smiled at her, tilting her head to one side like a sparrow. ‘You’re so very much in love with that boy, aren’t you?’
Penny turned red as fast as a cotton swab dipped in cochineal and wondered if her grandma had understood the significance of the locked door – or if she’d even heard them.
She looked at her and replied with a simple, ‘Yes’.
Barbie sucked air in through her lips then changed the subject, as she always did when she was on to a thought, but it then slipped her mind. ‘Come on, I made pancakes for breakfast.’
Penny got ready to pretend to enjoy pancakes with ketchup or – worse – with toothpaste, but instead she found the table carefully set and a stack of delicious-looking pancakes. Even the aromas in the kitchen seemed how they should be.
Reassured, she tentatively took a mouthful and it was good. It was a real pancake with no surprise ingredients.
‘Wow, these are delicious. Thank you!’ she said to her grandma, embracing her.
‘But we’re out of maple syrup,’ Barbie muttered, a little disappointed.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll go ask Mrs Tavella if we can borrow some.’
Penny put her coat on over her pyjamas and left the apartment. She was happy with recent events, which had been a pleasant surprise: Marcus had shown her a fleeting glimpse of love, and her grandma had finally made something she could actually eat. These things were definitely cause for celebration.
Out on the landing, she gave way to temptation and headed up to the attic. Not to ask Marcus for maple syrup, but to invite him down to have breakfast with them. He’d no doubt be regretting his kindness towards her the previous night and turn down her invitation. There had been that one time he’d invited himself to lunch, but breakfast was different. Breakfast was not a meal to be shared with just anyone.
She smoothed her hair down with her hands and wrapped her coat more tightly around her body.
Like he hasn’t already seen you in your pyjamas, and out of your pyjamas, and all upside down and in every position. Sometimes literally upside down.
She knocked on his door, blushing at the thought of how close they had been only hours before, full of kisses, caresses and stifled moans. Her heart was thumping so hard and threatening to leap from her chest that she was afraid of losing it on the stairs, like ripe fruit that had fallen from the tree.
But no one answered. She knew he couldn’t be sleeping. Could he possibly have gone for a run in the middle of the hailstorm?
Somewhat disappointed, Penny went back down to see Mrs Tavella. Her neighbour, in a patched purple robe, was pleased to see her and willingly lent her a bottle of syrup.
‘So how are you and Marcus?’ she asked, winking at her.
Penny wondered if the strange brood of old women in the building, many of whom seemed almost blind and deaf, were all in fact a little sharper than she realised. Or whether the love oozing from her every pore was so obvious – a kind of marker; some eternal thunderous pulse – that everyone could see and hear and understand. She didn’t answer, but thanked Mrs Tavella for the syrup and dashed home.
In one split second, and just a step away from the door, the whole joy of that morning evaporated as Penny heard a deafening crash from within the apartment, like the sound of a pile of dishes breaking.
She flung open the door to a chilling scene.
Barbie lay on the ground, unconscious or dead. Somehow she’d dragged the tablecloth and everything on it down to the floor as she fell – pancakes, plates, cutlery, even the vase of artificial flowers. Penny screamed and dropped the bottle in her hand, which fell and bounced, syrup splashing everywhere, dripping like golden blood.
The hospital was grey and distressing. Penny, still in her coat and pyjamas, stood pale and very scared, waiting for someone to tell her how her grandma was doing.
She could still hear her own voice screaming, quickly joined by a chorus of neighbours who rushed out of their apartments en masse to see what was going on. She could hear the siren of the ambulance and see Barbie’s cold hand under her own, her colourless cheeks, her closed eyelids.
She didn’t die, she just fainted, but she seemed dead.
At the hospital they took Barbie away somewhere, leaving Penny alone in a corridor with walls as white as ice and a few