Brian sped down the final homeward stretch, freewheeling, and then expertly swerved his bicycle through the front gate. He was easing his heavy satchel from his back when he saw a shaft of light coming from the front door and Joan standing there, on the top step.
“Shut the door, quick!” he called. “The air-raid warden’ll get us fined if he sees us showing that light!”
Joan didn’t answer. Brian went in, slammed the door behind them both and then slung his satchel on the floor. “I’m so hungry! Is Mum in?” Still no answer from Joan. Then he saw her white face. “What’s up?”
Joan replied in a whisper. “It’s a man. I saw a man, staring in at me through the sitting-room window. Just now. He was right there in the garden.”
“What? What man?”
“I don’t know. He was just sort of peering in. So I pulled the curtains and put on the lights.”
Brian slowly loosened his school tie. “Do you think he’s still here, then?”
“I don’t know. I’m glad you’re back. Ought we to go and look?”
“Not me. Not likely! Have you locked the back door?”
“No! Oh, I didn’t think of that!”
Together they scooted through the kitchen, past the place where Mum kept her cleaning things and did the washing, and down to the end of the passage. Brian turned the key in the back door and bolted it. Then he peeped out of the little larder window. It wasn’t quite dark yet. A watery sun was just disappearing into a low belt of purple cloud.
“I can’t see anyone,” he said.
“He was there. He had a cap on.”
“An army cap?”
“No, I don’t think so. I couldn’t see very well. Only his eyes, sort of staring.”
“Are you sure you’re not making this up?”
Joan flung herself away from him, near to tears. “Of course I’m not. I told you. I was doing my homework and I looked round and there he was.”
“Well, he’s not there now. At least, I don’t think so.”
But even Brian was relieved when they heard Mum’s key in the lock.
Her reaction was briskly practical, as it always was when there was any kind of family crisis, but they noticed that her voice was a bit shaky. “The sitting-room window, was it? Well, he can’t have been a paperboy or he would have rung the doorbell. You two stay here with Judy. I’ll just go and have a look around.”
“I’ll come with you,” Brian offered bravely.
Judy, left alone with Joan, set up a wail. “I want my tea! When are we having tea? We didn’t get anything to eat at the jumble sale. What’s Mum doing in the garden? It’s nearly dark! Is there a horrid man out there?”
Joan was in no mood to comfort her. Together they watched from the window as Brian and Mum searched the garden in the dying light, looking behind bushes and all around the rustic arbour where a neglected garden seat swung and creaked in the wind. It wasn’t a very big garden, so it didn’t take them long. At the far end, beyond the rubbish heap, there was a fence with a gate that led directly onto the golf course.
“If there was someone nosing around, he probably went out that way,” Mum said when she and Brian came back indoors. “Anyway, he’s gone now. Let’s light the fire and have a cup of tea.”
Judy was already asleep, and Joan was brushing her teeth and getting ready for bed in the room they shared. She kept peering out of the window, worried that the man was still lurking around. By the next morning, when it was beginning to get light, Joan was feeling braver. As Mum cooked breakfast before school, she opened the back door and stepped outside. The fear of the previous night’s events was now eclipsed by her anxiety about not having done her French homework.
Joan wandered out a little way into the garden, scuffing her feet on the wet grass. The old seat hung there, dripping with rainwater and swaying gently. She went up to it and absently gave it a push. As it creaked to and fro, she noticed some muddy footprints underneath, quite fresh in the dewy grass. It looked as though somebody had been there, maybe slept there, quite recently. Last night, perhaps? She shivered and hurried back inside to get ready for school.