‘Hello? Hello?’ A different voice now: the boy’s. ‘Can you hear me? Hello? Are you all right?’ There was a light slapping noise, which I took to be someone gently tapping Roxy’s cheek to wake her up, then the woman’s voice came back in, followed by a sharp intake of breath, a gasp and a little moan.
The boy said something to the woman, and then there was a cough and another moan of pain.
‘That’s me,’ said Roxy. ‘I’m coming round, and I try to get up.’
Sure enough, the picture moved, as if Roxy was trying to sit upright, but then went back to the ceiling as the woman said, ‘No, hinny. Lie back down, pet. You’ve banged y’heed bad. Just rest there a bit, pet. Divvent move. Shhhh.’
It was a gentle, soothing voice, with a strong north-eastern lilt, and something else as well: another accent. She sounded like Kristina Nilsen at my old school who was Norwegian but had a Geordie accent as well.
Anyway this was not the cackling voice of a witch, but I didn’t say that to Roxy.
She fast-forwarded a bit more.
‘It’s just me lying down, and them talking in their language.’
On the screen, there was a glimpse of a china bowl. Roxy said, ‘She had something in there that she bathed my head with, where it got cut. Smelt gross and it stung like anything.’
Then the woman’s voice said, ‘D’you reckon you can sit up, petal? Come on, up you get. Easy does it. How ye fettlin’?’
Suddenly there they were, standing in front of Roxy as she sat up and the tiny camera took everything in.
The woman’s shapeless sweater appeared to be hand-knitted. Her long hands were rough-looking and clasped in front of her in an appearance of concern.
The top of her head was cut off by the camera, but there was a soft look on her face. She said something to the boy: ‘Go-ther svine, Alve. Go-ther svine.’
The boy was obviously her son: they looked very alike, from the pale eyes to the dirty-blond hair and the long fingers. His teeth, too, were yellowed and gappy. His clothes were old-fashioned: proper trousers (not jeans), button-up shirt. Aunty Alice would have said he looked ‘right smart’, but to me he looked like he’d borrowed his dad’s clothes. The sunglasses hanging round his neck completed the unusual look.
Behind them was a room that was darkish and cluttered, with old-fashioned easy chairs, and a table piled with papers, and a mantelpiece covered with vases and knick-knacks, and piles of paper on the floor and …
‘Sheesh – look at the state of the place!’ I said.
Roxy laughed. ‘Get you, Mister Houseproud!’ she teased. ‘But I know what you mean. And it smelt …’ She hesitated.
‘Bad?’
She wrinkled her nose as if that would help her to recall the smell. ‘Not bad, exactly. Just … old. Like an old person’s house with old stuff in it. A bit dusty, maybe? It was clean, though.’
I nodded. Gran and Grandad’s house smells a bit like that, and they’re not even all that old. We looked back at the screen.
‘How are you feelin’, hinny? Are you dizzy at all? Try standin’ up – gently, mind.’
‘She sounds normal,’ I said. ‘Nice, even.’
‘I know,’ Roxy said. ‘You wait, though.’
‘Can you move all yer bits, petal? Nothin’ broken? That was quite a bump y’ had.’
The picture moved while Roxy, presumably, twisted her arms and legs about to check, then her voice said, ‘No, nothing broken, thanks. I’d better be going.’
And then the boy piped up, off screen: ‘Are you sure? You do not have to go straight away. It might not be safe, you know, if you have been concussed.’
There followed an exchange in their language, but I still couldn’t make anything of it, though I did hear the word ‘Al-vuh’ again. It was hard to tell because I couldn’t see their faces, but it sounded like the woman was being a bit firm with the boy.
‘Pause it,’ I said to Roxy and she did. ‘What was all that about?’
Roxy shrugged. ‘How would I know?’
We rewound and played it again. ‘If I had to guess,’ I said, ‘it would be that she was telling him not to invite you to stay. It’s in her tone.’
We played it a third time, and Roxy agreed. ‘I didn’t want to stay, anyway. I was terrified.’
On-screen the camera turned so that we saw the rest of the room. Parts of it were piled so high with stuff that the towers of paper and books looked as though they might topple over. On one wall was a bookshelf that probably contained as many books as our school library, crammed in higgledy-piggledy. The camera was moving too fast for me to see any titles, but they looked like old books, not brightly coloured paperbacks. There was a glimpse of a cat’s black-and-white tail passing the camera’s eye.
Roxy’s voice: ‘I … I really have to go. Thanks. Thank you.’
The woman stepped in front of her, and her face had become much less friendly.
‘But, hinny, you haven’t told me what you were doing. I mean, why were you on our property in the first place? It’s clearly marked as private, and there are fences which you and your friend must have broken through.’
‘My … my …’
‘Your friend. Oh aye, we saw him, didn’t we, Alve?’
The boy nodded with a pained expression on his face. It was clear he didn’t like this new line of interrogation.
‘W-we just got lost.’
The woman leant in close. ‘Did y’now? Well, divvent get lost again, or I’ll have the Peelers onto ye.’ Then she smiled: a cold smile that said ‘I’m not being mean, but don’t underestimate me.’
I had no idea what this ‘having the Peelers’ meant, and looked across to Roxy who gave a half-shrug. It didn’t sound good, whatever it was.
As Roxy’s voice on the film stammered apologies, the picture showed her progress out of the room, into an equally dark and cluttered hallway, and towards a large wooden door with a small window in the front. Her hands scrabbled for the handle, and then she turned and only the boy was standing before her.
‘I’m sorry,’ Roxy repeated, and the strangest thing happened.
The boy gave a shy smile, which was only just visible at the top of the screen, because of Roxy’s lack of height. Then he said, ‘Me too.’ He glanced behind him, then added, quieter, ‘Perhaps I shall see you again?’ His tone was sad, and hopeful. On the film his mother’s footsteps came closer.
The wooden door was open and he said: ‘That way.’ At the edge of the picture, he raised his hand in a shy wave, and the (mostly) black cat scuttled away in the corner of the frame.
Then the picture started jerking up and down as the sound changed to Roxy’s running feet slapping the road as she got away as quickly as she could.
And now she was sitting in front of me, looking smug.
‘Told you,’ she said. ‘The strange language, the lotion, the old books, the threat? She is totally a witch.’
However much I pleaded and scoffed, nothing would convince Roxy Minto that she had not had an encounter with a witch.
If