55. Winnie

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

WINNIE

Mina: Let us know you get to London safe, Winnie. The Nevermore Murder Club are thinking of you. Isis is concocting a good luck spell for you as I type!

“ I s this the place?” the driver calls back to me as he pulls in behind a red fire truck.

Rain pelts the windows of the taxi. I squint out the window at the end of the row of red-brick townhouses – or, at least, where my mum’s townhouse should be.

I’m still expecting to see the grimy white trim, windows blacked out from stuff piled inside, and the wisteria clogging the junkyard that is the front garden and crawling up the siding, not in a charming way but in a Shirley Jackson-meets-HP Lovecraft-possessed-house-sinking-into-the-swamp-from-whence-it-came way.

Instead, I’m greeted by a pile of smoking rubble, a bunch of firefighters and police officers, and neighbours milling around in their dressing gowns. Bricks topple from the walls of Ken’s house next door. His sitting room is open to the elements. I can still see the canasta game he and Barry had set up at the dining room table.

“This is the place, thank you.”

I pay the driver and drag my suitcase onto the pavement. He doesn’t offer to help. I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t want to leave the dry comfort of a cab for this disaster.

Water splashes up my trousers as I manoeuvre my case up the wonky steps, lifting it over a swelling carton of magazines and a stack of no less than seven broken pairs of rollerblades. I drop the case in a pile of wisteria.

Broken shards of my heart thud against my chest.

“Mum?”

She blinks from beneath the blanket the paramedics have wrapped around her shoulders. She’s wearing a threadbare t-shirt and soiled bunny rabbit slippers. Her eyes are hollow, haunted. “You came,” she croaks.

“Of course I came.” I wrap her in my arms. I’m shocked at how thin she is beneath her enormous t-shirt, her bones sticking from her skin.

“Oh, Winnie, it was awful. I was asleep. Ken and Barry were up late because it was Barry’s birthday and they were mid-way through a bottle of wine when Ken smelled smoke and called the fire department. If he hadn’t banged on the window, I wouldn’t have got out in time. The fire-lady over there says they think it started in the kitchen. It was probably that old microwave. You were always telling me to get rid of it?—”

“Shhhh, don’t worry about it.” I press her to me. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“Poor Ken,” she sniffs. “They’ve said his house is probably condemned as well.”

“He’ll forgive you.” I wasn’t sure that he would, but we’ll deal with that later. “He’ll have insurance. The important thing is that no one got hurt. And it looks like the fire is almost out.”

“I lost everything, Winnie. All our memories. My whole life was in that house.” Her lip trembles. Tears streak her cheeks. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Let’s not think about that now. I see someone’s brought you a cup of tea.” I pick a cup off the fence post next to her and realise it’s empty. “I’ll find someone to refill this for you. Everything’s better after a cup of tea.”

I notice she’s clinging to a small, rectangular object.

“I found this in the rubble,” she sniffs, holding it out to me. “The council lady can’t force me to get rid of it now.”

It’s a framed photograph. The glass has smashed and the wooden frame is stained with soot, but the image inside is preserved. It’s a photo of me, posing with Mum and Dad in Santa’s grotto at Hamleys on Regent Street. One of the last photos of us all together before he left.

A hard lump forms in my throat.

All the years I have let this house rule my nightmares, and now it’s gone.

Someone has taken my soul and put it through one of those old-fashioned clothes manglers.

Mum strokes the frame, peering up at me with childlike innocence. I try to remember when our relationship did this one-eighty and I became the grown-up and her the child, but it’s too long ago now to recall.

“It’s going to be okay, Mum.” I force my lips into a smile. “I’m here. I’ll look after you.”