Why not? - English

11-10 Night of the Norman

As we got back to the station from the Flood house, I saw Penny suddenly stop as soon as she got out of Jupiter. Confused, I also got out and walked around Jupiter, only to meet her in the hall gate in front of Jupiter. Why was she suddenly so thoughtful?

"Do you smell that, Sam?" she then asked me, as if she knew exactly what I had wanted to ask and it was only then that I noticed the smell in the air.

"It smells like...cake. Burnt cake," I stated, confused.

"Well, it wasn't me this time!" Elvis interjected when he and Ellie came to us and we both had to smile at his statement. He'd burned the food so many times before, but today we really couldn't blame him.

"Back there! Don't you think the smoke coming from the chimney looks pretty strange?" Ellie interjected and pointed to a chimney from which jet-black smoke was coming out. That was really strange.

"This is Mrs. Foster's fireplace," I observed thoughtfully.

"Mrs. Foster? Your neighbor," Penny turned to me confused and I nodded.

"I'll take a look and take care of it," I replied to the others and made my way through the garden gate to my house.

"I'm coming with you," I heard Penny say and she was next to me in the next moment. "Maybe there's something wrong with her or there's a fire in the chimney. Then you can use any help," she added and I had to agree with her. I hadn't even thought that far ahead. On the other hand, I couldn't get it out of my mind that old Mrs. Foster had noticed that Penny had stayed overnight at my house the other day. Had she perhaps forgotten that again, as she so often did with so many things? Or would it just get unpleasant?

After walking through my garden into hers, we rang her doorbell, but nothing happened, so I jumped over the low wall, that separated our gardens, back into my garden and headed for my own front door.

"Where are you going, Sam?" Penny asked me confused over the wall as I was unlocking my front door.

"Mrs. Foster once gave me a spare key in case of emergencies," I replied to her and reached for the key in the key box before I went back to her front door and unlocked the door and then called for the old lady.

"Do you think it's wise to break into an old lady's house in the middle of the night? She's probably asleep. Not that she'll have a heart attack!" Penny objected thoughtfully as she followed me up the stairs and I stopped for a moment, so she could catch up with me.

"That's why I'm calling her, so she can hear us coming," I said with a smile and Penny gave me a skeptical smile in return. "Besides, she'll never have a heart attack. The woman is tough. She doesn't knock anything down. She's very confused and forgetful, but you should hear what she did back when her husband was away at war and..." I explained to Penny on our way up the stairs, but I stopped when I heard the old lady calling and called to her again.

"Sami? Oh Sami, how nice that you come to visit me," she called out to us as we walked up to her. The floor plan of her house was exactly the same as mine - like each of the neighboring terraced houses. They were built by the mining company to accommodate the countless new miners needed after gold was discovered, so I suspected her call was coming from the living room and headed for it.

I paused in the living room doorway, puzzled, when I saw old Mrs. Foster sitting in a TV chair, armed with a broom that she was using to keep her new cat away. It was given to her by her son, so that she wouldn't be so alone while he was working on an oil rig somewhere in the North Sea. The cat was sitting on the arm of the sofa next to her, but now looked up at us and meowed in greeting.

"Mrs. Foster, what are you doing?" I asked confused, while Penny spoke reassuringly to the brown cat and slowly approached her.

"Oh, Miss Pawdry always wants my food. I haven't been able to eat anything since I got this little trouble," the old woman explained to us when Penny had finally reached the cat and picked it up in her arms. "Oh, how strange. She's normally so shy!" Miss Foster said, amazed at the cat's trustfulness, and lowered the broom before reaching for the plate in front of her and holding it out to me. "Do you want cake? I baked it today."