left a lamp on, you think?’ Ameena asked. She chewed on the knuckle of one of the fingers on her left hand. I couldn’t remember ever seeing her so nervous.
‘You should know,’ I said. ‘Was there a light on when you stayed here?’
She looked at me blankly for a moment, her eyebrows dipping into the beginning of a frown. It passed as quickly as it had come, and she gave a casual shrug. ‘Didn’t notice,’ she said. ‘But then I didn’t exactly hang around long.’
That surprised me. As far as I’d known, Ameena had been sleeping rough in the Keller House for almost two weeks after our encounter with Mr Mumbles. I wanted to ask her where she’d gone instead, but there was no time for questions.
With a final glance back at me, Ameena took hold of the old wooden banister, and crept cautiously up the stairs.
Upstairs the same threadbare carpet covered the floor and the same peeling wallpaper drooped from the walls. A bare bulb hung from the ceiling, thick with dust and cobwebs. The bulb wasn’t the source of the light, though. That seeped in through a door at the far end of the landing. It was one of four doors, and the only one standing open. Unfortunately, it wasn’t open far enough for us to see inside the room.
The smell of damp was worse up here. It reached down my throat, making me gag. Ameena seemed unaffected as she crossed the landing, making for the half-open door.
She stopped when she reached it, moved to push it the rest of the way open, then hesitated. For a long time, she didn’t look as if she was going to make any further movement.
‘Want me to go first?’ I asked, adding please say no, please say no, please say no in my head.
‘No.’
‘Thank God!’
She shot me a scowl.
‘Sorry,’ I mumbled. ‘Didn’t mean to say that out loud.’
With a shake of her head, Ameena put her palm against the door and gave it a nudge. It swung open a little, then caught on the carpet, forcing her to step closer and give it another shove. It opened with a low, ominous creak.
The glow of a streetlight shone in through the bedroom window, and I remembered that none of the upstairs windows had ever been boarded up. I’d lain awake in bed countless times when I was younger, convinced I’d seen shadows moving within the bedrooms of the Keller House while I was closing my own curtains.
And now, here I was, my own shadow moving across the mould-stained wallpaper, and through the window, across the garden – my house. My bedroom. My curtains. I stared into my darkened room, wishing I could transport myself back to one of those nights, lying in bed, Mum assuring me the Keller House was empty.
I hoped she was right.
‘Hey, check it out!’ Ameena’s voice broke the spell and I turned from the window. She was sitting propped up on a single bed, her muddy boots leaving marks on the yellowing covers, her back resting against the padded headboard. ‘Bagsy the bed.’
‘You can have it,’ I said, queasy at the thought. ‘There could be anything crawling about in there. I’ll sleep on the floor.’
‘Oh, like that’s better?’
I looked down and winced. The carpet was a mess of mould and mouse droppings. Mushrooms sprouted from the soggier patches, all of them different shapes and sizes, all of them probably deadly.
A fat black insect with a shiny back scuttled past my foot. I watched it scurry across the carpet, through a clump of the mushrooms, and into a dark hole in the skirting board.
‘We should check out the other rooms,’ I said, fighting the urge to scratch my skin until it bled. ‘They might be less...’
‘Revolting?’
I nodded. ‘Hopefully.’
‘Right then,’ Ameena said, swinging her legs off the bed and taking a kick at the closest mushroom crop. ‘Lead the way, kiddo.’
Of the three remaining upstairs rooms, one was another equally filthy bedroom, one was a small box room with nothing in it, and the last was a bathroom so horrific we both agreed never to speak of it again.
The box room was where we settled in the end. It was completely bare – exposed wooden floorboard, unpainted plasterboard walls – and, as a result, hadn’t decayed as badly as the other rooms. It also looked straight on to the side of my house, meaning we could see if anyone came or went through the front door or the back. The perfect place for a stakeout.
I stood at the window, looking across the gardens to my house. In the past twenty minutes I’d seen just one car pass along the street. I’d ducked as soon as I spotted the headlights, but the car didn’t slow down as it continued along the road and turned the corner at the far end.
‘Anything?’ Ameena asked from right behind me. I hadn’t even heard her approach.
I shook my head. ‘No. Looks deserted.’
‘We expected that,’ she said, as tactfully as she could. ‘I’m sure she’s fine. Your mum. There’d have been something in the papers if she’d... if her condition had changed.’
‘I know,’ I replied, still not taking my eyes off the house. ‘I want to go over.’
Without looking, I could guess at Ameena’s expression. ‘That’d just be stupid,’ she said. ‘You’d get caught.’
‘Who by?’ I asked, gesturing across to the house. To my home. ‘There’s no one there.’
‘They’re bound to be watching, though. Think about it.’
‘I won’t be long,’ I told her. ‘I just want to see it. Maybe get some clean clothes.’
I stepped back from the window, still not looking at her. She caught me by the shoulder. I stopped, but didn’t turn. ‘Don’t do it,’ she said. ‘You can’t help anyone if you’re locked up.’
‘I’m not helping anyone now,’ I said, shrugging myself free. ‘I won’t be long. There’s no one coming.’
Halfway to the door, I stopped, as a blue light lit up the room. It faded quickly, then brightened again. The pattern repeated, over and over, and I knew what was happening even before Ameena spoke.
‘Cops,’ she said, matter-of-factly.
I crossed to the window. ‘Here?’
‘At yours.’
Ameena stood to one side of the window frame, leaning out just a little to watch what was happening below. I took the opposite side and peeped out.
A single police car stood outside my front garden, its blue light flashing, its headlamps blazing.
‘No one coming, eh?’ Ameena said. I didn’t meet her gaze.
‘What’s it doing?’ I asked, my voice a whisper, as if whoever was in the police car might hear me.
Before Ameena answered, the driver’s door opened and a woman in a police uniform stepped out. From here she looked young – mid-twenties, maybe – but it was hard to tell for sure.
She glanced along the street and up at my house. I pulled back, expecting her to look our way, but she didn’t. Instead she walked around to the other side of the car and opened the rear