light projected her shadow on the yard wall, where it loomed like some monstrous parody of a Victorian villain.
The yard of number seventeen was littered with junk and did not benefit from security lighting. Even in the weak beam of Lena’s torch Edie had to pick her way through the detritus and fight the smell of rotting rubbish. As she had suspected, the back door had been left open and her heart sank and floundered like a landed fish.
Whoever was inside hadn’t turned on the lights so she paused and strained her ears in a bid to pick up auditory evidence of a wrecking party. There was nothing, only the distant wail of a siren and the muffled hum of the square. Feeling increasingly apprehensive she stole through the door and found the kitchen empty of vandals and the same as she had left it, except for the presence of a back pack that had been placed on the kitchen table. Edie shone the torch beam on it. The bag was old and worn and emitted a pungent smell of old dirt and rotting daffodils – why the prospect of facing one of the great unwashed was less fear provoking than a houseful of rampant teenagers was beyond Edie, but for some reason she felt less tense about the anticipated encounter. Until a loud, house-shaking thud from upstairs caused her to drop the torch and cling onto the rolling pin with both hands in a primal stance of abject terror. The torch rolled on the floor, its thin beam making a kaleidoscope of shadows dance across the walls, to the extent that she felt surrounded and assailed by the ghosts of her own fears. Taking a deep breath she moved into the hallway and crept towards the stairs. Her heart was beating so loudly that she became convinced that the intruder would hear it, consider it a war drum and consequently see it as a call to arms.
From the bottom of the stairs she could hear no further noise, the house was menacingly quiet – as if waiting with bated breath along with her for someone to leap out and break the silence. For Edie the absence of any sound was more terror provoking than anything else, a cacophony of joyous destruction would have been less menacing, at least then she could have sallied in and used the impetus of an unexpected interruption to halt proceedings. She faltered at the foot of the stairs, remembering a history lesson in which the teacher had explained that in defending a castle, the soldier descending the stairs always had the advantage. Whilst she pondered her own disadvantage, the realisation that the bathroom light was on penetrated her consciousness, as did the recognition that whoever was up there was groaning in what sounded like pain. Tentatively Edie peered around the newel post and looked up. A thin hand protruded over the highest tread, it twitched, the fingers jerking and clutching at the air. It didn’t look like the hand of a man.
Aware that unless the intruder had set a trap she was safe enough, Edie took the stairs, still keeping a tight grip on the rolling pin while the other hand slid up the bannister, twitching against it almost as nervously as the one she could see at the top of the stairs. The groans had become weaker and fear changed into concern as Edie’s ascent revealed the presence of a girl. Her thin body was curled onto the landing floor in a state of collapse and she was half conscious and bleeding.
Edie’s immediate response was to drop the rolling pin and lurch towards the girl, all fear and reservation having fled in the face of this unexpected situation. As she knelt beside her, the girl’s eyelids fluttered and she seemed to register Edie’s presence, though she tried to roll away and use her free arm to bat Edie away.
‘No, leave me ‘lone,’ she groaned.
Blood had trickled from her nose and had congealed on her face below a pulped and bruised eye. ‘What happened? Can you sit up?’ Edie said as the girl flailed. ‘It’s OK, I’m not going to hurt you, what happened?’
The girl groaned again and rolled onto her front. ‘Fainted, don’t like blood, feel sick.’
Edie noticed a blood stained towel on the floor – one of her own, and a thing that might have irked her under other circumstances. She grabbed it and rolled it into a rough pillow and pulled the girl onto her side in a rough approximation of the recovery position, or as much of it as she could recall from her Girl Guide first aid course. She put the towel under the girl’s head. ‘Lie still, wait for it to pass. I’m going to get something to clean you up.’
The bathroom was smeared with blood and the smell of vomit rose from the toilet, forcing Edie to wrinkle her nose and recoil as she rummaged through Dolly’s bathroom cabinet looking for something suitable that she could use to clean the girl up. The search yielded nothing except an ancient flannel and a dribble of antiseptic in a bottle probably older than Edie. She used the antiseptic more to ensure that the flannel was clean than any hope that it would have any healing properties for the girl’s face. An old crystal fruit dish purloined from a side table on the landing served as a suitable bowl for the concoction once it had been rinsed free of dust.
She returned to the girl, who now lay less rigidly and who peered at her from her un-swollen eye with increasing consciousness. Wringing out the flannel, first Edie began to dab at the girl’s face, unsure of which was the most unsightly – the blood, the bruising or the grime that adhered to her skin. Once she had cleaned most of the mess away the damage didn’t seem too bad. A bloody nose and a small cut above the swollen eye. ‘Who did this?’ she demanded, knowing that what had happened to the girl’s face had been no accident.
The girl winced as the flannel passed over a particularly tender spot. ‘I fell, doesn’t matter.’
Edie had heard it all before, she had walked into a fair few doorframes herself whilst married to Simon. ‘What, you fell into someone’s fist?’
The girl pulled her head away. ‘Doesn’t matter, anyway who the fuck are you and where’s Dolly?’
Edie sat back on her haunches as the girl hauled herself into a sitting position and leaned against the wall.
‘Shouldn’t it be me asking you that question? Who are you and what are you doing here?’ Edie said, less evenly than she would have liked to. The girl was clearly on her uppers, scruffy, dirty and smelling of unwashed flesh, neglect and sadness. Sadness had a smell all of its own and was too familiar to Edie for her to mistake it for anything else. It had the scent of misery and the tang of salt.
The girl attempted a scowl, but it clearly pained her. ‘Where’s Dolly?’
‘She died, three weeks ago. She was my aunt.’
The girl shook her head slowly and winced as the movement hit home. ‘Shit, poor Doll. I didn’t know she had family.’
It felt like an accusation and Edie herself wanted to wince away from it. ‘We weren’t close,’ she muttered. ‘How did you know her?’
The girl shrugged, her face crumpling in pain as a reaction to the movement. ‘Just did, she used to help me out a bit, you know.’
Edie didn’t, but could guess. The state of the girl told her everything she needed to know, at first she had suspected drugs but the thin arms showed no signs of needle marks, just the evidence of homelessness and malnutrition. ‘Is that why you broke in, because Dolly used to help you?’
‘I didn’t break in, the door was open.’ the girl said, cringing again.
‘Look, I’m going to go next door and get you some painkillers – don’t move, I won’t be long.’ It seemed pointless to do anything else, the girl was clearly suffering and Edie wasn’t going to get much further with her at this rate.
The ever organised Lena had painkillers in her kitchen cupboard, in the same plastic tub where Edie also found sticking plaster, dressings and antiseptic cream. She assumed that Lena wouldn’t mind and took what she needed, fully intending to replace it all when she could. While she rummaged she considered the good chance that the girl would have gone by the time she got back. If she had, she had, but on the off chance she also took a tin of soup and a few slices of bread.
To her surprise the girl had remained exactly where Edie had left her, looking pale and weak. ‘I thought you might have done a runner,’ she said.
‘Nowhere to run to.’ the girl answered blandly.
Edie dressed and taped the cut above her eye, fed her two analgesics and dampened the flannel with cold water