Now a tray. Any food he can get. Time’s running out. The corridor feels like a house where everyone has to speak in whispers, where someone’s died and all the children must be quiet. Behind a door Mouse can hear a TV’s chattery daytime hum and he scuttles away and turns a corner and there’s a lone tray at the end. Quick. Nothing on it but some half-eaten pasta and a cold pot of tea and a dreg of milk that’s drained in a gulp. The bowl of pasta’s grabbed, it’ll have to do. He runs back to the wallpapered door and plunges through it.
A scuffed landing. Lit by a light bulb as weak as sickness. A tiny room full of towels. Shampoos. Soaps. He fills his pockets with as many toiletries as he can get then presses the lift button, praying that no one else is in it, and watches the numbers rise steadily up, up, from B, basement, and his throat tightens, ready to run if he must. The door opens.
Empty. Thank goodness.
Empty all the shuddery way down.
Mouse slams back against the lift wall with relief.
That Miss Jude Pickering the Third was right. He so much prefers it like this. It’s as if she’s been briefed.
HEY, it’s like this invisible network of watching around us. Good people, out there. Everywhere. Keeping us safe. Thanks.
He who formerly was thoughtless and afterwards cultivates awareness brightens up the world like the moon when free of clouds.