it side by side, elbowing each other all the way. Wrestled to open one of the two doors. The building was a single-storey job, not much bigger than a hut. But it had the same sagging pantiles, and even a little brick chimney.
The first door nearly came off its hinges, as Rose got there. Over the children’s heads, inside, she could see whitewashed walls, and loose flakes of whitewash spinning on the end of cobwebs. And a broad unpainted box stretching from wall to wall, with an oval hole in the middle of it.
‘What is it?’ asked Timothy. ‘There’s a big bucket under the hole. Doesn’t half niff.’
‘It’s the bathroom,’ said Rose, feeling for once more knowing than her children.
‘Bathroom?’ said Jane, shocked. ‘You mean even in the middle of the night?’
‘There’s probably a new proper one, inside the house,’ said Timothy in his lordly way.
‘I doubt it,’ said Rose smugly. Not a chance of main drainage out here, and there was no sign of a septic tank. But she noticed, on the back of the outhouse door, a large rusty nail; and on the nail, large roughly-torn pieces of newspaper.
‘Is that to read?’ asked Jane.
‘To wipe your bottom on,’ said Rose a trifle savagely. Spoilt little brats. That’d show them. Though, to be truthful, she’d never used newspaper in her life . . .
But far from being put off, the children were utterly fascinated. Timothy took the bundle of newspaper off the nail. It was very brown, and began to crumble between his fingers.
‘This outhouse was last used on the fourth of June, 1981. Daily Mail. MCC weren’t doing very well.’
‘Bighead,’ said Jane. ‘What’s next door?’
‘Probably the wash-house,’ said Rose, as she was rocked by the scramble to get past her.
It was the wash-house. With a huge iron boiler set in brick, over a tiny grate filled with white ashes.
‘They boiled all their clothes in here,’ said Rose, lifting the lid and peering down into the boiler.
‘Yuk,’ said the children together, holding their noses. ‘That’s not clothes.’
The boiler was full of black liquid, giving off a very putrid smell.
‘That’s not clothes,’ said Timothy. ‘That’s supper!’
‘Probably hasn’t been used for a hundred years,’ said Rose with an attempt at lightness over a horrible desire to retch, as she slammed back the lid.
‘No, Mum, no,’ said Timothy, bending to the grate with the pile of white ash. He extracted another triangle of brown newspaper, charred at the edges. ‘June the first, 1981.’
For some reason, that threw Rose pretty badly. ‘C’mon, let’s go. It’s nearly lunchtime. And we’ve got to find the car yet.’
‘Aw, Mum, no!’ they chorused. Timothy added, ‘This is the best thing we’ve done this holiday!’
‘Better than that rotten crazy-golf at Cromer!’
‘Better than Indiana Jones!’
‘Even better than East-Enders!’ From Jane, that was praise indeed.
For the rest of her life, Rose was to blame herself. But at the time, it was two against one. And if they chose, they could make her life heaven or hell. In her rebellion against Philip, she needed allies.
They peered through the dusty kitchen window, shading their eyes with their hands.
‘No faucets,’ said Timothy. ‘Just a sort of village-pump thing. D’you think you have to pump the water up?’
‘ ’Spect so,’ said Jane. ‘Somebody’s left the washing-up!’
Dimly, on the big kitchen table, Rose could see a mug; and a plate, with the knife and fork and some furry things still on it.
‘I wonder . . .’ said Timothy. And the next second he was trying the kitchen door, with its two long panes of pebbled glass, and blistered maroon paint. To Rose’s horror, it swung open with a screech and Timothy vanished inside.
‘Tim, no!’
But he was in the kitchen already, grimacing at her through the dusty window, putting his thumbs in his ears and wiggling his fingers. She dashed in after him, to restore order, with Jane hard on her heels.
He pointed triumphantly to a dog-eared calendar from a Norwich seed-firm that hung by the sink, and said in deep booming sinister tones, ‘June the eighth, 1981.’
Rose looked; every date til then had been crossed out, with a blue Biro cross.
‘And,’ added Timothy, ‘he had bacon and egg for breakfast, and didn’t finish it.’
One look at the furry things on the plate nearly finished Rose.
But the next second she heard his feet thundering up the stairs.
By the time she finally got them back outside and on to the path, it was past two o’clock. And the mist was still down, and they were no nearer