The Servants. M. Smith M.

      He sat with a blanket around his shoulders and watched his little television for a couple of hours, but soon he felt tired from another long afternoon of falling off his skateboard, and went to bed.

      When he dreamed, it was of being back in the house in London. Though that house had been a lot smaller than the one in Brighton, it had been a real home. The place where he'd been born, grown up, had friends to visit, waited for Santa Claus to come every year – even after his father had explained that there was no such thing.

      Mark dreamed he was in the back garden there, kicking a ball around with his dad. They ran around together, knocking it back and forth, faster and faster. Mark was better at it than he'd ever been before, always managing to return his dad's searching passes, earning grins and laughs and shouts of approval for each time he sent it singing back. They both started panting, getting out of breath but keeping at it, knowing there was some kind of force acting through them now, something outside their control, that they had to keep playing while it lasted, no matter how tired they got.

      Then Mark's father kicked the ball in a completely different direction.

      They hadn't been making it easy for each other before, but at least he'd been kicking it somewhere Mark had a chance of getting to. This last kick wasn't a pass he was ever going to be able to intercept. The ball went sailing clean over the fence on a trajectory that was low and flat and weirdly slow. It flew silently, disappearing into a twilight that arrived suddenly and yet then felt as if it had been there forever. Mark turned his head to watch it go, wondering if he was ever going to be able to get the ball back. He watched also because it meant he did not have to look back at his father's face, in case he saw there that this kick had not been an accident, that his dad had deliberately kicked it over the fence.

      Mark kept waiting for the sound of a crash, of the ball hitting a window – or a least the ground – but it never came.

      When he eventually did turn back he realized his father had gone, could never have really been there, in fact. Mark was no longer in the garden back at the old house, but on the promenade down by Brighton seafront, next to one of the super-benches that had old metalwork walls and a roof and places where you could sit on all sides. It was dark, and he was alone, and there was nothing to see or hear except the sound of the sea.

      Then Mark realized he was lying down rather than standing, and that he was not nearly cold enough to be by the sea in the middle of the night: that the sound he'd interpreted as the sea was in fact the rumble of distant traffic on the road, heard through a window. He came to understand that in reality he was in his bed in David's house. The room was very dark but for a thin strip of pale light that seeped through a gap in the curtains from a streetlight outside in the square. Though it wasn't as cold as the beach would have been, it was still far from warm, and he huddled deep into his bedclothes, lying on his side, facing out into the room.

      As he started to drift towards sleep again he thought he could hear a different noise. A first it sounded like a soft and distant flapping, but then he realized it was people talking somewhere. At least two voices, maybe more. He wondered if it was his mother and David, upstairs, though it must be very late by now, past the middle of the night. His mother needed a lot of sleep at the moment. If she was awake at this time, it was not a good thing.

      He opened his eyes a little.

      And saw something pass in front of his face.

      It was there for barely a second, something that looked like the back of someone's hand, moving past the side of the bed within a couple of feet of his head. A sound that was like the swish of fabric.

      Then he heard footsteps, and though they must have been from upstairs they did not sound like it. They sounded more as if they had travelled across the floor of his room, from just beside his bed to the doorway, and then disappeared into the corridor and away toward the back of the house.

      Then everything was silent, and still.

       Chapter 3

      THE NEXT MORNING, Mark left the house early, skate board under his arm as usual and a bolted breakfast of cornflakes taken alone in the silent kitchen. He was still feeling fuzzy from the dreams he'd had in the night, and wanted to get out into the cold winter sun. The house felt dark sometimes, even when all the lights were on.

      He shouted upstairs to say he was going out. David appeared quickly at the top of the stairs, finger to his lips. His mother was asleep, evidently, and her keeper wanted Mark to keep quiet.

      He shrugged angrily – he was supposed to tell them where he was going, wasn't he? David was forever saying so – but shut the big front door behind him quietly on the way out. The sky was wide and sharp blue again, though something about the quality of the light suggested there might be rain later. You could see that kind of thing more easily here than in a city. Better get his practice done early, then, rather than spend the morning walking up and down. He was getting a little bored with the seafront walk, if he was honest. When they used to come here they would go to the Lanes and look at the shops for at least some of the time. Even though few of them held things of any interest to him he wanted to do that now. He was tired of this stretch of the promenade. He was tired of spending so much time alone.

      He was just setting off down the slope towards the road when something caught his eye. He turned and saw that the door to the basement apartment was open. He went to the top of the metal staircase and peered down, curious.

      He couldn't see much beyond the door, which was open about a foot and revealed a short, narrow passageway beyond. Then he heard a noise from within. It sounded like someone struggling with something.

      ‘Hello?’ he said.

      There was no answer.

      He went down the steps until he was in the basement courtyard. His head was only a couple of feet below the level of the pavement here, but it felt strange, as if he was descending into a whole other part of Brighton. He stood at the door and heard the noise again.

      ‘Hello?’ he repeated.

      Still no response, and he was about to go back up the staircase when he heard the sound of shuffling feet. He took a hurried step back from the door, suddenly feeling like an intruder.

      A woman appeared out of the gloom.

      She was old, and short – about the same height as Mark – and a little stooped. Her hair was pure white and her face was white too and looked as though it was made of paper that had been scrunched up in someone's hand and then flattened out again. She was dressed all in black, not the black of new things but the colour of a dress that had once been black but had been washed and folded and worn again, many times. The sleeves were fringed with lace. Her wrists were like sticks poking out of them, and the hands at the end were covered in liver spots, brown and purple against ivory skin. In one of these she was holding a light bulb.

      ‘Who are you?’

      ‘Mark,’ he said, hurriedly. ‘I … I live upstairs.’

      The old lady nodded once, and kept looking at him. He realized she was not so much old as very old, and also a little scary-looking. When she blinked she looked like a bird, the kind you saw on the seafront, stealing bits of other people's toast.

      ‘I was walking past and I heard a sound, so … I wondered if someone needed help.’

      ‘You must have good ears,’ she said. Her voice was dry, and a little cracked. ‘Do you have good ears? Do you hear things?’

      ‘Well, yes, I suppose so,’ Mark said.

      The old lady held up the light bulb. ‘Trying to change this. Can't get the chair to stay steady. That's all.’

      ‘I could help, if you wanted?’

      She smiled, and for a moment looked less intimidating and also younger. Certainly not a day over eighty-five.

      She