Where Have All the Boys Gone?(15)

“Where’s the torch?” asked Louise, finally.

Katie looked at her soaking wet feet. “Um, I didn’t bring one.”

“What did your dad say about driving at night without a torch?”

“I don’t have a dad.”

“Oh, yes, bring that up now we’re trapped in a flood in the middle of nowhere.”

Gingerly, Katie opened the door. There was definitely water running under their feet. “Bollocks,” she said.

Louise gasped sharply.

“What?”

“There’s a light . . . over there.”

Sure enough, a tiny light could be seen bobbing up and down towards them.

“Do you think it’s a rescue boat?”

“Uh, yeah,” said Katie, whose first thought had, in actual fact, been that it was aliens.

“Hellaooowww!” screeched Louise. “Carn you come and help us, pleayse!”

“Could you sound a little less like the Duke of Edinburgh?” hissed Katie. “Haven’t you seen An American Werewolf in London?”

“Cooeee!” shouted Louise.

“What the MANKIN HELL . . .” a strident voice, closely followed by the beam of a torch and an equally visible bosom, strode out of the darkness “. . . do you think you’re doing?”

An imperious nose followed the bosom, along with an expression that looked far from the welcoming Scots of tradition, with two eyebrows that wouldn’t have been entirely out of place on an old Labour minister.

Katie and Louise immediately splashed to attention.

The woman sized them up and down. “And you are?”

“We’re looking for number 4 Water Lane,” said Katie, in her best well-brought-up voice.

“D’you think this might be Water Lane?” said the woman, staring pointedly at their shoes.

“Is that a yes or a no?” replied Katie. Playing humorous word games with Attila the Bun would be all well and good if they weren’t on the brink of hypothermia.

The woman sniffed in a manner that implied that yes, it obviously was, surely even to the educationally sub-rate specimens in front of her. “You’ll be the London girls then.”

Katie and Louise swapped glances.

“I thought it was quite clear that you were expected before 8:30?” she continued.

“It took us a while to get here. From London,” said Katie.

“Really? Is it far? Maybe you had to stop for cocktails and to buy some shoes on the way.”

If she hadn’t been so very, very wet and very, very tired, Katie would simply have turned around and driven all the way back home.

NUMBER 4 WATER Lane was not, as the girls had fantasised for the last two hundred miles, a tartan-festooned haven of horseshoe antiques, a stag’s head or two and a blazing open fire. It was an enormous house, shrouded in almost complete darkness, with creaks and peculiar noises emanating from different corners. It was freezing—“heating and hot water 7–8. Breakfast 7–8” read the sign on the wall that Attila, whose name was in fact Mrs. McClockerty, had pointed out, leading them to ponder the invention of time travel as she led them through endless gloomy corridors, pointing out a terrifyingly pristine, anti-macassared floral monstrosity called the “residents’ lounge.” They appeared to have been billeted in the old servants’ quarters, directly under the eaves. Fortunately the lighting was terrible: Katie was sure there were cobwebs and God knew what else in the corners. The beds were single, and both mattresses and blankets were painfully thin.

“I need the toilet,” whimpered Louise from her bed after they’d put the light out.

“It’s down the hall,” whispered back Katie.

“I’m too frightened.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake.”

“Katie?”

“Yes?”

“Are you sure we haven’t been kidnapped by white slavers and sold into service?”

“Ssh!”

There was a short pause. “Have you seen that film The Others?”

“NO!”

“Gaslight?”

“Goodnight Louise.”

“Amityville?”

“If you wet the bed, I’m telling Mrs. McClockerty.”

There was a pause, then a rustle. Katie stiffened. Sure enough, the covers on her bed were being pulled back.

“Louise!”

“Please!”

“Well, no funny stuff, OK?”

“I would never fancy you even if I was gay,” said Louise loftily. “I’d fancy that bird from Location Location Location.” And, despite her avowed terrors and full bladder, she immediately fell fast asleep.

Katie wriggled a little to try to get comfortable, but it was no use. Grateful for the warm body beside her, she lay staring into the dark as the clock ticked away until morning.

GETTING UP THE next morning proved near impossible—the room was icy and so huge that getting to their clothes seemed an epic journey, never mind the arduous trek to the bathroom. Only by holding hands, closing their eyes and shouting “bacon and eggs!” could they inch their way forwards into the frigid air.

Sadly, bacon and eggs weren’t exactly forthcoming.

“It’s continental breakfast,” announced Mrs. McClockerty, as if what is delicious-freshly-made-in-a-patisserie-under-a-heartwarming-early-Mediterranean-sun was in any way a comparable experience to the dried-out pieces of toast studded on the tray before them while the wind audibly howled around the house.