The Summer Isles by Ian R. MacLeod Read Free Book Online Page B

darkness, there is something odd about the look of the panes, and even of the flowerbed that separates the house from Number 6 next door. A few weeks ago, I’m sure, it was filled with a military row of tulips. Now it seems messed, flattened.
    My feet crunch on something sharper than gravel as I find myself walking up the path to my acquaintance’s front door, which I never imagined I would do outside my dreams. Many of the windows have been shattered, and a fat iron padlock has been fitted across the door’s splintered frame. There is a pervasive, summery smell of children’s urine.
    I see, last of all, the sign that the Oxford Constabulary have pasted on the porch. T AKE N OTICE H EREBY … But this sky is incredibly dark and deep for summer, and even the streetlamps are out; I can’t read further than the Crown-embossed heading. I slump down the doorstep, scattering empty milk bottles, covering my face with my hands. At long last, it all seems to come to me. This. Death. The end of everything.
    When I look up some time later, I realise that a figure is watching me from the quiet suburban night.
    “I know,” it repeats. “This must be a shock to you.”
    I nod, scuffing the heel of my hand as I struggle to my feet.
    “Knew them well, did you?”
    “N—not exactly.”
    The figure, smaller than I am, clearly female, takes a step across the crazy paving. Housecoat and slippers. A steely glint of curlers. “Come on, then. I’ll get you some tea. We’re only next door…
    “I’m Mrs. Stevens,” she tells me, wisely keeping her first name to herself as she potters about with the teapot and the kettle in the blinding brightness of her kitchen.
    “My name’s Brook,” I say. I can’t see any point in lying.
    “I check the doorstep each day for the post,” she says, twisting off the tap and giving her mottled fingers a shake. “Pass it on to our local bobby, although I’m sure he doesn’t know what to do with it either. You’d think they’d know better, wouldn’t you, than to keep sending letters ? I mean, him virtually working in the Post Office and all. You’d like it sweet and strong, I expect?”
    “Please.”
    I watch Mrs. Stevens as she warms the pot, then ladles in the tea. The kitchen, now that I can make out more of it, is surprisingly big. Windows on two sides, one with a fan-extractor. A white enamel machine that I suppose must be a refrigerator hums gently to itself in a corner. A cuckoo clock ticks above the sink. The tiles and the work surfaces shine.
    “When did it happen?”
    “It would be…” Mrs. Stevens tilts her head and squints up at the ceiling. She must be close to seventy, but a part of her still seems girlish. “The Sunday before last. About six o-clock, I’d say it was. In fact, pretty much dead-on, as Les and me had just finished our salad.”
    “They took them all away?”
    “All of them. The pity of it really.” She stirs her own tea and passes me mine. Blue willow-pattern china. “Them young girls.”
    “Nobody did anything to stop it?”
    She gazes across at me, and licks a brown line of tea that’s gathered on her small grey moustache. “I’ll tell you what they were like, Mr. Brook. In every way, I’d have said, they were a decent couple. Only odd thing I remember now is they sometimes used to leave the light on without drawing the curtains so you could see right in… The lassies were nice, though. They fed our cat for us when we went up to Harrogate last year, although of course the poor thing’s got run over since. Probably that dreadful new road, trying to get back to his old hunting grounds. Silly puss…”
    “You were saying.”
    “There’s not much to say, really, is there? The way things have turned out. Shameful, though. Lets down the neighbourhood, especially what’s been done to the house since they left, mess and bricks through the window. But you know what the kids were like. Knew them well yourself, did you?”
    “He was just an