lucybest65 The end is nigh.
33
Now
I careered down the stairway of Blue Moon’s office building as fast as I could and burst out onto the street below. I blew out a breath as I leaned against the wall and absorbed what was about to happen. I knew which building it was. Now I needed to find it and work out if it was the whole house or just a flat that Lucy had. I was just about to start walking when my phone began to ring. I pulled it from my back pocket; it was the number. I felt the familiar sensation of panic rise through me as I let it ring out. I didn’t need to answer it.
I carried on veering around the corner and then back on myself until I reached the back of Blue Moon and immediately looked up for the window of purple flowers. There was a row of five four-storey townhouses. Most of them I could see from where I was standing had intercoms next to the door, but the one house with purple flowers in the window box, the one in the middle, the one I believed Lucy Best was residing in, had no intercom, meaning it was a house and not a flat. I walked across the road and stood at the bottom of the steps that led up to the main door. I paused outside, looking up at the grandness, wondering if being here was indeed the right thing. To my right were steps that led down to a white basement door, framed either side by black iron railings. I stood and thought for a moment, assessing the situation. I eyed the steps down to the basement. I thought back to what I had already achieved in the last hour, what I had managed to do; a daring task I would never have envisioned myself doing a few weeks, or even a few days ago. But things were rapidly changing in my mind. Maybe it was because I knew I was running out of time. As if my phone was wired to my thoughts, it began ringing. I yanked it out and cursed at it as I saw the same number ringing. I made an instinctual decision and turned it off.
I walked up the steps and approached the large, black door. I rang the doorbell and heard it trill through what I imagined to be a huge, sparse hallway. I stood on the doorstep. I felt a chill in the air as the afternoon cooled. All the walking I had done had made me hot, and now I was starting to cool down. I pulled my sweatshirt out of my rucksack and put it on.
A minute or so had passed and no one answered. I considered ringing again. Either I was being ignored or no one was in.
I looked around, beginning to feel paranoia seep in as people passed by. I wondered who was looking, who was making a note of my hair colour, height and what I was wearing so they could accurately relay it to the Crimestoppers’ line later.
I shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot and shivered at the chill that was absorbing into my bones. I suddenly realised I was a long way from home. I thought about my phone, which was switched off. Maybe I should turn it back on? But the consequence of that would be more detrimental than the feeling of aloneness.
I had now been standing on the doorstep for a good few minutes and so I began to edge back down the steps. I took a quick look down the stairs at the basement door, and as I did, I thought back to the stroke of luck that allowed me to take my chance getting to the rooftop of Blue Moon. I thought back further about how I had found the advert for the rooftop cinema in the magazine. So far it felt as though I had not arrived here by chance but by a series of events that had all been carefully aligned. I felt as though I had a purpose; standing here on the doorstep of a total stranger actually seemed to me to be the first thing to have made sense in a long time.
As I arrived at the bottom of the steps, I automatically began the descent to the basement. Walls surrounded me on either side as though I had just stepped into an empty swimming pool. I peered through a small window to the left of the door and saw nothing but darkness. I knocked hard. I stood, shifting my feet from side to side. A minute or so passed. I glanced up at the road, then placed my hand on the doorknob, turned it and to my amazement, it opened.
34
Now
The door let out a gentle squeak and I cast a tentative glance behind me before I stepped over the threshold and closed the door. With no one else around and a dread burning up my chest and into my throat, I took a moment to rapidly open and close the door another six times.
There was a musty smell in the room I found myself in that suggested it wasn’t used for much other than storage. There was a shard of light coming through the small window, and I could see a closed door at the top of a flight of steps. I stopped and looked at the stairs. All my doubts and fears came thundering down on me at once, and I almost turned and ran back out of the door. But I thought about how I had been driven here by social instinct. About how far I had come. About my neighbour. About lucybest65 and how I needed to check she was okay.
There were about twenty or so different-sized boxes piled up on one side of the room; they
