Falling Fast - L.S

19

It was six-thirty by the time the bus dropped us at Holmes Chapel. We walked round the corner and down Aberfeldy Close, where I knew Harry lived.

The road was busy and dirty and full of traffic and litter. I could feel Harry tensing as we walked. We'd hardly talked on the bus. It was like we were in limbo.

Waiting.

My heart thumped as I followed Harry down an endless row of boarded-up newsagent's, sex shops and convenience stores. He finally stopped at a set of steps sandwiched between a bleak, harshly-lit café and a cheap looking estate agency. The door at the top of the steps had six buzzers beside it. I could only count four windows above our heads.

Harry turned his key in the lock and pushed the door open. The smell of damp was overpowering.

He banged his fist against some kind of switch on the wall. A light flickered on and off overhead.

Harry swore under his breath. Then he strode across to a staircase opposite the door and started climbing. The smell of damp receded as we reached the second floor. There were three doors leading off the tiny landing. Harry turned to the one on the right and fitted his key.

I followed him inside, my hands shaking. I don't know why I was so scared. I just knew that what we were doing was a very big deal.

A threadbare carpet led away from the door for a few metres. Two doors on the left. Two on the right.

"This won't take long," Harry said darkly.

He opened the first door to the right. It was a bathroom - a tiny bath on one side, a loo and a sink on the other. He shut the door quickly. I only had time to get a general impression. Messy but clean.

He opened the next door. A living room - if you could call it that - about three metres square, with three beanbags on the floor, a TV and a tiny, spotless kitchen area to the right.

I noticed a pile of Harry's school books in the corner. For some reason the sight of them brought a lump to my throat.

The curly-haired boy shut the door. "Had enough?"

I shook my head. He leaned over and opened the first of the doors on the left of the tiny corridor. Gemma was laying asleep, her long brown hair spread out on the pillow of the double bed which took up most of the room.

There was a single chest of drawers on the far wall and a small clothes rail crammed with clothes. I could make out less than half a square metre of carpet between the bed and the door.

"She always sleeps for a bit when she gets in from work," Harry whispered. "She says Mum snores and it keeps her awake at night."

He closed the door quietly and moved on to the next room.

It was even smaller than the first bedroom. Someone had hung a curtain down the middle of the room. The near side of the curtain contained a single mattress covered with a faded Barbie duvet cover. A couple of cardboard boxes containing clothes and toys stood against the curtain. There were only a few centimetres between the boxes and the mattress - about the width of a child's foot.

"This is Caitlin's," Harry said.

He took a single step across the room to the curtain, then twitched it back and waved through. "My room," he said sarcastically.

I crept past him. A single mattress lay on the floor against the far wall. Books and magazines and clothes were scattered all over the remaining floor space. The entire area was about two and a half metres long by one and a half metres wide.

My mouth fell open. I looked back, out to the corridor and the other rooms. The whole flat had to be the size of our living room.

I didn't know how to meet Harry's eyes. There was a long silence. Then he shoved his hands in his pockets and stepped over to the door.