My father is driving us north through if not out of Preston. I'm convinced that an elaborate detour accompanied by muted cursing has returned us to the same five-way intersection planted with a Christmas tree that spreads its lowest branches almost to the edge of the grassy ring. Their shadows twitch like spiders' legs groping over the snow. Now we're across the intersection, and my mother inhales shrilly at the hint of a skid as we follow the route she suggested. It's the second exit, somewhere between a quarter to and ten to if the roundabout were a clock.
The suburb has been simplified by the weather. While there was no trace of snow in the town centre, here it fattens the trees and erases the names of the wide streets. Light encircles the roots of the streetlamps and spills out of some of the broad white-headed detached houses across their colourless lawns; otherwise the route is dark. The night seems to coop up the stale heat of the Mini, which feels even more airless than the kitchen did. I'm thinking of proposing that we end the search before the icy roads or the distractions of my parents' arguments can grow more dangerous when my mother cries 'It's that way, isn't it? That one.'
She's waving her forefinger to steer the car left where the road forks. Haven't we already driven past the house on the corner, or was there another garden crowded with pallid dwarfish shapes that must be ornamental gnomes encased in snow? On the other hand, I don't think the houses in the street gave way to shops. Both rows of shops are boarded up, and snow is heaped against most of the doors. All the upstairs flats are dark, except for one that flickers with ashen light surely too colourless for a fire. None of this is encouraging, but my mother says 'Isn't that it? There's nowhere else to go.'
Indeed, the street comes to a dead end beyond two broken streetlamps. The barely visible glow of the moon behind the padded sky outlines the hulk of an unlit building. Very little identifies it as a theatre apart from a line of rusty protrusions where the awning must have been, twelve feet or so up the grey stone façade, and the pairs of faces carved lower down, their theatrical grimaces blurred by age or the dimness. Boards sprayed with large dripping initials are nailed across a door in the left-hand corner. 'That's it, then,' says my father. 'Don't you want a closer look, Simon?'
'May as well as long as I'm here.'
My father has hardly scraped the tyres along the kerb in front of the theatre when my mother darts out of the car. I hurriedly follow in case she slips on the icy carapace of the pavement, but neither the ice nor her limp prevents her from reaching the door. Beyond the broken lamps the deserted white street resembles a set, and only the cold that displays our dim breaths seems to make it real. My mother squints through a gap between two scrawled boards. 'Bring the flashlight, Bob,' she calls.
He shakes his head and grabs the item from under the dashboard. As he slams the car door he thrusts the flashlight at me. 'Hurry up, Simon,' my mother urges, stamping to fend off the cold or with impatience.
As I pick my way to her I realise that quite a few people must have used the pavement recently for the ice to be so uneven. Presumably there's a short cut past the theatre to the streets behind it. I pass my mother the flashlight, and she fumbles to switch it on with a hand that's swollen by a stuffed glove. She pokes the beam at the gap and peers through the disc of glaring light on the boards. 'Is someone in there?' she says and even more enthusiastically 'Hello?'
'Quiet down, Sandra. What do you want people to think?'
'Which people? Show me any. There's either someone in there or it's – '
She interrupts herself by knocking on the boarded door. When her glove muffles her thumps she turns the flashlight around. 'Sandra,' my father protests, which doesn't deter her from pounding on the boards with the end of the barrel sheathed in rubber. Amid the reverberations I hear a smothered metallic clank. She hasn't broken the flashlight, since the light continues to flail in the air. The next moment the door falters inwards. 'Good God, woman,' my father grumbles, 'what have you done now?'
As she trains the flashlight beam on the opening I see that the boards have been sawn through on either side of the entrance. While the door is shut they look intact. My mother knees the door through her quilted winter overcoat and leans into the gap. 'There he is,' she murmurs.
The beam has drawn the remains of a face out of the dark. It's a poster on the wall across the lobby, where the obscurely patterned wallpaper has sprouted whitish fur. The poster isn't just illegible with age; the features of its subject are distorted beyond recognition – they look puffed up with a pale fungus. 'Let's see what else we can find,' my mother says. 'Open the door for your old mum.'
'Do you think we should? If you or dad fall and hurt yourselves – '
'We've been out of your life long enough. We want to help with our book,' she says and bumps her shoulder hard against the door.
Rather than let her bruise herself I give it a shove, and it swings wide with a grinding of rubble that I feel more than hear. As my mother limps eagerly into the foyer, the flashlight beam illuminates the box office. The giant cobweb that billows in its depths is the shadow of cracks in the pay-box window. I'm hastening after her when my father demands 'How far are you two proposing to go?'
As she and the light turn to him I notice that the inside of the door locks with a metal bar, which couldn't have been fastened securely. 'As far as Simon needs to,' she declares and spins around once more. The glistening pelt of the walls appears to stir as if the theatre has drawn a wakeful breath. High in the darkness overhead the dusty tendrils of a chandelier grope like an undersea creature for us, or at least their shadows do. The mass of filaments pretends it hasn't moved as the flashlight beam settles on the cracked window. 'Is that something for you?' my mother wonders aloud.
A white lump is poking over the counter beyond the glass. Is it a misshapen plastic bag or a wad of paper? Neither strikes me as promising, but perhaps my mother can discern the marks printed on it. She reaches under the window and strains to hook the object with her gloved fingertips. It appears to wobble jelly-like before slithering off the counter. I don't care for the resemblance to a sagging face that has ducked out of sight, but this apparently doesn't trouble my mother. 'Well, that wasn't much help,' she says. 'Let's see in here.'
As she heads for the doors to the auditorium my father tramps into the lobby. His tread shivers the carpeted floorboards more than I like. 'Are you done yet?' he demands.
It's only the unsteadiness of the flashlight beam that lends the double doors a furtive movement, of course. 'Oh, Bob, where's your sense of adventure?' my mother says. 'You never used to be like this.'
'I must have grown up. Someone round here has to.'
'Then it's a good job we haven't, isn't it, Simon?' she giggles and pushes the left-hand door with the flashlight.
The beam shrinks as if the dark has closed a fist around it. The door totters backwards with a creak of its metal arm, and the light sprawls into the auditorium. It illuminates the nearer sections of about a dozen rows of seats divided by the aisle. When my mother limps through the doorway the light finds more of them and outlines boxes full of darkness above the stalls, but falls well short of the stage. I'm about to wonder if the batteries are up to any further exploration when my mother says without much breath 'What are those?'
Several pale shapes are huddled in seats close to the walls. Surely they're stirring only because the magnified light is wavering. My mother limps along the aisle and swings the trembling light from side to side. 'Keep up with her,' my father growls at my back.
Why just me? I hope his problem is slowness, not reluctance. My mother halts beside the nearest row in which a plump white shape gives the impression of waiting for a show or more of an audience. 'Somebody's been making snowmen,' she cries.