The Servants. M. Smith M.

took a plate from the little cupboard above her sink. She frowned a little, and hesitated before setting the plate down. It felt cold to the touch. The room wasn't warming as quickly as it usually did.

      She stood at the counter for a moment and listened to the sound of feet on the pavement above her window as they moved past the house along the rails of their own lives. The footsteps seemed both distant and somewhat loud, against a silence in the house that seemed to grow fuller all the time.

      Something was up. She was becoming increasingly convinced of it.

      She put the kettle on, to make a cup of tea.

      Half an hour later, comfortable in her chair and with enough cake inside her, she found herself dozing. She didn't mind. The room was nice and warm now. Resting her eyes for a few moments might be as good a way as any to prepare for what was coming next.

      If you live long enough, everything happens.

      And then some of it happens again.

PART ONE

       Chapter 1

      MARK SAT ON a ridge of pebbles and watched as the colours over the sea started to turn. It had been a bright, clear afternoon, the sky hard and shiny and blue. A line of pink had now appeared along the horizon, and everything was slowly starting to get darker, and greyer, clouds detaching themselves one by one to come creeping over the rest of the sky. It was only a little after four o'clock, but the day was already drawing to a close. It was ending, and the night would start soon.

      Normally Mark found you couldn't sit on the rocks for too long before your behind started to hurt. Today that didn't seem to be bothering him, possibly because the rest of him hurt too. Some bits hurt a little, others hurt a lot. They all hurt in slightly different ways. Skateboarding, he had discovered after extensive trials, was not as easy as it looked.

      He'd owned his board for over a year – it was one of the last things his father had given him – but Mark hadn't had the chance to start learning how to use it while they were back in London. There had been too much confusion, too many new things to deal with. It hadn't seemed very important, what with everything else. When they'd driven down to the coast in David's car, however – Mark, his mother, and David, naturally – he'd sat all the way with the skateboard on his lap. A form of silent protest which he was not sure they'd understood, or even noticed. In the three weeks since, Mark had finally confronted the process of trying to teach a piece of wood (with wheels attached) which of them was the boss.

      So far, the piece of wood was winning.

      Mark had been to Brighton before, on long weekends with his mother and proper dad. He knew the seafront fairly well. There was a promenade along the beach, about forty feet lower than the level of the road. This had long stretches where you could walk and ride bikes and roller-blade – almost as if to make up for the fact that there was no sand on the beach, only pebbles, and so you couldn't do much there except sit and look out at the waves and the piers, adjusting your position once in a while to stop it from being too uncomfortable. There were cafés and bars dotted along it – together with a big paddling pool and a play area. Mark was eleven, and thus too old now for these last two entertainment centres. He had still been taken aback to discover that the pool had been drained for the winter, however, the cheerful summer chaos of the playground replaced by a few cold-looking mothers nursing coffees as toddlers dressed like tiny, earth-toned Michelin Men trundled vaguely up and down. Walking past the play area felt like passing a department store in the evening, when the doors were locked and most of the lights were off – just a single person deep inside, doing something at the till, or adjusting a pile of books, like a tidy ghost.

      So Mark had spent most afternoons, and some of the mornings, on a stretch of the promenade where there was nothing but a wide, flat area of asphalt. Once this area held the original paddling pool, he'd been told, built when the seafront was very fashionable: but it had been old and not safe – or just not brightly coloured enough, Mark's mother had suggested – and so had been filled in and replaced. There were usually other boys a few years older than Mark hanging around this area, and some had laid out temporary ramps. They scooted up and down on their boards, making little jumps, and when they made it back down safely they peeled off in wide, sweeping arcs, loops of triumph that were actually more fun than the hard business of the tricks themselves – though Mark understood you couldn't have one without the other. These boys crash-landed often too: but not as often as Mark, and not as painfully, and Mark fell when he was only trying to stay on the thing, not do anything clever.

      A lot of the boys seemed to know each other, and called out while they were watching their friends: encouragement, occasionally, but more often they laughed and shouted rude words and tried to put the others off. Mark understood that was how it was with friends when you were a boy, but he didn't have anyone to call out to. He didn't know anyone here at all. He skated in silence, and fell off that way too.

      When the sky was more dark than light he stood up, the pebbles making a loud scrunching sound beneath his feet and hands. It was time to go home – or back to the house, anyway: the place they now seemed to be living in. A house that belonged to David, and which did not feel anything like home.

      From where he stood, Mark could see the long run of houses on the other side of the Hove Lawns and the busy seafront road. These buildings all looked the same, and stretched for about six hundred yards. They were four storeys high, built nearly two hundred years ago, designed to look very similar to each other and painted all the same colour – pale yellowish, the colour of fresh pasta. Apparently this was called ‘Brunswick Cream’ and they all had to be painted that way because they were old and it was the law. The house Mark was staying in was halfway up the right-hand side of Brunswick Square, bang in the middle of the run of buildings. In the centre of the square was a big patch of grass surrounded by a tall ornamental hedge, the whole sloping up from the road so that the houses around all three sides had a good view of the sea. Mark had almost never seen anyone in the park area in the middle. It was almost as if that wasn't what it was for.

      As you looked along the front to the right, the buildings changed. They became smaller, more varied, and after a while there were some that looked completely different and not old at all. A few tall buildings made of concrete, two big old hotels (one red, one white), then eventually the cinema, which looked as if it had been built in the dark by someone who didn't like buildings very much. Or so David said, and as a result Mark found he rather liked its featureless, rectangular bulk. You could see films in there, of course, though Mark hadn't. He was only allowed to go along the front in the area bounded by the yellow buildings. He was only permitted down here by himself at all because he'd flat-out refused to stay in the house the whole day, and after enduring a long lecture about talking to strangers. Mark had just stared at David during this, hoping the man would get the point – that he was a stranger too, so far as Mark was concerned. He hadn't.

      It was getting cold now, but still Mark didn't start the walk up to the promenade. He stayed a little longer on the border between the sea and the land, wishing he wasn't there at all. He'd liked Brighton in the past. When he'd come with his mother and dad they'd stayed at a modern hotel down past the cinema. His mother spent hours poking around the Lanes, the really old area where the streets were narrow and twisted and most of the stores sold jewellery. They had spent long afternoons on the pier – the big, newer one, with all the rides, not the ruined West Pier, which was closer to Brunswick Square and which someone had, a few years before, set on fire. More than once. But now they were staying in David's house, and all Mark could see was the way the town came down to the sea, and then stopped.

      London didn't stop. London went on more or less forever. That was a good thing for towns to do. It was a good thing for everything to do, except visits to museums, or toothache, or colds. Why should things go on for a little while and then stop? How could stopping be a good thing? Brighton ran out. It was interesting and fun for a while and then you hit the beach and it was pebbles