A Desirable Residence - By Madeleine Wickham Page 0,50

card feeling as though he’d been found infiltrating the building under false pretences. He pushed open the swing door, and threw his head back to a blast of chill winter wind. Who gives a fuck anyway? he thought to himself. They can keep their crappy little part.

But by the time he was on the train to Silchester, his initial excitement had returned. So what if some secretary had made him feel stupid. It was Alan Tinker who counted. And Alan Tinker had said he knew he could act. Now Piers sat staring out of the train window, running down the list of cast members in his mind. The characters of Summer Street were mainly young, laid back, his kind of people. He would get on with them fine. He’d bloody well have to.

It was dark when the train arrived, and even colder than before. Hurrying along the streets, Piers wondered idly if it might snow. He was not normally one to rejoice at snow; Ginny’s inevitable raptures at the sight of even one snowflake usually amused and sometimes irritated him. But even he had to admit that a snowy Silchester might be quite pretty. And it was certainly cold enough. Bloody freezing. As he strode along, he pictured in his mind the comforting image of a roaring, crackling, log fire. A glass or two of mulled wine. Perhaps even some mince pies. It wasn’t quite December, but Christmas had been apparent in Silchester’s shops for quite a while. He should be able to get hold of them. He looked at his watch. Half-past four. He would take Duncan along with him to the supermarket. Duncan would know what to put in mulled wine.

But as he neared twelve Russell Street, he saw that the windows were darkened, and a sense of disappointment came over him. He was in a mood for people and noise and celebration; the house would be cold and dark and empty. He was almost tempted to head back for the bustle of the town centre.

Then he saw a pair of feet poking out from the doorstep. His first thought was that it must be Ginny or Duncan, locked out, and he began to hurry towards the house. Ginny, in particular, was not good in the cold; if she had been sitting there for long, her fingers would be blue and she would be miserably snappy. He began to wonder if the water was on; if he would be able to run her a bath straight away and get a fire going downstairs. As he neared the gate, however, he saw that the legs were skinny and clad in thick tights, and that the feet were shod in incongruously large boots. It couldn’t be Ginny. Of course. It was the kid. Alice.

He opened the gate, and she looked up, with a pale, startled face. She was sitting wedged up against the door, with her shoulders hunched up in her jacket and a pair of earphones on her head.

‘Hello there,’ he said cheerfully. ‘No one home?’

‘No,’ she said hesitantly. She reached inside her jacket pocket and turned off her Walkman. ‘I wasn’t going to wait long. I just thought I’d see if anyone came.’

‘And a good thing you did,’ said Piers heartily. In principle, he thought they were seeing a bit too much of this kid. She seemed to appear nearly every day, awkwardly popping her head round the kitchen door, or arriving in the front garden, waving at them through the sitting-room window. She never rang the bell; sometimes he wondered whether there were times when she’d failed to catch anyone’s attention and had simply gone quietly away again. ‘Now you can help me,’ he continued. ‘I need someone to come shopping with me to buy stuff for mulled wine. You know what to get for mulled wine, don’t you?’ Alice thought frantically. It was spices. She didn’t know what sort. But she couldn’t say no.

‘Yes,’ she said breathlessly.

‘Good,’ said Piers. He put his key in the lock. ‘Now, come in for a sec. I want to get out of this jacket and put on something warmer.’ He looked at her suspiciously. ‘You look freezing. Do you want to borrow one of Ginny’s sweaters?’

‘No, no,’ said Alice, ‘thanks.’ She blushed, but Piers was opening the door, and didn’t see.

‘Right,’ he said, bounding up the stairs. ‘Won’t be long.’

Alice hovered in the hallway and hugged herself, half from cold, half from an unspecified nervousness. Even though she’d been coming