‘Why are you blubbing?’ says Charles.
‘They’re tears of joy,’ I say – amazed by how quiet my voice is.
38
The Solo
Sometimes, when you’ve decided something, it’s like the part of your mind that’s made the decision is setting things in motion before the rest of your brain has caught up. So when Charles asked what I was sticking up my nose, the slow bit of my brain had to think about the answer.
‘They’re nose plugs,’ I say, pulling a capsule from my other pocket. ‘Real talk – genuine SAS issue.’
And then I drop the capsule and stamp on it.
I was expecting more delay, but almost immediately Indigo coughs once, twice and throws up all over the bed. She rears back, vomits again – stretches out and grows a beautiful bushy tail.
‘Indigo,’ I say. ‘To me.’ And she jumps into my arms.
Simon’s mouth twists into a funny shape.
‘Yuck,’ he says.
‘I did a stink bomb,’ I say.
He says something, but with his hands clamped over his face it’s too muffled to make out. I lean over and grab him by the arm and drag him out into the hall. I want the stairs, but there’s another door and I can’t risk leaving someone up here. I push Simon towards the stairs and bang open the door.
Inside is another room with two narrow bedsteads and mean-looking furniture – servants’ rooms. Nobody at home, but I crush another capsule – just to be sure.
Simon is waiting for me at the top of the stairs.
‘Get down the stairs!’ I yell as Charles the House lurches into the hallway behind me.
Simon thumps down the staircase ahead of me, and I drop a third capsule halfway down and stamp on it. But even as I do, I realise it was a mistake. Indigo yaks messily down my side and even with the nose clip I’m feeling bare sick and not in a good way.
Indigo is coughing and spluttering and jumps out of my arms – skipping the last third of the stairs. Behind me there is a wail that starts like a child’s but goes all weirdly loud and deep, like something that lives under water and eats whales. I jump the last of the steps.
‘You two!’ I shout at Simon and Indigo. ‘Out the front door!’
Amazingly, they don’t argue.
There are three rooms on the second floor, only one has kids in it – Nerd Boy, Long Hair and a girl I don’t know. The walls have turned all stripped and peeling – we’re back in the real ting house and the kids have two seconds to look about before the smell hits them and they run for the door.
All I have to do is make sure they go down, not up.
‘Abigail!’ A voice as loud and as deep as a foundation and full of grinding bricks. ‘What have you done?’
I want to shout something clever like ‘smell you later’, but I’m trying not to gag as I half-run, half-slide down the stairs to the first floor. The smell is obviously running ahead of me, because the hallway is full of choking kids. I have to shove one boy in the right direction – he snarls, I shove him again, and he almost falls down the stairs.
Wood splinters above me as if something bare heavy has crashed down onto the staircase. I follow snarling boy down, trying not to think what the spirit of a house might be able to do physically – if it was vexed enough.
On the ground floor they’re already trooping out. And, amazingly, Simon is standing by the front door waving them through like a lollipop lady.26 I check the knocked-through reception/dining room, the kitchen and toilet under the stairs. But everyone has gone.
I look at the door to the stairs down to the basement flat. I don’t want to, but sometimes it’s not about what you want, is it?
‘Out out out!’ I shout at Simon and Indigo. ‘I’m right behind you.’
Unfortunately, so is House.
I go down the basement stairs, out into what was once the kitchen and servants’ quarters, then a bong-infested granny flat, and then no doubt rented out to – I don’t know . . . Who can afford a flat this far up the hill in Hampstead? In the real ting house it was an empty shell, one big room stripped out and with the doors and windows sealed against squatters. Almost totally dark.
‘Who’s that?’
Natali is standing in the shadows.
‘It’s me. Abigail,’ I say, and crush the last of my capsules underfoot.
‘Abigail?’ she says.
‘The happening has been moved to a different venue,’ I say, and grab her arm. She resists, but once the smell hits her she’s keener than me to get out.
I follow her up the stairs and out into the ground-floor hall. There is a rectangle of daylight ahead, and luckily Natali makes straight for it.
Then it’s the 1970s again. Julias is having a dinner party. The daylight has gone. I can feel myself slipping back into the space Grace Dvorˇák left behind when she died.
‘It’s not going to work,’ I say, even as I remember her first solo, pulling the stick back and feeling the plane rotate under her, the sudden smoothness as the wheels leave the ground and the sudden terrifying sense that she was in sole control of her destiny. And then climbing up, high into a blue sky above the lush apple orchards of Kent.
‘But for this gift,’ I say, ‘I thank you.’
And wrapping Grace’s memory around me, I walk out into the light.
26 School crossing guard.
39
A Long Delayed But Inevitable Grounding
I’m standing outside the house in the twilight with blue lights flashing all around me.
And hordes of Feds are sorting through the posse of teenagers that I, Abigail Kamara, have led from the valley of death – not that I’m going to get any credit. Not even an Amazon voucher.
Simon is sitting in his mum’s sensible Audi and waving at me through the window. I wave back, but Simon’s mum is
