Pulling myself together, I headed up Pollock Lane. It was cobbled and steep, and more or less like stepping back in time, if you ignored the cars. They were parked with two wheels up on the pavement, on one side of the road only, and just barely fitted. The cottages looked pretty even in the dark, with Christmas wreaths on the front doors and sparkling Christmas trees in the front windows. The cottages were tiny, now that I looked at them properly—two windows at the top, a door and a window on the ground floor. I tried and failed to imagine my adopted family, the sprawling collection of Leonards who filled my life, managing to fit themselves and their personalities into a Pollock Lane cottage. Gilly’s silent withdrawal seemed more appropriate. It’s just me at home, she’d said, and I might be going to see my father. So I’d assumed it was just her and her mother living in Pollock Lane. Looking back on it, she hadn’t said that. She hadn’t said much at all.
Number fourteen was about halfway along, and in contrast to the others, there was no wreath on the door. The shutters were firmly closed, with just a little light leaking through to make me think that someone was at home. The cottage was painted a drab shade of gray with a black front door, and the overall impression it made was grim. I stood there for a second, apprehensive, then reached out and knocked on the door. It was a good loud knock, as if to make up for my lack of confidence. For all that, no one came to answer it for a long time—more than a minute. I could hear movement inside the cottage—a strange shuffling sound that made me uneasy all over again. Something being dragged. No, someone walking—but slowly. Someone old? Scuffling from within, and a bumping sound that made me wince without knowing why. I looked up and down the street, seeing no one, squares of light falling on the cobbles from the ordinary, normal houses on either side of number fourteen. How I wished I was knocking on one of the other doors.
A scrabbling sound came from behind the black door, and I fought the urge to run away as the latch turned and it opened, very slowly. A woman stood there, clinging to the door for support. She was tall and very slender. She had a long, angular face with a square chin, and bony hands. I saw the resemblance to Gilly in the color and texture of her hair, and in the pale blue of her eyes. This woman’s eyes were cloudy, though, and she frowned as she tried to focus on me.
“What is it? What do you want?” The words came out slowly, so slurred that I hesitated before replying, not sure I’d understood her.
“Mrs. Poynter? I’m Jess Tennant. I’m looking for Gilly.”
“Gilly?” She said the name as if it belonged to a stranger. “Oh, Gilly.”
“I was supposed to work on a history project with her.” Something told me not to mention the fact that Gilly hadn’t turned up at the library. “Is she here? Could I see her?”
Mrs. Poynter stood in the doorway, not moving, considering what I’d said. I didn’t know if she’d been drinking or if she’d taken something, but there was no way she was sober. Her face was slack and she swayed where she stood. She put a hand to her head and I saw blood on her knuckles, a graze right across them.
“Gilly,” she said eventually.
“Yes.”
“What did you say your name was?”
“Jess.” I waited another few seconds. “May I come in, Mrs. Poynter?”
Her gaze fell on my very old, very battered boots and she frowned, slowly, with effort. “You’ll have to take them off.”
“Of course. No problem.”
She hadn’t moved from the doorway. I stood outside on the doormat and yanked off my boots, shivering as the cold seeped up through the soles of my feet. It was enough, apparently, to pass muster with Mrs. Poynter, who stood back and motioned for me to come in. She collided with the wall behind her, which seemed to come as a surprise to her. I sidled in past her, not wanting to get too close. There was something witchlike about her, something off, even allowing for the effects of whatever she’d taken. I was starting to see why Gilly hadn’t been all that keen to meet at her house.
I went straight into the living room because there was nowhere else to go—there wasn’t a proper hallway. I put my boots down side by side on the floor by the wall. The room was cold and unwelcoming, with no fire in the grate. There was a single lamp on in the corner, beside a battered armchair. Paperbacks filled shelves on either side of the empty fireplace, but that was it as far as entertainment was concerned. No television that I could see. No music system. No pictures on the walls. Definitely no Christmas decorations.
Behind me, Mrs. Poynter swore quite comprehensively as she overbalanced. She managed to cling onto the door latch so she didn’t actually fall, but she was by no means steady on her feet. I went to help her and she allowed me to take her by the arm. I guided her slowly across the living room to the armchair in the corner, where she collapsed. There was no glass near the chair, no sign that she had been drinking, and I couldn’t smell alcohol on her breath.
“Mrs. Poynter, are you all right?”
She had her eyes closed. Her face was pale, and slightly sweaty. “Fine,” she said on a gasp, looking and sounding anything but.
“Can I get you some water?”
She shook her head, then seemed to change her mind. “Yes. All right. Water.”
I went through the door at the back of the living room, past the dark stairs that cut the cottage in two, and found myself in a kitchen that was marginally more cheerful than the living room. It was warmer, anyway, thanks to the cast-iron range that filled the fireplace. An old worn table with three chairs stood against one wall. One door stood open, revealing a tiny bathroom, and there was another door that gave onto the small yard behind the cottage. I looked in the sink and found a single plate covered in crumbs, and a badly chipped mug. There was a half-inch of brownish liquid in the bottom, and when I tilted it to tip the liquid out, a gritty residue coated the inside. I abandoned the thought of washing it out and went looking for a clean glass. I filled it at the tap and went back to Mrs. Poynter, who had slumped sideways. Her eyes were closed again and her breathing was heavy. I put the glass down beside her dangling hand and felt the inside of her wrist for her pulse, not really knowing what it should be like. It was slow but regular, and when I shook Mrs. Poynter’s shoulder, she woke up easily enough.
“What is it? I’m sorry.” She said it all in a rush, then put one hand over her eyes. “What’s happening?”
“I’m looking for Gilly,” I said clearly, crouching down in front of her to make it easier for her to see me.
“She’s upstairs.” Mrs. Poynter’s eyes closed again.
“Are you sure?” She’d have come down if she’d heard voices, I thought. I was almost sure that the house was empty apart from the two of us.
“Leave me alone.” She snuggled down in the armchair, her head leaning against the back of it. I stood up, wondering what to do. It couldn’t hurt to look upstairs, although I was worried that Gilly might come back and find her mother passed out in a chair, and me snooping around upstairs, and be mortified and angry in equal measure.
But it wasn’t snooping exactly. It was making sure she was all right.
I went back to the living room door and looked up the dark, narrow stairs. I didn’t want to climb them. They were steep and forbidding, and there was no landing at the top—just a door on either side. One would be Gilly’s bedroom. The other would belong to her mother, and probably wouldn’t have a chalk pentagram on the floor. Probably.
I passionately didn’t want to pick the wrong one.
In the end I decided that Mrs. Poynter would have the room at the front of the house, overlooking the street, and Gilly would be in the back room, so there was no danger and I should just open the door on the left. I ran up, noticing how steep the steps were and how narrow the treads. I tripped halfway up and put a hand out to save myself from sprawling. The carpet burned my palm and I winced. I had to use my left hand to open the door I’d decided was Gilly’s, and I fumbled for the light switch. I found it eventually. A weak yellow light filled the room from the bulb in the middle of the ceiling, and really, it needn’t have bothered. Bleak was the only word for what it revealed. Before I did anything else, I turned and softly closed the door behind me, feeling better with something solid between me and Mrs. Poynter’s pale gaze. I didn’t actually think she was capable of climbing the stairs in her current condition, but I wasn’t in the mood for surprises. The latch clicked into place and I moved away from it on tiptoe, trying not to make too much noise on the bare floorboards.
It was Gilly’s room, but only the school books on the desk confirmed it. There was nothing personal to be seen at all—no photographs or posters. A framed picture of a rabbit hung above the bed, but it was yellowing and dusty. I guessed a previous tenant had forgotten it because it was far more suitable for a nursery than a teenager’s room. The walls were a depressing shade of beige. A small bookcase stood against one wall, but it was half empty and all the books in it were secondhand classics or school textbooks, nothing like the ones I read for pleasure. The single bed was an old wooden one, scuffed and secondhand like the desk and the bookcase. I glanced at the bedside table, expecting to see a novel or a magazine, but there was only a lamp. The bed was rumpled, as if someone had been lying on it earlier. That wasn’t actually surprising: there was nowhere else to sit in Gilly’s room, unless you counted the upright chair at her desk. I thought of the warmth and chaos of life in Sandhayes, the big Victorian villa I lived in, and of the huge room at the top of the house, the one I’d inherited from poor Freya, full of posters and books and art that meant something to me. The contrast with Gilly’s life was painful.
I went over to the bed and put a hand on it, half expecting it to be warm, but the blanket was cool to the touch. The pillow was hollowed by Gilly’s head. My toe hit something solid under the bed and I bent down to see her school shoes, kicked off. Her uniform was thrown over the back of the chair. She’d come home, changed, and flung herself down on her bed. On the other side, a small wastepaper basket contained balled-up tissues, as if Gilly had lain down and wept. Or worse. I tilted the basket, and saw that a few were spotted and streaked with red. Cutting … I knew plenty of girls who did it, slashing their skin to ribbons in neat lines down arms or thighs, because physical pain was better than the emotional kind. Cuts healed, if you let them. Scars soothed.
The room hummed with recent occupancy: I could feel Gilly’s presence even though she was gone. She was there and not there.
I edged over to the desk and looked at the books, hoping for something like a note or a diary or the receipt for a train ticket to somewhere better than Pollock Lane. Failing that, something that told me what was going on between Gilly and Max Thurston would have done. All I found was a space in the dust, a rectangle where something had rested. I bent and looked under the desk, seeing a twin socket with an adaptor in one side for the desk lamp and the small light on the bedside table. The other socket was empty. So it was a fair guess that whatever was missing had been plugged in. A computer, I thought, and wondered how Gilly had been able to afford one—wondered why she’d been allowed to have one—when everything else in her house was so basic, so pared back and old-fashioned.
A creak from downstairs made me jump—were those footsteps coming up the stairs? There was a shuffle and a sliding sound that ended in a thud. Definitely someone coming up the stairs. I grabbed a notebook from my bag and pulled a page out of it, then, on a whim, put the notebook on Gilly’s desk, on top of a stack of other books. I scribbled a brief note, folded it over, and tucked the corner of it under the desk lamp to stop it from blowing off the table. Then I crossed to the door and reached out to open it just as someone turned the door handle. The door burst open and I jumped back, stifling a scream. Mrs. Poynter stood there, leaning at a dangerous angle. She looked at me blankly.
“Gilly?”
“She’s not here,” I said. “I was just leaving her a note.”
“Are you finished?” The last word fought its way out of her mouth, suffering serious injuries as it went.
“Definitely.” I nodded emphatically. “I should really go.”
She looked at me blearily. “Go. Now.”
“That’s just what I was thinking.” But you’re standing in my way. And if you try to make me walk past you, I’m just not going to be able to do that. I was scared of her, I realized, and even though I rationalized it immediately—of course I was afraid she might fall against me because we would both definitely fall down the stairs—I knew that wasn’t it.
She turned away from me and opened the other door, half falling up the step that led into her own dark bedroom. The only light came from the street, and heavy net curtains blocked out most of it. The room was too dim for me to be sure, but I thought I saw a streak of something on the wall before Mrs. Poynter shut the door; something dark. Something that could have been blood.
That was just my imagination, I told myself, shivering as I snapped off the light in Gilly’s room. Breakneck speed on those stairs wasn’t very fast at all, but I hurried, reckless now, worried that the cold air of her bedroom would revive Mrs. Poynter, and revive her interest in what I was doing in her house. The light was off in the living room, and in the darkness I stumbled over something on the floor, something solid and unyielding that proved to be one of my boots. I searched the floor on my hands and knees, my fingers snagging on knotholes and old nails that stuck up from the floorboards. I covered ever-wider circles, hunting, increasingly desperately, in vain. I couldn’t find the switch for the lamp either. In the end I opened the front door and let the light from the street guide me to the far corner where the second boot lay, miles away from where I’d left it. I shoved my feet into my boots and didn’t take the time to lace them up properly.
Nothing and no one could have made me spend a minute longer in Gilly Poynter’s house, even if it unlocked the answer to every question I had. I pulled the front door shut after me with a clatter. It was only when I was sure I was free that I let out the breath I hadn’t even known I was holding.