The Visitors(5)

Besides, I’m wearing my old checked slippers and my comfy cardie with the worn cuffs and missing buttons.

First impressions are very important; everyone knows that.

The young woman is no longer in the yard, but the bag full of clothing is still out there, gaping open like an abandoned coal sack. I hope this means she’ll be coming outside again before too long. Wind and rain are forecast for this evening, so if she leaves it there, the contents will doubtless get wet and scattered all over the yard.

While I wait for her to reappear, I pluck out a blank card from the Rolodex and fiddle with the settings on my camera.

About ten minutes later, my patience is rewarded when the young woman appears and proceeds to tie up the bag, before walking halfway down the yard to the bin and dumping it in there.

She’s wearing a brown wool cardigan now, which she pulls closed across her body as she returns to the house. She doesn’t pause, doesn’t look around, and within seconds, she is back inside. I hear the door close behind her.

Although I’m a little disappointed, it doesn’t matter. I have what I wanted.

Using my powerful zoom lens, I’ve managed to get some nicely detailed images with the camera.

I flip out the small memory card and pop it into the side of my laptop. While it loads, I pull out the old grey suitcase from under my bed and begin to search through the photographs.





Chapter Four





Holly





Holly Newman stood at the window of Mrs Barrett’s kitchen and filled the kettle for the umpteenth time since she’d arrived.

It felt so strange, being in the area again. Especially since nothing seemed to have changed around here at all in over ten years.

Take this very crescent, for instance. The mostly detached houses, built in the sixties, stood proudly on their modest plots. Small front gardens led to longer, narrow yards at the back.

Aside from the odd neat porch, and the ostentatious white Grecian pillars that the people at the end had added, the facades were unchanged.

Holly used to pass by here on her way home from school when she travelled to college each day. The third house in still had a front garden full of gaudy and, Holly had always thought, rather sinister-looking gnomes.

National newspaper headlines constantly screamed of local corner shops shutting down in favour of the sprawling superstores that seemed to be springing up everywhere, but here, at the top of Baker Crescent, it was a different story.

Fred Crawley the butcher, Mr Timpson the greengrocer, and Mr and Mrs Khan’s general store, complete with its small integral post office, all stood in a line. Immovable as ever.

Holly had been just eighteen years old when she’d left the area for the bright lights of Manchester and the ‘amazing opportunity’ she’d been persuaded to chase. What she’d give now to rewind that decision.

She sighed and flicked the switch on the kettle, listening to the faint hiss of the element.

In effect, she was right back where she’d started. But she refused to think of it like that. Being back here now signified something else: that she’d drawn a line under everything that had gone before. Everything she had endured.

Holly had left behind the people she prayed she’d never have to see face to face again… all but one, anyway. She yearned to see him, the love of her life, more than anyone, but she had no choice but to bide her time.

She had emerged from hell itself and was ready to start again. And this time, she would make it work.

There was no definite plan as yet, but she could feel the determination drumming at her very core.

She cast her mind back to twelve years earlier, when she’d left school. Wollaton Secondary Modern – they’d changed the name now – was only about half a mile away from here. She had achieved moderate grades, which was a wonder, considering.

The thing that loomed largest in her memory was the enormous relief she’d felt as she’d walked out of those crummy peeling iron gates for the last time. It had been a welcome change from the crushing sense of dread she’d suffered every single morning of her schooldays. The prospect of the long, miserable day that stretched ahead of her.

On her last day, she’d watched with amusement as the squealing knots of girls in her year cried, hugging each other, lamenting the end of their time together.

Strains of their shallow promises had reached her ears as she drew closer. How they were all going to stay in touch, how they would always be friends no matter where in the world they ended up. And of course, they’d already planned to meet soon to catch up.

Life wasn’t like that. Holly knew.

People soon forgot you. They often said good things would happen that never did.

There existed a parallel universe to the soaps and feel-good programmes on television. An everyday reality where bills didn’t get paid, electricity was cut off and kids went to bed hungry most nights, hoping against hope that nobody would come into their bedroom to hurt them.

Lots of the girls who had been breaking their hearts out in the school yard had come from indulgent homes. They had enjoyed being the apple of the eye of parents who were still married.

It had been a state school, so not many of them knew real wealth. But Holly recognised that those girls had been rich in other things. The belief of parents and teachers that they could and would do well in life. Food in the cupboards at home. A clean, fashionable uniform that wasn’t third-hand or frayed at the hem.