The Imaginary (13 page)

Emily plucked a likely-looking boy's picture.

‘This is the one,' she said. ‘I've got a good feeling about him.'

That morning John Jenkins opened his wardrobe door and looked for his coat.

He
needed it, since it was raining yet again.

‘There you are,' he said as he pulled it out and pulled it on.

As the door shut with a neat little click he had the oddest feeling. It was as if something had crawled across the back of his neck, but on the inside. It said to his brain, ‘Something's watching you.'

He hurried from the room, across the landing and started down the stairs. His mum and dad were waiting in the hallway.

‘Come on lazybones,' his dad said. ‘We'll be late for the film if you don't get on.'

John hurried down, but just as he got to the place on the stairs where he could see across the upstairs carpet, under the chest of drawers on the landing and straight across into his bedroom, he paused for the briefest of moments.

The door to his wardrobe was swinging open.

That was what it had looked like, anyway. But he was sure he'd shut it properly. Hadn't he?

He carried on down the stairs, trying to not look behind him.

‘I'll just go check the back door,' his mum said, leaving him and his dad in the hall.

John sat on the bottom step and did his shoes up. He could remember the day, at the start of the holidays, when he first tied the knot by himself. It was most peculiar. Before that he was hopeless, he just couldn't do it. Whichever way his fingers turned and however knot-like the shoelaces had looked, the moment he stood up they'd come undone and his shoes would slip off.

And
then one day, without anyone watching him or telling him what to do, when he was just sat on his bed by himself,
abracadabra
, he did it. It was as if he'd always been able to tie knots.

When his mum had expressed her surprise he'd expressed surprise straight back at her. ‘Of
course
I can tie my shoelaces,' he'd shouted. ‘I'm not a baby!' And he wasn't, he was six years old.

He made the loop round his finger and prepared to pass the other bit of lace through the—

He
stopped.

There'd been a creak on the stairs behind him. Above him.

He and his mum and dad were all downstairs. He had no brothers or sisters. No friend had stayed the night. There was no one up there, but he knew that the only time the second step down from the top of the stairs creaked was when it was trod on. He'd trodden on it many times, he knew the creak like the back of his hand.

He looked at the back of his hand. It was shaking. The knot fell apart.

He didn't look round. He didn't look up the stairs.

‘Not done your shoes up yet, John?' his mum said, coming back.

His dad had been reading a letter and hadn't noticed.

‘No, Mum,' John said. ‘Can you do them for me?'

‘Of course, love,' she said, kneeling down in front of him.

‘Mum?'

‘Yes?'

‘Is there…?'

‘What?' she said as she tugged his laces tighter than was comfortable.

‘Can you look up the stairs?'

‘What?' She moved on to the second shoe. She was good at this, fast.

‘Is there anyone there?'

‘Don't be silly,' she said, still not looking up.

‘I… I heard something. The creaky step creaked.'

His
mum glanced up.

‘Well, there's nothing there now,' she said.

‘Did you hear it, Dad? You heard it, didn't you?'

‘Sorry? What? No,' was all his dad said, putting the post down and opening the front door. ‘Come on, let's vamoose.'

John Jenkins stood up, his shoes nice and tight, his coat nice and warm, but imaginary ice-water dripped down his spine.
Something
was watching him.
Something
was behind him. He could tell, but he couldn't turn round.

He hurried out of the front door as quickly as he could, running in front of his mum and dad and going round the corner to where the car was parked.

As they drove away he finally looked back at the house.

It looked just the same as ever, except…except, he thought he saw, although he couldn't be sure, couldn't swear to it, but he thought, through the rain, that he saw a face at the hall window.

At the hall window of their empty house.

‘Well, that went well,' Emily grumbled, throwing herself sulkily onto the settee.

Rudger stood by the lounge door.

‘Are you sure you should be sitting there?' he said. ‘It's not our house.'

‘Oh, don't be such a baby, Rudge. It's our house
now
. We're on assignment. We live here until we're not needed any more.'

‘
But he didn't see us.'

‘Sometimes it takes a while, that's all.'

She's done this before
, Rudger thought,
she must know what she's doing
.

Emily folded her arms and then unfolded them, scratched at her cheek and then folded them again. It was like an elaborate dance, just not a very good one.

‘We should make another plan,' she said after a moment. ‘We need to catch his attention. Just get him to see one of us once, and then we'll be in.'

‘How do we do that?' Rudger sat carefully next to her. ‘He looked right through us before, in the wardrobe.'

‘Yeah,' she murmured to herself. ‘If he won't see us when he looks straight on, well, we need to get him to look sideways.'

‘Sideways?' Rudger asked.

‘Yeah, Rudge, old pal.' Emily was cheering up. She rubbed her hands together as she spoke. ‘It's obvious. This one's going to be a
mirror
job.'

The film was so funny that by the time John Jenkins came home, he'd completely forgotten the weird feeling he'd had that morning.

‘I'll put the kettle on,' his dad said, after taking his shoes off.

‘I'm popping to the loo,' his mum said, nipping up the stairs two at a time.

John
was left alone in the hall.

He put a foot on the bottom step and pulled the first of his shoelaces undone. As he did so he glanced up the stairs and suddenly, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, remembered the noise he'd heard earlier on. The fun of the film that had filled him in the cinema sank like a stone in his stomach.

He was looking up the stairs and he couldn't stop looking up the stairs. He had the feeling that if he took his eyes away for a moment something would happen. A door would slam or the stair would creak. If he turned round something would happen. He was petrified, like a rabbit on a country road who can see the lights of the lorry coming and knows nothing other than that he
can't
run.

He swapped feet, lifted the shoe that was still tied up onto the bottom stair.

He reached down, without looking, and tugged at the lace with his fingers. His mum tied good shoelaces, they never got knots and they came apart with one sharp tug.

And then he saw something.

And he jumped.

Literally jumped in the air.

His mum stood at the top of the stairs.

‘Oh, sorry, love,' she said. ‘Did I scare you?'

‘
Mum
,' he moaned.

They
sat at the dining table to eat their dinner. It was the last of their family days and his parents liked to do things properly. There was still a week before school started, but this was the last day his mum and dad could both take off work.

What they called the dining room was just a bit of the living room with a dining table in it. If he'd been really good, or if he nagged enough, they'd have the television on and he could watch it from the table at dinner time, but today they were having to talk to one another.

His dad was talking about his bike, how he needed a set of new tyres before the autumn, and his mum was helping herself to salad, when John looked up.

Behind his seat was a Welsh dresser on which his parents put the horrible plates his grandmother bought them every Christmas. On the opposite wall was a big mirror. His dad had bought it at a car boot sale earlier in the summer. He said it would make the room feel bigger. John didn't know if it did, the room had always felt big enough to him, but he liked to look in the mirror when the conversation got dull and the telly wasn't on. He'd look at the back-to-front pictures of kittens on the plates behind him.

There was a kitten sniffing some flowers and there was a kitten sitting on a cushion and there was a kitten with a moustache of cream. Even at six years old and no art expert, John knew his mum was right to think these plates awful. If he'd had a choice
as
to what plates to have he would have had ones with robots on. Preferably robots breaking things. Preferably robots fighting other robots, and breaking
them
. Maybe if he asked his gran really nicely she'd give them some of
those
plates this Christmas.