She hopped onto a stool and reached across to open the fridge. ‘Fancy a beer?’
‘I … er …’
‘Kidding. Hey, you know “gullible” isn’t in the dictionary?’ and she tossed me a box of juice with a straw. ‘Have a seat. Take the weight off your feet. Mi casa es su casa!’
We sat for a bit, sipping our juices. I had known Roxy for about six minutes, and already I was certain that I hadn’t met anyone quite like her before.
When I said she was tiny, I wasn’t exaggerating. She was so small that, if I was guessing her age, I’d say about six, but her behaviour suggested someone much older, more like sixteen. Her skin was the shiny brown of polished wood, with even darker freckles across her nose, and her springy Afro hair was cut roughly and short, like a boy’s. Her clothes gave nothing away: shorts, flip-flops, dirty white T-shirt, denim jacket. Standard kid-in-summer gear. Only she had to be at least eleven because she was at Percy Academy.
It was her grin that I noticed the most, though. You know how some people, when their faces are resting, look naturally grumpy? It’s not like they’re in a bad mood or anything – it’s just that, when they have nothing particular to smile about, they don’t? Dad’s face is like that. People are always saying to him, ‘Cheer up, mate – it might never happen!’
Anyway, so far as I could tell, Roxy was the exact opposite. Her mouth seemed to be fixed in a permanent smile, as if she was laughing to herself about some private joke.
She caught me looking. ‘What you starin’ at? Haven’t you never seen a toff?’ Suddenly her accent was that of a Londoner and my surprise must have shown on my face. She laughed. ‘It’s a line from Oliver!’
I must have looked blank.
‘Oliver! You know – the musical? Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. When Oliver meets the Artful Dodger, that’s what Dodger says. We’re doing it in my Drama Club. I’m gonna be Dodger. I’ve got the costume and everything!’ She pointed to a long velvet coat and a man’s hat on a peg.
That I could believe. ‘How old are you, Roxy?’
Her voice changed again, this time to a posh old lady’s: ‘How dare you ask a lady her age, young man!’ She was clearly quite the actress, this new neighbour of mine. ‘Same as you. Four weeks older, actually.’
‘You know my birthday?’
She jumped down from the stool and opened the shed door.
‘There’s a lot I know about you, Aidan Henry Linklater. And your sister, Liberty, born on February the fifth. Put the juice box in the recycling there and follow me. There’s something I need to show you.’
I followed her into the woods, down a barely visible path. If only I had known what was to happen, I might have avoided a whole lot of trouble.
But I also would never have met Alfie Monk.
Roxy stomped ahead of me through the woods, pushing aside branches, and beating nettles with a stick. We lost sight of her ‘garage’ after only thirty metres or so.
‘You know where you’re going?’ I said, trying to sound dead casual – as though I wouldn’t really care if she said ‘no’. I don’t think she heard.
The woods were shady but not quiet. So far, the spring had been much warmer and drier than usual, and the leaves and twigs crunched loudly under our feet; when we stopped, I could hear a bee, and Roxy breathing. If I cocked my head, I could just make out the traffic on the A19 shushing past – a comforting sound: a reminder that, even though it felt like we were in the middle of nowhere, we actually weren’t.
Then Roxy stopped and crouched down. ‘There. Can you see it?’
‘See what?’
‘There, man! You blind?’
Lower down the steeply sloping forest floor, between the silvery-grey trees and about as far away as I’d be able to throw a pine cone, I saw it: a mossy, slate-covered roof.
I glanced over at her to check if she was joking. I mean, a roof. So what? Roxy clocked my doubtful expression.
‘It’s better when you get nearer. Come on,’ and she was off through the trees. She was no longer bashing the nettles with her stick, and she advanced quietly, glancing back to check that I was following. Then she stopped.
We had a better view of the roof. It seemed to be level with us, which was odd, till I realised it was just because we were on a steep hill: it led down to a stone-built house surrounded by thick, spiky bushes – as if someone had planted the area especially densely to discourage intruders.
‘Careful here,’ whispered Roxy, and she pointed inside a bush at a coil of rusty barbed wire; the branches had grown around it. Further along, the bushes thinned out very slightly and there was a sign, one of those ones you can buy in hardware shops that says:
BEWARE: THE DOG ALWAYS ATTACKS
‘Erm … Roxy?’ I said.
She flapped her tiny hand dismissively. ‘There’s no dog. Don’t worry. Come on!’
I followed, feeling like an obedient puppy.
We came to a gap in the bushy barbed-wire defences. It would have been easy to squeeze through it had I been Roxy’s size. All I could do was lie absolutely flat on my belly and try to shimmy forward, following her flip-flops.
Her feet and lower legs were scratched all over and stung by nettles, but she didn’t seem to care.
Then the gorse bush cleared and we were in long grass: long enough to hide us if we lay flat. That’s when I saw the house properly.
The sloping ground extended another couple of metres and then dropped away sharply to become a brick wall about the height of a person. There was a neat, paved yard with a round fire-pit made of stone. A smouldering log gave off a thin wisp of smoke that rose up straight in the still air, and a few chickens pecked around on the ground. Next to the fire-pit was a round, metal pot, blackened with age and smoke.
The house itself was made of stone bricks, mottled and misshapen with age, and topped with a roof of the mossy slates I had seen from a distance. We were looking at the back of the house; the door was one of those ones that’s split in half. The top half was open but I couldn’t see inside. The paint on the door and window frames was a bit flaky; in fact, everything about the house looked old and dry and worn.
‘So, Roxy …’ I began.
‘Shhh!’
I lowered my voice. ‘So, Roxy. It’s someone’s house.’
‘Yes!’ she whispered back excitedly.
‘And this is a big deal?’
‘Well
