The lock to her actual flat was easier to operate. One turn and he was in. The flat was very small. A living room with a bay window at the front looking out on to the busy road below, a bedroom just behind that, a small bathroom behind that, and a half-sized kitchen at the back with double doors that opened out on to a fire escape with metal stairs going down into the shared garden space. He called out immediately.
‘Hope! ’S me. Where are you?’
No reply. The flat was quiet. He listened. Perhaps she was in the bath? Or on the loo? No sound. He walked to the kitchen first, and immediately put water in the kettle and turned it on. There were two chairs at a small table at the far end but otherwise the kitchen was uninviting, which was all wrong, they thought. Hope told him that any home where she lived should have a kitchen you can hang out in, but this one was too small and shoddily put together. The saving grace was the door out to the stairs. Hope was specifically told by her landlord that, by law, she WASN’T to block the access on these stairs, they WERE NOT for her recreational use, they were a fire escape ONLY. They weren’t even the proper access to the garden. To get into the garden officially, legally, she was supposed to go out of the flat, down the clompy entrance stairs, out of the front door, turn right on the street, turn immediately right again up an alley to the narrow lane at the very back, which ran along all the yards, and which contained everyone’s bins. There was a door into the garden yard from there, and THAT was the one she was supposed to use …
Yeah. Sure.
Just like Mr Bike Hermit wasn’t supposed to keep a bike in the hallway …
Of course, she used the fire escape. She often left the door wide open, and she had commandeered the slightly bigger top step to put plenty of planted tubs out. She grew herbs for cooking there. She had mint and basil and chives and rosemary. She had a honeysuckle which was growing vigorously up and twirling around the railings, and which had a heavenly perfume that blew back into her flat on summer evenings and helped to combat the sickly sweet cannabis aroma that wafted up from Mr Below, the Bike Hermit.
Quiet Isaac opened the door. It was April then, and warm enough to let the fresh air in. He walked back up the narrow corridor to Hope’s bedroom. He glanced ahead into the tiny front room to check she wasn’t asleep or something in there, but no. So, he opened the door to the bedroom. It was a small room, but Isaac loved it. It was where they were intimate, so even the lovely musky smell of the room as he opened the door excited him; there was always love in this room.
The curtains were open on the small window and the top half of the window was ajar a few inches. It was impossible to open the door fully since Hope had insisted on having a double bed in a room so small that a single bed was pushing it, space-wise. The double bed took up all the space and pretty much touched the walls on three sides. Since there was no room to walk around the bed, Hope had put shelves up everywhere so that whatever might be in bedside cabinets was now on shelves all over the walls. It made for a cluttered, cheerful room. Pride of place, above the head of the bed, was a painting Isaac had brought with him. His mother gave it to him just before he left Africa. It was the side-on silhouette of an African American in a high collar, circa eighteenth century, with a majestic clipper ship beneath, and the words ‘Captain Paul Cuffee 1812’ written around it. This was his mother’s hero, a black Quaker ship’s captain who assisted free blacks in America to emigrate to Sierra Leone, and played a huge part in abolishing slavery and establishing a new colony in Freetown. Quiet Isaac’s mother often told him that this was a man to aspire to be like, a courageous traveller who NEVER FORGOT HIS ROOTS. Isaac had heard the stories of Cuffee’s bravery all his life, but the overriding message was about returning. His mother wanted him to arm himself with all the engineering skills he could, then bring them home.
HOME.
HOME.
Her message was powerful and Quiet Isaac fully intended to honour her wishes … It was testament to his high regard for Hope that he had brought the painting from his campus room to here. He knew it would be safer here, and this was where his heart was. Hope had placed it there, and next to it on the shelf, she put two small flags she’d made and coloured with felt-tips. A Union Jack and the tricolour green, white and blue flag of Sierra Leone. Isaac whooped when he first saw them and it had made Hope very happy.
So here he was, entering the room he loved so much. As he flung his tote bag on to the bed, he noticed a blue shoebox there, with ‘OPEN ME’ written on it in Hope’s unmistakeable bold clear handwriting. He looked closer.
As Quiet Isaac bent over to examine the curious box, Hope held her breath. She was hiding in the small wardrobe in the corner of the room, just behind the bedroom door. The cheap built-in cupboard had slats on the doors, so she could just about see him. She didn’t want him to have a single clue she was there, so she had been sitting as still as a statue in the cramped space ever since she heard his key in the door
