“Oh no, of course not,” lied Mary with a nervous laugh. “Are you sure? It’ll only take a minute. And, I don’t know, I think it might make me feel a little better, at least. I mean, it might take a little while for us to get through what I want to say. I’ll put the kettle on, shall I?”
Without waiting for a response, Mary made her way towards the kitchen, leaving a disgruntled Amanda behind her in the hallway. Just as Mary reached the kitchen door, to her great relief the phone started to ring. She spun around on the spot and, with a look of great relief, darted towards the living room.
“Oh, do excuse me,” said Mary as she rushed past Amanda in the hall. “I’ll just get that.”
Amanda leant back on the yellowing wallpaper of the hall, sighed deeply and noticed the house’s scent of stale tobacco for the first time since she had arrived. She could not understand at all why Mary had phoned her a couple of days before. The woman seemed so unforthcoming when it came to whatever she had called about that Amanda started to have her doubts about whether Mary had any real information to give her at all. However, the idea that Mary had nothing to tell also made no sense to the young vampire as why would Mary - who had been so short with Amanda when she first visited Balfour Lane - bring a school investigator back to her home for no reason?
“Speaking,” Amanda heard Mary say. A long pause followed, during which time Amanda assumed whoever was on the other end of the line was speaking to Mary. As Mary’s mumbled affirmations to whoever was on the phone drifted into the hall, the thought crossed Amanda’s mind that perhaps she had the opportunity, while Mary was distracted, to inspect the bathroom that she had been prevented from entering the night before. As quietly as she could, Amanda made her way into the kitchen and – just as she found herself standing before the bathroom door – then heard an unintelligible guttural scream that seemingly came from the room beyond; something which was quickly followed by the crash of something against a wall. Without hesitation, Amanda rocketed forwards to find out what was going on in the once hidden room.
Just as Amanda entered the bathroom, she heard the sound of the kitchen door fly open and smack against the wall.
“What’s going on? Don’t you dare go in there!” cried Mary.
Amanda slammed the bathroom door behind her, fumbled for a second for the sliding bolt lock – which she quickly recognized would not even be able to keep a child, let alone Mary, out of the room for long – before pressing her back against the door and holding onto its handle in an attempt to hold off the woman of the house for long enough to discover what was going on. She could feel her still beating, undead heart racing in her chest, but she nevertheless managed to examine the room before her as best she could from her defensive position at the door. To her surprise and slight disappointment, she found almost nothing out of the ordinary. All that was there was a slightly ugly, old fashioned extension bathroom. The only thing of any note was the head height, broken window that had been smashed the night before.
Amanda’s brief examination of the room was brought to an abrupt end when she felt the sudden sharp pressure against her hand as Mary attempted to gain access to the room.
“What are you doing in there? Get out!” shouted Mary.
“What’s wrong with you!” exclaimed Amanda. “There’s nothing here! What are you hiding from me? Tell me!”
“Get out! Get out! Get out!” screamed the woman as she released her grip on the handle and started to beat her fists against the door.
Amanda pressed herself all the harder against the wood of the door for fear that the enraged woman would burst through and attempt to tear her to shreds; she even glanced around for something to either hold the door or to defend herself with, but nothing of use was ready to hand. The woman’s pummelling of the door ceased, only to be replaced by the sound of feet skipping across the kitchen tiles. Amanda braced herself in the expectation of an impact, but when Mary threw her full force against the door, it was not enough. Amanda was thrown forwards and hurtled uncontrollably into the sink, before falling down to the floor. As she came down, hard, on the ground, she had just enough presence of mind to notice that the noise she created was not only suggestive of a substantial open space beneath the floor, but also that there was a suspicious slope to the floor in one of the bathroom’s corners.
Through hurling herself at the door, Mary briefly stunned herself, but she soon regained enough composure to make another rush towards Amanda, who was still sprawled out on the floor. As the woman approached at speed, with fixed determination and rage in her eyes, Amanda threw out a leg to protect herself and knocked a surprised Mary backwards into the bath. Knowing that her attack on Mary would not keep the woman away for long, Amanda seized the moment, got to her feet as quickly as she could and then lurched for the corner of the room. She reached down, grabbing the corner of the linoleum floor covering, but before she could pull it back, she felt Mary’s hands push their way through her arms so they could seize hold of her chest. Mary pulled with all her power, causing the two to tumble backwards. But Amada did not let go of the multi-coloured tile patterned covering, leading it to first come away from the
