Samhain waited in the dark hallway, restless. Carrying a rucksack of things that might have looked, to anybody else, like the tools a person might use to break into a place.
‘No – no – no – no – no...’ Frankie, bent as a folded card, sorted through hasps and screws. Gorilla’s palms: hands that gripped drum sticks, and shifted guitar cabs. Fingers that fixed, cooked, nursed. Rattling now with loose lock mechanisms, and keys that didn’t fit.
‘You know what this is like,’ Samhain said. They’d got in through a window at the back, and whoever had been in this grand hallway last had boarded over the top glass. It may be midsummer outside, but it was night here. If Frankie would only step out into the day a moment, he could find what he needed right away. But Frankie never wanted to open the door to the outside. Not until they were standing with lock and key and screws laying out ready, to secure the squat. A superstition that had grown from Frankie once having been thrown out of a place, only ten minutes after breaking it.
‘That time you hid in Endra’s wardrobe because her boyfriend came home.’
‘No.’
‘No? I guess you were in your pants then. Hang on, this could be it boys, this could be it.’ Frankie’s silver shaved head tilted down; he winked to a brass Yale right in the centre of his life line.
‘Cells at New Cross, jizzlip.’
‘Ah.’ Crinkled envelope eyes: a smile with one molar missing. That was the smile. The one that had seen Samhain through hangover after hangover: the smile that, seen first time, had started the longest friendship of his life. Eighteen, young and stumbling, with head throbbing and the gig room rolling around him like a head of lettuce in a salad spinner, Samhain had looked into that face and taken Frankie for somebody he already knew. He’d thought Frankie was the same man who’d lent him a balaclava and scarf in Genoa. Firm hands had dragged Samhain up from the sticky social floor, and he’d started saying, ‘I love you,’ before he’d even made it to his feet.
‘Steady on,’ Frankie had said.
On their second, more sober encounter, Samhain had realised his mistake. But those first few words had been the start of something. And now here they were.
‘Seen enough o’ them. Wood Street Wakefield – Doncaster – Hammersmith – New Cross – could be any of ‘em. Police cells are all the same, mind. You ready?’
‘Yep.’ Samhain had one hand inside his bag, his heart beating like an idiot with a set of saucepans. Touched a hammer, a wrench. Fingers brushed the crowbar, before he found what he needed. The screwdriver had wriggled its way all the way down to the bottom, and was nestling under his other shirt. ‘Open it up.’
Heavy door. All chains and sliding bolts. The swollen wood and metal mechanisms had oxidised red and rusted shut. The whole thing stuck. ‘Haven’t you got a hammer there, dreamboat?’ Sweat poured off Frankie as though he’d been oiled. ‘Don’t just stand there, do something with that bolt. Not my hands, dickhead! Mind my hands.’
Samhain started hitting, working away at the bolts. Blows exploded along the door. Across the floor: he felt every hammer-fall in his shoes.
‘Right,’ Frankie said. Then he had a hand on the knob, right in the centre of the door. ‘Ready? Let’s get this thing open.’
Two sets of hands, working away. Hauling at it, pulling a truck’s weight, until at last the door came open. Just a nick at first: enough for a golden hair of light to run down the right-hand wall.
‘Nothing’s ever simple, is it?’ Samhain could already feel the beginnings of a morning-after ache in his chest and shoulders. His belt chafed with salt sweat. This was a solid door, a thing built to keep intruders away.
One last wrench, and it came swinging like a backhanded tennis racquet.
Sunlight. Liquid amber on wall and into eyes. Samhain blinked: he was looking out into a tangled bower of blooming pink roses, white trumpets of bindweed. Leaves brighter than new peas. Twigs and stalks twisting in an arch, branches and boughs in a person-sized nest. And there in its centre, wearing slacks and a golf sweater, stood a bald and cheerily-smiling man.
‘Hello!’ he chimed. ‘Are you the new neighbours?’
Samhain had dreamed of a home like this. Abandoned, bay-fronted, a Georgian thing with double rooms, and en-suites. The Boundary Hotel had a faded sign facing the road. It promised tea-making facilities, and a TV lounge. Samhain had been riding past it on his bike every day for months. He had wanted to check that it really was empty.
Life in the slum had made him filthy as an animal. Eight of them in a place with only three bedrooms, and only one bathroom, all of them living on top of one another. He had become obsessed with the idea of white sheets, and of making tea and coffee in a room where you never saw another person’s face. Floor space enough for a person to tread freely, without needing to step over somebody else.
The slum had only ever meant to be a house for three. But things got crowded when Sam had started crashing there following a break-up, and Frankie rolled up after being evicted from another squat. He’d brought two others from the same place with him. Soon, there had been a mattress in the living room, sleeping bags in the landing, and they were all always keeping their elbows in no matter where they were in the house.
The sides and back told you this was a working hotel. The sign made it look that way. The windows. The car park. It was only when you really stopped to look, through the exact spot in the unruly twigs-and-sticks privet, that you could see. A door black and heavy, and always, forbiddingly, and very finally, locked.
‘It needs a fair bit of work,’ Frankie said. ‘But we’re hoping to be open for business by the middle of next year.’
‘Wonderful!’ David bounced on his toes, head swivelling. ‘Me and Barbara have always said – that’s my wife – that it would be ever so good if some enterprising young lads, like yourselves, would get this place up and running again.’
The long hall. A dusty reception desk with papers, opposite the bar archway. This opened into the velvety, syrupy catacomb of the guest bar.
‘This place was always such a grand success – always full. It was ever so sad when the Evanses had to give it up. She was ill, you know. Cancer.’ David lowered his voice: ‘They never did come back.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Frankie said. ‘We hope we can do them proud.’
Samhain could choose a room first. He’d found the place, so he could decide which part of it was his. That was the only rule they had. ‘Nice to meet you, David,’ he said.
He had aspirations for the top of the house. A place right up in the trees, closer to the moon and sun, with light flickering through the greenery. Almost like being outdoors. ‘Sorry to leave you,’ he said, ‘but we’ve got a lot to do, and I’d better get started.’
Hand on the bannister. His skin met a fine coating of dust, which stuck to his palm like fur from a moulting cat.
He looked into the gloomy, twisting staircase, and started up the stairs.