be worth chasing it up. It wasn’t.”
“You went to Fern.”
“Yes. I went to Paul, too. Then I went to Bert.”
This surprises me. He must see it on my face because he laughs, fanning the cards out in his hand.
“I got there just after you and Alice had left. Busy day for Bert, by all accounts. I asked him about the basement and he let me in to take a look around.”
“What’s down there?”
Sam holds the fanned cards out to me. “Pick a card.”
“Sam!”
“All right, all right. There’s nothing down there. A worktable, lots of boxes. It’s well-lit and tidy. A few cobwebs, maybe. I think Tamsin might just have a touch of little sister syndrome.”
“You mean she’s feeling jealous of Alice?”
Sam nods, proffering the cards to me once more.
“That’s right,” he says, as I finally give in and slide one toward me. I peel it up to look at it. Two of hearts. “She wants the attention. You can’t blame her really.”
A sudden knock at the door startles us and I drop the card I’m holding. Sam curses, leaning back in his chair so he can peer down the dark hallway. That strange comet shape—the apotropaic mark that appeared outside and on the rafter in the empty house—is still horribly visible, carved deep and ugly into the wall.
“Should we get that?” I ask. Glimpsed through the reeded glass of the porch door, the figure standing there looks distorted, almost dreamlike. I suddenly feel that same creeping dread that I felt in Alice’s bedroom. I almost reach out to Sam as he stands awkwardly and moves to answer the door. I almost say to him,No, don’t!
“It’s me, you daft sods,” a muffled but familiar voice says on the other side of the door and Sam’s face breaks into a relieved grin.
“It’s Bert.”
I release a long, shuddering breath as Sam unlatches the door. We’re all on edge, jittery. Bert and Sam have a brief, murmured conversation and then Sam begins fishing his car keys out of his pocket.
“What’s going on, Sam?” I ask. It’s Bert who responds, standing in the hallway with one hand on the newel post at the bottom of the stairs.
“Bit of an emergency I’m afraid, Mina. Lisa is stuck at the garage near High Cross. The car has run out of petrol and she, uh, she doesn’t have the means to get home. She’s asked if I can go and collect her but I’m heading to the big supermarket out oftown about nine miles in the other direction. Have you seen the news? Turns out there are food shortages all over the country. The local shop has bare shelves. Panic buying, they’re saying. It’s worrying, is what it is.”
Sam looks at me with his eyebrows raised. “Mina, you’ll be all right with Alice won’t you, if I go and get Lisa? I’ll only be gone an hour or so.”
“Actually,” Bert says, meekly, “I was hoping Alice would be able to sit with Mary for a spell while I’m out. She’s asleep at the moment but if she wakes it could frighten her to find an empty house.”
“Do you want me to go and sit with her?” I ask.
There is a beat, and I can actually see Bert’s face change. Good humor to distrust. I don’t blame him. Not after yesterday, when he found me creeping around the bedroom.
“Well, that’s a nice offer, Mina, but I wouldn’t be comfortable leaving her with someone she doesn’t know. It’s hard to say these days what might upset her. I’m sure you understand.”
He looks at me meaningfully.
“Not at all. I’m sure Alice won’t mind.”
He smiles, relieved.
“Thank you, Mina. That puts my mind at rest.”
I keep smiling until the door closes behind them. I wait, standing alone in the hallway, listening to the sounds of the cars pulling away from the house. Just to be sure, I wait a little longer, feeling the darkness pressing in around me like a living thing, like a snake’s coils. Then I call Alice out from the sitting room.
TWENTY-SEVEN