I had some ideas but it all seemed a lot of work, and I was getting tired of working alone. I was dismayed at the thought of being completely alone again, I had got used to meeting up with the other residents, even if only to briefly hand over a bottle of clean water. I lay on the makeshift bed and stared up at the rafters, I could feel the light cloak of depression settling around me, weighing me down. I picked up my phone and called mum and Vik again, but there was no answer.
There was a power socket in the loft, so I hefted myself off the bed and opened the hatch. Wallowing in self-pity wasn’t going to get me anywhere. I went down into the kitchen and got the kettle. The cold-water tank was also up there, so using my lifesaver bottle, I would have clean water and food to eat. Waste would be a problem. I would need to go downstairs to use the toilet at least once a day.
As night fell, I curled up in my makeshift bed and tried not to think about spiders. I ran through all my plans and thought about Frank. Part of me really wanted to try to help him, but the rational part knew that there was very little I could do. Even if I went back and found him, I didn’t know if he had let his visitor in on purpose; maybe he really was a friend. I was assuming he was being held prisoner, but the man had called him when I visited. Had Frank told him about my water filter? I hadn’t told anyone about the specifics of the lifesaver bottle, but it was a very valuable bit of kit. And if Frank was in trouble was I in any position to help him?… Maybe he was locked in, in which case I would have to find the key, but how would I get into his house in the first place…. The thoughts went round and round until eventually I fell asleep.
I did not go back to check on Frank. Instead, I focussed on moving the pots into the garden behind mine, setting up a watering system for them, and then disguising everything I possibly could. The summer weather and my copious watering had resulted in an unprecedented growth of all my plants, but particularly the roses, brambles, and grape vine. I had just let them all do their thing until I was sealed inside a wall of greenery on all sides. I had pushed the rose stems over the wall, and they had grown until they were a tangle of thorns that fell down almost to the ground. They stopped people from walking along the pavement and getting close enough to hear me moving around inside. Or at least that’s what I had thought.
I had been preparing an area for more carrots, Carrots come in packs of a thousand seeds but didn’t stay alive very long once the packet was opened. I was eating my way steadily through the current crop, and although I had been re-seeding where I was harvesting, I wanted to plant some more. They could be left in the ground over winter, and eaten raw; and I may as well use up the seed.
I slid my hoe forward and back, loosening the top layer of soil at the edge of the flowerbed by the wall. The apple trees were doing well, and although I had kept the base free of weeds, to reduce competition, I reckoned that a couple of carrots at the edge of the bed wouldn’t really affect them.
As I worked, the footsteps on the road outside, that I had been half listening to, stopped. I paused, holding the hoe in the air. Had I been humming? It was something I often did when I was relaxed. I wondered if they had heard me; the footsteps continued and then I heard a cracking sound of wood breaking. I heard more banging noises and some grunts, some rustling, then silence.
The noise was to my right, at the back of the garden. I moved closer to the wall and crouched down on the path between the bed of sweetcorn plants and the greenhouse. I was well hidden but couldn’t see anything. I strained to hear; from the silence it sounded like they were doing the same. I waited them out, and eventually heard a rustle, then shockingly, a deep voice rumbled out ‘Ow, fuck, stupid fucking thorns.’
There was further swearing, and then the voices suddenly became quieter, as if they had turned away. There were movements and rustles, I hoped fervently that they wouldn’t poke too deeply into the cypress; the tarp would surely give the tunnel away. They seemed to be moving away towards the other bungalow and sure enough, I heard glass smashing and banging as they broke in through the back door.
I relaxed a fraction and reached forward to pull out some of the weeds I could see amongst the sweetcorn plants in front of me, keeping low and quiet. For the longest time I didn’t hear anything, and I wondered if they had already left, but after about half an hour, I heard banging again from the bungalow, they were probably trying to get out of the front door. If it was anything like mine, UPVC, they would have no trouble kicking through the foam panels. The banging stopped, and thirty seconds later I heard them walking back down the road. ‘That was a complete waste of time,’ said the deep voice.
‘Yeah, sorry, I was sure I heard something,’ said another voice, it was high and quick, a child perhaps. ‘Ow!’ said the same voice, sounding aggrieved. I listened carefully, but there was no further speech. It seemed the adult was not the talkative type.
The next morning the footsteps were back again, and again the morning after; they must have set up somewhere nearby. Where were they going every morning? The only thing past my house was the flats and then the alley to the cemetery.
A couple of days later I was woken at an unreasonably early hour by a magpie, rattling around on the tiles outside. It was five in the morning and dead quiet outside, except for the birds. I was still sleeping in the loft, which I had made a whole lot more convenient by adding blackout sheets to the Velux windows. I had strung fairy lights along the ceiling, and stapled sheets to the rafters to create a tent effect. And I had turned off the central heating, so I wasn’t disturbed by the water pump, which was right at the foot of my bed. I wasn’t quite sure what I would do come winter, but for now it worked well.
I went down for a hot shower and debated the wisdom of going out for a scout around. As I walked down the garden path twenty minutes later, I decided to pop over to check on the potato plants and see how much damage had been done to the fence. I climbed the ladder and scrambled over. The potato plants seemed to be doing fine, I could see the green shoots poking through in a couple of places, but I could also see the shiny slime trails of snails along the top of the soil. I made a note to grab the slug killer when I got back.
I crawled through the tunnel under the cypress and came up the other side. I peered out between the green branches and could see that about six or seven fence boards were missing, leaving a large gap open to the road. In a way, this was better, as I could see the road from the safety of the tunnel, but it also meant that as soon as I crawled out, I would be visible to anyone passing by. What I really needed was a way to look up and down the road from the safety of the cypress. Something like a periscope.
Leaving that idea to explore later, I exited the garden and moved out into the road. The weeds made it look desolate and the grey garage door opposite was broken open. I walked down the road in the morning silence and headed for the back of the cemetery. I made my way down a narrow alleyway between two bungalows. The tarmac was crumbling at the edges where the weeds were poking through, and there was ivy starting to peep over the fence on one side. Over the other, another plant, a wisteria perhaps, trailed long stems whilst old gnarled branches, laden with small apples, stretched out above. At the end of the alley there was a gate, which gave out into a wooded glade. It was propped open, half off its hinges. I paused and looked out through the trees, it was empty, but I could hear the gurgling of moving water.
I threaded my way through the trees and could almost instantly see the source of the noise; a small stream. The water ran shallowly along a gravel bed until it reached a small pool where it swirled briefly before streaming over a lip to a jumble of rocks just a foot below. At the side of the rocks were a number of discarded bowls and plastic bottles.