A Desirable Residence - By Madeleine Wickham Page 0,20

and slammed the door shut with what he hoped was a hearty gesture. He took a deep breath and gave a confident smile to his reflection in the glass. Then, as he turned round to stride jauntily to the front door, he saw the girl with the pram peering at him from the other side of the road. His heart began to beat a notch faster.

He gave the girl a craven smile, and she immediately began to push the pram away. Marcus turned and walked, rather flustered, to the house. He wanted to get inside as quickly as possible. As he rang the bell, he tried to stand as close to the heavy wooden door as possible, as if somehow to blend into it. A couple of dogs barked warningly from the recesses of the house; gradually the tapping of feet became audible. Then the door was flung open.

‘Marcus!’ Leo’s cry of welcome seemed indecently loud, and was augmented by the welcoming yelps of two English setters which began to frolic about Marcus’s knees. The whole ménage immediately filled Marcus with dismay, and he found himself shrinking very slightly back into his jacket. But Leo seemed to notice nothing amiss. He held out his pudgy hand in greeting, and, as they shook, gave Marcus the slightest of winks. Marcus forced himself to grin knowingly back.

‘I thought we might as well be comfortable,’ said Leo, as he led the way down a flagstoned corridor. ‘Come on in.’ They entered a large, bright sitting-room, and Leo gestured to a couple of dark green button-backed chairs. Marcus looked apprehensively around. At one end of the room was a long row of windows looking onto the street.

‘Sit down,’ said Leo cheerily. ‘I’ve asked my daily to bring us some coffee.’

Marcus sat down, gingerly, on one of the chairs. This was not at all how he had imagined their meeting. He had envisaged a small, discreet room, tucked far away from the eyes of the outside world, preferably locked and bolted before they began talking. Here, in this large, exposed room, he felt vulnerable and uneasy.

‘So,’ he said, more abrasively than he had intended. ‘What’s this all about?’ As he spoke, he glanced involuntarily towards the window. The sooner this meeting was over, and he was out of the house, the better. He turned back, and stared at Leo, willing him to start talking.

But Leo, sitting on the opposite chair, simply smiled, and placed the tips of his fingers carefully together. He was younger than Marcus by about five or even ten years, but corpulent and already middle-aged looking. Sandy curls waved around his pink face, and as Marcus watched him, his full lips drew back in a smile, revealing small, pearly teeth.

‘Well now,’ he said eventually. His voice was high, with fruity overtones, and seemed to bounce around the bare-boarded room. There was a moment of silent anticipation.

I could just leave, thought Marcus. I could just get up, quickly, before Leo says another word, tell him I’m ill, forget the whole thing. He tried experimentally to move his leg, to flex his muscles as if preparing for a quick departure. But his whole body seemed comfortably weighed down in the chair, heaped with inertia. And as he leaned back again resignedly, watching Leo’s complacent smirk, temporarily closing off his professional conscience, he became aware of a new sensation. Right in the base of his stomach, almost hidden underneath the murky layers of unease and guilt, began to thump a small, bright beat of excitement.

That day, Alice had a double free period after lunch. She was supposed to spend it in the senior library, doing her prep and starting on her background reading lists. The week before, because they were now starting their GCSE courses, they’d all spent a lesson being shown how to use the library by sixth-formers. The teachers had chosen the most lumbering, conscientious prefects for this task, who had explained laboriously how to use the filing system, and what to do with returned books. While she trailed around, pretending to listen, Alice had seen girls sitting at each gleaming wooden table, writing out neat essays, or frowning over lists of vocabulary. The atmosphere had been tranquil and ordered and obviously designed to be conducive to work. But that was all wrong for Alice. She liked doing her homework curled up awkwardly on the floor in her bedroom, or at the kitchen table with the radio on, or, best of all, in