slumber talk

7: Deal Me In

I stood in the middle of the curling dirt path. Panting, sweating, shivering from both the rain that was running down my neck and the sweat that was freezing into crystals over the rest of my skin. I was drenched in the storm that had sizzled to fruition as I ran down here and the tears that had refused to dry as I stumbled through acres of undergrowth and picked my way through the dying wilderness on the Hill.

One more time I reached up to cross the slab of polished flagstone that served as a front stoop, grabbing the ring of the bull's head knocker and rapping it hard against the wooden door, as many times as I dared. I didn't have control over my limbs anymore; the fact I'd ended up here proved that. When the ring fell slick between my wet fingers I stepped back off and into the arms of the cold and familiar thunderstorm.

There were levels to the Hill, and the people who lived there. There were wealthy recluses that had settled in the middle of the copse, like my mother; self-assured in their status and happy to retreat to the relative coverage of the trees. There were the rich of income but so starved of esteem who flocked to the communities at the precipice edge, locked up in shiny castle towers and looming estates that couldn't help but catch your eye as you were walking down below. They were the ones who'd drive their equally lurid sports cars and people carriers the 5 minute drive onto the motorway and into town in order to establish that they did, indeed, live on the Hill, and would gesture towards their homes as and when the question arose with an ironic, casual thumb. Being sought after and admired at gave them their fix, I guess – as many times a day as they could afford.

Then there the ones that no one really talked about. The ones who lived further than the copse and far further than the estates, drove themselves in self-suited exile past overgrown footpaths and strange-smelling flowers to rolls of terrain daylight didn't touch. You couldn't see them from town, you couldn't even see them from the motorway – they lived on the Other Side of the Hill, a fabled place I could imagine kids being warned about in cooked-up urban legends. Where settlers succumbed to wild plants and perilous nature and beasts prowled during the night, and where the houses were so far apart from each other, nobody would hear if you let out a scream.

Right now, that worked to my advantage. I could do with no one knowing the depths of my desperation.

The door opened, finally, with a creak of defiance that was loud enough to cut through the piercing thunder. The slat of welcome I was greeted with gave way to a similarly crude brown eye.

It was sheer surprise, I think, that caused Hassan to fully pull open the door.

"The fuck?" he asked, raising his voice over the decibels of the celestial orchestra going on above. The rumbles of thunder dispersed into the sky as the weather clawed at my protective layers. "What's going on? Where's Jez?"

"Jeremy's gone," I shouted back. "The band left at 7."

Some form of realisation seemed to dawn on his irascible face. His grip on the door fell slack, causing a bout of wind to quickly knock it into him.

"I need answers," I shouted again. It felt good to shout. It felt good to succumb to the spell of my emotions. "I need to know – who she is. I need to know."

My hood was finally ripped back from my face, unveiling my face to the horrors of the storm, pelting the crystallising rain at my cheeks and throat and eyelids. And as Hassan stood there defeatedly from the cover of his home, I felt the last of my hopefulness crumble into dust.

~

Whatever I'd believed about houses on the Other Side, I hadn't expected this.

Hassan's place was huge. In a very different way to Mum's. Hers was sprawling staircases and entertaining rooms with decadent twists of marble and gold, something that could've fallen straight from the clouds – whereas Hassan's, Hassan's looked like it grown out of the centrefolds of the earth.