A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [82]
‘I could go for you,’ Matthew volunteered. ‘I’ve been along it loads of times with Alan. It’s dead easy from our yard.’
Fifi was tempted. If he could get in the back way and open the front door for her, she could just check on the child, give her something to eat, and put her own mind at rest. But she had a feeling his mother wouldn’t like it. She’d either got to do it herself or wait until Dan got home.
‘No, your mum wouldn’t like it,’ she said reluctantly. ‘I’ll go myself. Can you show me the dead-easy way?’
She didn’t even have to go through the boy’s flat. There was a gate next to the coal yard that led straight out into his backyard. It was devoid of any plants or trees, just a well-swept space with a washing line and the brick wall along the back.
‘You can climb up on the coal bunker,’ Matthew said, and obligingly got a wooden beer crate and stood it beside the bunker.
Fifi had no trouble at all getting on to the wall, and once she looked along it, she understood why Alfie had no difficulty using it as his private route. The wall was at least fifteen inches wide, and though there were trees and shrubs on both sides of it, there were no obstacles between this end of the street and the far end by the corner shop.
‘Stay there for a little while, just in case I can’t get in through the back door,’ she said, looking down at Matthew. ‘Is there something in their backyard to climb down on?’
‘Loads of stuff,’ he said with a wide grin. ‘But it’s right mucky.’
If Fifi hadn’t been worried about Angela, she would’ve got a childish delight in making her way along the wall because it reminded her of going scrumping for apples as a child. She was hidden from anyone looking out of their windows, yet if she parted the leaves she could see into the back gardens, and even into rooms that had no net curtains. Number 10, next to the Muckles, had a very overgrown garden, full of bramble bushes. The elderly couple who owned the house had been taken away to a nursing home soon after Fifi and Dan moved here. Their son came once a week to check on the house, and he’d told Frank he wasn’t going to clear the brambles because it deterred the Muckle children from attempting to break in. Fifi hoped it wasn’t the same in the Muckles’ garden, because she wasn’t keen on getting scratched to pieces.
Luckily, although there were some brambles on both Yvette’s and number 10’s side, a wide area had been hacked clear in the centre of the Muckles’ garden. As Matthew had said, there was plenty to climb down on, almost a staircase of wooden beer crates and planks. She made her way down very cautiously though, for she wasn’t certain the structure was safe and all around it were broken bottles, tin cans with jagged tops and other junk.
She reached the ground safely, wrinkled her nose at the smell of rotting rubbish and urine, and gingerly picked her way to the back door, past old car seats and a mattress with the springs coming through. The door was unlocked, but she had to push it hard as there was something behind it.
This was just a crate of beer: once she got the door open slightly she could see it and push it out of the way. Then she went in.
She almost turned and went straight back out because the smell made her gag, but she covered her nose with her hand and tried hard not to look at the filth.
She had never in her life seen anything like it. Dirty dishes, empty beer bottles, fish-and-chip papers, cigarette stubs, milk turned sour in bottles and cans of food with jagged tops lay everywhere. The sink and draining board were full of dirty dishes, cigarettes ends stubbed out on them. Burnt saucepans sat on the floor alongside clothes, shoes and old newspapers. She couldn’t imagine how anyone could even make a cup of tea in there, let alone cook a meal. But not wanting to linger, she passed through it into the hall.
It was eerily quiet, the only sound a buzzing of flies somewhere. She pushed open the back-room door and saw a rectangular table strewn with beer bottles, dirty glasses, a