I pulled it open to see Kerry standing on the step. ‘There you are,’ she said. ‘I’ve been knocking for ages.’
I stood with my mouth open for a second or two. ‘You didn’t have to bash the door like that,’ I said. ‘It sounded like you were trying to break it down.’
‘But you weren’t answering.’
‘We might’ve been out.’
‘But you weren’t.’
I sighed. ‘What do you want, Kerry?’ I said this quite loud, so that Zoe would hear me and would make sure there were no traces of the ritual.
‘I’ve just come to see you. Can I come in?’ Kerry took a step towards me and I had to stop myself from swinging the door shut in her face. Instead I took a step backwards and let her walk inside.
‘Zoe is just upstairs,’ I said. ‘Let’s, umm, go into the kitchen and make some hot chocolate.’
Kerry followed me into the kitchen. I switched on the light and as it flickered into a bright glare, we both stared around. ‘Oh my god,’ I whispered.
The place looked as though there’d been a small explosion. The takeaway boxes, plates, knives and forks had been thrown around the room. One plate had smashed and was in pieces on the floor. The kitchen walls were smeared all round with red, like something from a horror film.
‘What have you been doing?’ asked Kerry, her eyes big and round. ‘How have you managed to make all this mess? Won’t your mum go completely wild? Mine would kill me.’
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t understand it.
I ran out of the kitchen and shouted up the stairs to Zoe. She strolled down slowly, giving me a little nod to tell me that she’d put everything away upstairs. I pushed her into the kitchen. Zoe gaped and swore under her breath.
‘Help me,’ I said. ‘We have to get rid of all this mess before my mum comes home.’
Kerry immediately started picking things up from the floor. ‘What time is she back?’ she asked, pushing the torn, soggy cardboard from the takeaway boxes into a plastic carrier bag.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, raking my hands through my hair. ‘But it can’t be long.’
Zoe picked up the broken plate and wrapped the pieces in kitchen roll. ‘We need to know how the hell this happened.’
‘Yes, what were you two doing?’ Kerry demanded.
‘It wasn’t us,’ I said, grabbing the kitchen roll and starting to wipe the walls. The sticky, red smears were sweet and sour sauce, it turned out and it took a few squirts of cleaning spray to get rid of them.
Zoe tried the back door. ‘Not locked,’ she said. ‘Someone must’ve walked in and done this. Charming.’
A horrible thought struck me and I ran into the living room to see if there was any more damage. But it looked exactly as we’d left it. I took the bags of rubbish out to the bin, squinting around to see if anyone was there. It was dark and deserted.
When I went back inside, Kerry and Zoe were arguing. Kerry said that we must have done the damage ourselves and Zoe was insisting that we didn’t.
‘How could someone have come in and done all that without you hearing them, though?’ Kerry asked. ‘Although you didn’t hear me knocking at the door for ages. Did you have headphones on or something?’
We didn’t answer, because at that point we heard Mum’s key in the door. I flicked the kettle on as she put her head round the kitchen door. ‘Wow, girls, thank you for cleaning the kitchen,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you good? Sorry I was so long. The bus was really late.’
‘Kettle’s on,’ I said, as brightly as I could, though I was still trembling. Zoe made three hot chocolates and I made my mum a mug of tea and ushered her towards the sofa. ‘Sit down and relax,’ I told her. ‘We’ll go upstairs out of your way.’
‘You should tell your mum,’ Kerry said, far too loudly, on the way up the stairs.
‘Tell me what?’ I heard Mum call, half-heartedly, from the sofa.
I didn’t reply, but Zoe poked Kerry hard in the back.
Upstairs, I closed the bedroom door firmly behind us. The smell of oil and incense was still very strong and Kerry sniffed and wrinkled her nose.
‘Don’t you dare say anything to anyone about this,’ I warned Kerry. ‘Not even Jodie, right?’
‘But…’
‘Just shut up, will you?’ Zoe’s mouth was a hard line. ‘It’s all horrible enough without you making things worse.’
Kerry’s phone bleeped. She glanced at it and said she had to go home. ‘Luke says Mum’s looking for me. Shall I take my mug into the kitchen?’
‘Leave it here, I’ll sort it out.’ I didn’t want to give Kerry the chance to get into conversation with my mum, so I steered her to the door.
Back upstairs, Zoe and I stared at each other.
‘What the hell happened, then?’ I asked, dropping onto my bed. ‘I didn’t know what all that red stuff was on the walls, at first. It was like something from a nightmare.’
‘Want my theory?’ Zoe raised her carefully black-pencilled eyebrows. ‘I reckon it was Kerry.’
I laughed. ‘Don’t be daft. She’s the last person who’d do something like that. She’s too – I don’t know. Too boring. And good. What was that word you said before?’
‘Sanctimonious,’ said Zoe. ‘But it doesn’t mean someone’s really good, just that they like to look that way.’ She tapped her nails on the little table. ‘She could’ve got in the back door, no problem.’
‘So could anyone,’ I said. ‘Isn’t it more likely it was some stupid kids? Or – or someone who was high on something and didn’t know what they were doing?’
‘But if it was someone like that, someone who was off their head,’ Zoe said, ‘why
