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arked and then whimpered and then all was quiet again except for the noise of footfall, somebody
running away.
John was up on his feet in an instant. He ran outside.
I followed him, but by the time I got to the front door it was swinging wide open and he was gone.
A bitter wind blew into the room, not just through the door but also through a gaping jagged hole
where the front window had been. The curtains, drawn to shield us from the press, were dancing,
flapping and turning in the wind like dervishes. Pieces of glass littered the floor, sharp edges
everywhere, and in the centre of the room lay a brick.
There were letters painted on it. It took me a moment to realise that there were two words on its
side, the same two that had screamed at me from the back fence: ‘BAD’ and ‘MOTHER’. Small,
printed carefully. It couldn’t be easy to paint on brick.
‘John!’ I screamed.
I ran to the door. Glass crunched underfoot. From one end of the street footfall rang out, the sound
echoing. I saw John and, just ahead of him, another figure, both running as fast as they could. They
were moving shadows and, in an instant, they’d disappeared around the corner.
The street stretched away from me, dark and wet, the glow from the streetlamps looking threedimensional
in the rain, orbs of orange fluorescence. I stood in a shard of white light that spilled out
of my house and fell around me, making the slick wet surface of the pavement gleam blackly.
Opposite, a neighbour opened their front door just a crack.
‘Help,’ I said. ‘Help us.’
From the corner the men had disappeared around, I heard a scuffle, a thud, a cry of pain, and then I
began to run too.