The Servants. M. Smith M.

narrow indeed, but after only a couple of feet there was another doorway. Mark realized that the first passageway was an addition, part of the courtyard which had been enclosed to provide somewhere to hang coats and store umbrellas. Beyond the inner doorway was a second corridor, which was much wider and evidently lay directly underneath the hallway of the house upstairs.

      On the right side of this short corridor was a door, and Mark glanced through it as he stepped into the gloom. In a space about a third of the size of the room he was using upstairs, the old woman had crammed a single bed, two narrow armchairs, a small table, a bookcase, and a wardrobe. There was a tiny kitchen area under the bow-window. The furniture looked like the kind of stuff you saw outside second-hand shops, not protected from the weather and priced at about four pounds each. The air in the room was soft and dim, filtered through the lace curtains. The whole space couldn't have been more than about twelve feet by eight, and most adults would have felt themselves wanting to stoop.

      He turned back to see that the old lady was standing by a rickety wooden chair in the passageway. A naked cable hung down from the ceiling. He took the bulb from the lady's hand and carefully climbed up onto the chair.

      He could feel the legs wobbling but his practice on the promenade over the last couple of weeks made him feel slightly more confident of keeping the chair upright – certainly more than the woman's hand gripping the back of the chair did, which he felt was unlikely to make much difference if the thing did decide to tip over.

      He stretched up and unscrewed the bulb already in the fitting. It resisted, but finally came out with a rusty-sounding squeak. He handed it down to the old lady and pushed the new one in – and was startled when it suddenly glowed in his hand.

      ‘Whoops,’ the old lady said. ‘Sorry’

      He quickly screwed the bulb in before it got hot, then jumped down from the chair. He could see now that this corridor stopped after about six feet, where there was a heavy door which didn't look as if it had been opened in a long time. Mark was surprised. He'd assumed the old lady must have at least one more room in her flat, maybe two – she couldn't possibly live just in that front space, could she?

      The hallway seemed gloomy even now it was lit. It was very dusty and there was an underlying smell, like the inside of something you were only supposed to know from the outside. There were no tiles on the floor, only battered floorboards, and the walls were dingy.

      ‘That's most kind,’ the old lady said.

      Mark shrugged, suddenly feeling a little embarrassed.

      When he got to the place on the promenade where the other kids normally were, Mark was confused at first. There was nobody there. As he stood in the middle of the open area, he eventually remembered it was a Monday morning. Everybody else was at school, probably – which is where Mark should have been, and would be, if they were still in London. The seafront was deserted and even the little café which had been open over the weekend was shut, the white plastic tables and chairs put away.

      Mark didn't mind at first. At least he had the place to himself and wouldn't have to worry that other boys – or girls: he'd seen a couple down here – might be laughing at him. After he'd been going up and down for an hour or so, however, he came to think maybe it didn't work like that after all. Everything he did seemed a little more fluid than it had the day before. He still couldn't flip the board on either axis, and every attempt ended in a hectic scrabble and the clattering sound of the board crash-landing several feet away – but on the other hand he didn't wind up sliding along the ground as often, generally managing to land on his feet. So it was progress, kind of.

      But it felt a little pointless.

      The danger that other people might laugh at your mistakes was precisely what made it worthwhile – essential, even – to keep on trying. That was part of why boys were such a tough audience for each other: it made you do stuff. Without this you had to do everything for yourself, and that was okay for a while but then you started to wonder why you were doing it, and why you were still so crap at it. It made you question what the point of it all was, if it just meant you were going up and down, falling off, then going up and down again. Mark started looking up expectantly when people came past, in case someone was going to wander over to his area, put down a plank and a wedge, and start doing things. But nobody did. The only people walking up and down were old men with dogs, or couples not talking to each other.

      Soon there was hardly anyone at all, as the sky got more leaden and a cold wind picked up from the sea. The skateboard just didn't want to stay upright, or carry him. All it wanted was to tip him over, as painfully as possible, and then hurtle randomly away.

      In the end it started to rain and Mark walked bad-temperedly back to the house, past the little hut that sold sandwiches and tea and cakes regardless of what day of the week it was, and whatever the weather. You couldn't sit inside it, but there were plastic tables and chairs arranged on the promenade to one side, protected from the wind – slightly – by sheets of yellow canvas. The café was called The Meeting Place but today it was deserted except for a middle-aged man sitting alone at a table, looking down at his hands, an empty tea cup beside him. He didn't look as if he was expecting to meet anyone.

      When he started to look up Mark hurried past, in case the man's face reminded him too much of his own.

      When he got indoors David was in the kitchen, standing in front of the fridge staring at the contents as if he couldn't understand what he was seeing. Given that he had bought everything in there – very little of which was on Mark's Favourite Things To Eat list – Mark thought that was annoying of him.

      ‘How's it going?’ David asked, still gazing into the fridge.

      Mark threw his jacket over a chair. ‘Pretty crap,’ he said.

      David watched water drip off it onto the floor. ‘Going back out after lunch?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘Because it's raining,’ Mark snapped. ‘And it's a waste of time. You might have to put up with me being in your house for a while. Sorry if that's going to put you out.’

      ‘Of course it won't,’ David said. For once his stepfather sounded irritated. ‘You can do whatever you want. It's your house too.’

      ‘No, it's not,’ Mark said, as if he'd been waiting for just this opportunity. ‘I don't live here. I live in London.’

      ‘Not any more,’ David said. ‘We—’

      ‘We don't do anything. What I do is nothing to do with you.’

      ‘Actually, it is,’ David sighed. ‘Your mother and I got married, Mark. Remember? You were there. That means what you do has everything to do with me. You may not like it, but that's the way it is. We're just going to have to work at it. It's like skateboarding. You can't just expect—’

      ‘Oh fuck off,’ Mark muttered.

      David stared at him, still holding the door to the fridge, and the room suddenly felt very quiet.

      ‘I'm going to have to ask you to apologize for that,’ David said.

      Mark had been as surprised as David to hear the words come out of his mouth, but he wasn't going to take them back.

      ‘No,’ he said.

      ‘Is everything all right down there?’

      They both turned at the sound of Mark's mother's voice coming down the stairs. Mark opened his mouth to say no, of course it wasn't, how could it be, but David got there first. He walked quickly over to stand in the doorway, tilted his head up.

      ‘It's fine,’ he said. ‘I'll be right up, honey’

      Mark understood then what his position had become. David now stood between him and his mother. He always would. This was his house. He ruled. Whatever he wanted to do, or say, he could. There was nothing Mark could do about that. Yet.

      ‘Yeah,’ he snarled, quietly,