Читать книгу After You Fell - J.S. Lark - Страница 22

The coffee inside the takeaway cup resting on my knee is cold. I’ve been sitting on this old iron park bench for nearly two hours.

I’ll have to go soon. Simon and Mim will be back from her parents’ in three hours. Simon will question me if I get home too long after them. He expects me to be there when they walk through the door.

The only movement in the house on the far side of the park has been a single view of the nanny; she walked past a window on the right-hand side on the first floor. I haven’t seen anyone else. Sitting here has shown me nothing. But I’m closer to the children and my heart feels happier.

I think there’s an entrance to the cellar of Alex Lovett’s house on the other side of the park. A door cuts through the wall beneath the iron railing that’s topped by the Fleur de Lys. The ground of the park drops into a ditch that is more than a metre below the street level, and there’s a row of short doors in the wall supporting the street; one for each house. Those doors were probably used for deliveries for things like coal, blocks of ice or bags of flour years ago. Today, though, they must still provide access, through a tunnel under the road, to the basement floor of the houses.

I stand, only because my bottom and legs are numb from sitting here so long. I walk to the left, because when I turn at the corner I’ll be able to look at the house for the longest period of time.

There’s so little activity in the house, I think Alex has taken the children out.

It is Saturday.

I throw the cup of cold coffee in a rubbish bin.

Frustration grips as a pain in my stomach again – right in the middle of me. I want to see the children. The frustration starts to bubble, like fizz rising in lemonade, but it feels as if in a moment it is going to boil like water that tries to jump out of a saucepan.

They are my children, a voice says – a voice that might be Louise’s.

She’s frustrated too.

I walk across the park in the direction of the house, listening again for Louise’s voice, but nothing else is said.

A knocker rattles, announcing that a door is opening. Conversation tumbles into the street.

It is Alex Lovett’s front door. Children’s voices carry on the air and they come out into the street.

I walk down the slope, into the valley at the edge of the park, towards the wall, towards the house.

‘Granny,’ the boy says, looking at a woman I do not know. She’s past middle age. There’s an older man with the children too. I haven’t seen either adult in Facebook posts.

I guess they’re Alex’s parents.

The door closes without an appearance from Alex.

It is less than two months since Louise died.

They need their father.

Their mother.

He should be with the children.

I walk up to the railing, and hold the bottom of the metal rails, watching from my rat’s-eye-view, as they walk off along the street.