Free Incarnate by Ramsey Campbell

working. They want to knock it down now and about time too, but where are they going to put me?”
    “That’s fine, Arthur. Sit down now,” Joyce hissed, but he wasn’t listening. “Going to leave me in there,” he shouted, “while they knock it down, are they?”
    The old lady next to him joined in. “That’s right, they don’t care a toss about us. They let the muggers and the rapists roam the streets and tell them not to be such naughty boys. You aren’t even safe in your own bed anymore. I beg your pardon, Mrs. Churchill, I won’t be quiet, you brought me here to talk.” Half a dozen people were shouting now, and the one who shouted loudest won: a barrel of a man who turned out to own the video library. Joyce sank into her seat as he accused the planners of letting the area run down until half the property was beyond repair, so that they could buy it cheap. “You did well,” Geoffrey murmured, gripping her hand, dismayed to find it so cold and shaky. “You made your point. I’m sure it will be in the papers.”
    She let go of his hand and helped Mrs. Madden retrieve her things, and was placating the old people when the meeting came to an abrupt end. “Look after them for me while I talk to the reporters,” she said, and was gone before Geoffrey could speak. He sat uncomfortably next to Mrs. Madden and said, “We’ll just wait for Joyce,” and hoped that would be all that was required of him. He marveled yet again that Joyce had taken on this work and wondered yet again if she had taken on too much. Thank the Lord, she was coming back.
    He didn’t feel they were on the way home until the car had climbed the hill above the shabby roofs. A bridge carried Hornsey Lane a hundred feet above the ravine of Archway Road, and then they were on the summit, in the High Street of Highgate, where the wind blew the rumbling of London away. There was the wine bar that had once been Geoffrey’s shop, near the steep dark slope of Swain’s Lane that led to the cemetery, the forest prying open the graves. He turned the car past Castle Yard, where cottages brandished fenders at the traffic, and parked in front of their Georgian house.
    He followed her up the path between the neat flower beds. She hurried into the house so hastily that she trod on a letter without noticing and almost tripped over the vacuum cleaner. He had to struggle with the albums he’d bought outside Windsor as he closed the door, and so he had time to read the return address on the envelope. He snatched it from the mat and stuffed it into his pocket just as she emerged from the kitchen. Thank God, she must think the letter was for him. “What was wrong?” he said.
    “I thought I heard the kettle boiling.” She grimaced at her silliness. “I don’t know what I could have been dreaming of.”
    “It isn’t worth worrying about.”
    “I didn’t say it was.” She frowned at the vacuum cleaner and wheeled it back to the hall cupboard. “Don’t get too engrossed,” she said as he carried the albums upstairs. “I’ve put the stew on. Half an hour.”
    His office was next to the guest room. Windows were lighting up on Muswell Hill like sparks reviving a fire; the gutted shell of Alexandra Palace was a dark blotch. He laid the albums on his baize-topped desk and took out the letter. It was unthinkable that he should open a letter addressed to her. He locked it away in the safe and tried not to wonder what it said.
    He leafed through the first of the albums and wished that he hadn’t made so much of her hearing the kettle. She never left the vacuum cleaner out. but she must be worrying about the day center, that was all. He stared at the dark wallpaper and the Gibbons catalogs that always made him feel cozy, at home, and wondered what she was doing downstairs. He was glad when she called him to dinner.
    Her mother’s Wedgwood gleamed through the glass of the dresser in the dining room. She seemed happier now, ladling out the stew while he