“Date stamp says the twelfth of September last,” he said, turning on the monitor. “Daniel got the keys to the house on the tenth. He and Justin drove down that afternoon to make sure the roof hadn’t fallen in or anything, the five of them spent the eleventh packing up their stuff, and on the twelfth they all handed in the keys to their flats and moved out to Whitethorn House, lock, stock and barrel. They don’t hang about, this lot.” He hoisted himself onto Costello’s desk, beside me, and hit Play on the remote.
Darkness; a click and rattle, like an old key turning; feet thumping on wood. “Sweet Jesus,” someone said. A finely modulated voice with a Belfast tinge: Justin. “The smell.”
“What are you being shocked about?” demanded a deeper voice, cool and almost accentless. (“That’s Daniel,” Frank said, next to me.) “You knew what to expect.”
“I blanked it out of my mind.”
“Is this thing working?” a girl asked. “Rafe, can you tell?”
“That’s our girl,” Frank said softly, but I already knew. Her voice was lighter than mine, alto and very clear, and the first syllable had hit me straight in the back of the neck, at the top of my spine.
“My God,” said a guy with an English accent, amused: Rafe. “You’re recording this?”
“Course I am. Our new home. Only I can’t tell if it’s doing anything, because I’m only recording black anyway. Does the electricity work?”
Another clatter of feet; a door creaked. “This should be the kitchen,” Daniel said. “As far as I remember.”
“Where’s the switch?”
“I’ve got a lighter,” said another girl’s voice. Abigail; Abby.
“Brace yourselves,” said Justin.
A tiny flame, wavering in the center of the screen. All I could see was one side of Abby’s face, eyebrow raised, mouth a little open.
“Jesus H. Christ, Daniel,” said Rafe.
“I did warn you,” said Justin.
“In fairness, he did,” said Abby. “If I remember, he said it was a cross between an archaeological site and the nastier bits of Stephen King.”
“I know, but I thought he was exaggerating as usual. I didn’t expect him to be understating.”
Someone-Daniel-took the lighter off Abby and cupped his hand around a cigarette; there was a draft coming from somewhere. His face on the wobbly screen was calm, unperturbed. He glanced up over the flame and gave Lexie a solemn wink. Maybe because I had spent so long staring at that photo, there was something astonishing about seeing them all in action. It was like being one of those kids in books who find a magic spyglass that lets them into the secret life of some old painting, enthralling and risky.
“Don’t,” said Justin, taking the lighter and poking gingerly at something on a rickety shelf. “If you want to smoke, go outside.”
“Why?” asked Daniel. “So I don’t smudge the wallpaper, or so I don’t stink up the curtains?”
“He’s got a point,” said Abby.
“What a bunch of wusses,” said Lexie. “I think this place is terrifantastic. I feel like one of the Famous Five.”
“Five Find a Prehistoric Ruin,” Daniel said.
“Five Find the Mold Planet,” said Rafe. “Simply spiffing.”
“We should have ginger cake and potted meat,” Lexie said.
“Together?” asked Rafe.
“And sardines,” said Lexie. “What is potted meat?”
“Spam,” Abby told her.
“Ew.”
Justin went over to the sink, held the lighter close and turned on the taps. One of them sputtered, popped and eventually let out a thin stream of water.
“Mmm,” said Abby. “Typhoid tea, anyone?”
“I want to be George,” said Lexie. “She was cool.”
“I don’t care as long as I’m not Anne,” Abby said. “She always got stuck doing the washing up, just because she was a girl.”
“What’s wrong with that?” asked Rafe.
“You can be Timmy the dog,” Lexie told him.
The rhythms of their conversation were faster than I had expected, smart and sharp as a jitterbug, and I could see why the rest of the English department thought this lot were up themselves. They had to be impossible to talk to; those tight, polished syncopations didn’t leave room for anyone else. Somehow, though, Lexie had managed to slot herself in there, tailored herself or rearranged them inch by inch till she made a place for herself and became part of them, seamless. Whatever this girl’s game was, she had been good at it.
A small clear voice at the back of my head said: Just like I’m good at mine.
Miraculously, the screen lit up, more or less, as a forty-watt bulb came on overhead: Abby had found the light switch, in an unlikely corner by a grease-draped cooker. “Well done, Abby,” said Lexie, panning.
“I’m not sure,” said Abby. “It looks even worse now that I can see it.”
She was right. The walls had obviously been papered at some stage, but a greenish mold had staged a coup, creeping in from every corner and almost meeting in the middle. Spectacular Halloween-decoration cobwebs trailed from the ceiling, swaying gently in the draft. The linoleum was grayish and curling, with sinister dark streaks; on the table was a glass vase holding a bunch of very dead flowers, stalks broken and sagging at odd angles. Everything was about three inches thick with dust. Abby looked deeply skeptical; Rafe looked amused, in a horrified kind of way; Daniel looked mildly intrigued; Justin looked like he might throw up.
“You want me to live there?” I said to Frank.
“It doesn’t look like that now,” he told me, reproachfully. “They’ve really done a lot with it.”
“Have they bulldozed it and started over?”
“It’s lovely. You’ll love it. Shh.”
“Here,” Lexie said; the camera jerked and swung wildly, caught cobwebby curtains in a horrible seventies orange swirl. “You mind that. I want to explore.”
“I hope you’ve had your shots,” Rafe said. “What do you want me to do with this?”
“Don’t tempt me,” Lexie told him, and bounced into shot, heading over towards the cupboards.
She moved lighter than me, small steps tipped up on the balls of her feet, and girlier: her curves were no more impressive than mine, obviously, but she had a dancing little swing that made you notice them. Her hair had been longer then, just long enough to pull into two curly bunches over her ears, and she was wearing jeans and a tight cream-colored sweater a lot like one I used to have. I still had no idea whether we would have liked each other, if we had had the chance to meet-probably not-but that was beside the point, so irrelevant that I didn’t even know how to think about it.
“Wow,” Lexie said, peering into one of the cupboards. “What is it? Is it alive?”
“It may well have been,” Daniel said, leaning over her shoulder. “A very long time ago.”
“I think it’s the other way around,” said Abby. “It didn’t use to be alive, but it is now. Has it evolved opposable thumbs yet?”
“I miss my flat,” said Justin lugubriously, from a safe distance.
“You do not,” Lexie told him. “Your flat was three foot square and made from reconstituted cardboard and you hated it.”
“My flat didn’t have unidentified life-forms.”
“Whatsisname upstairs with the sound system who thought he was Ali G.”
“I think it’s some kind of fungus,” Daniel said, inspecting the cupboard with interest.
“That does it,” said Rafe. “I am not recording this. When we’re old and gray and wallowing in nostalgia, our first memories of our home should not be defined by fungus. How do I turn this thing off?”
A second of linoleum; then the screen went black.
“We’ve got forty-two clips like that,” Frank told me, hitting buttons, “all between about one minute and five minutes long. Add in, say, another week’s worth of intensive interviews with her associates, and I’m pretty sure we’ll have enough information to put together our very own DIY Lexie Madison. Assuming, that is, that you want to.”
