Free Ruins by Joshua Winning Page B

Aileen?”
    The old man winked at him.
    Aileen had disappeared up a flight of stairs and Nicholas heard her humming to herself animatedly.
    “Sentinels and their secret doors,” he muttered, hurrying after Sam.
    Upstairs looked like a completely different house. A long, bright landing was broken up by numerous flights of stairs that led off in different directions. They followed the sound of humming and came to a small room that was sparingly furnished, but preferable to the finicky décor downstairs. A single bed with crisp white linen. A beige armchair. A sink.
    “Here,” Aileen said to Nicholas, “this’ll be yours. I’ll put Samuel in across the hall.”
    She left the room and Sam trudged after her.
    Nicholas went to the window. The sun hung over the town and he admired the golden view. They were high up and he could see over row upon row of neat rooftops. An old stone building that looked like a watchtower peeked above them. Nicholas remembered it was the entrance to the Abbey Gardens.
    “Looks alright,” he said, “different to how I remember.”
    It was strange; Bury resembled a compressed version of Cambridge. Almost like a toy town imitation. The Market Square contained most of the shops, and the cobbles of Abbeygate Street led from there to the Abbey Gardens. It was a small town with quirky lanes and not a single skyscraper, not counting the spire of St Mary’s Church.
    As he eyed a flinty shape within the Abbey Gardens, Nicholas felt a pang of… what? Grief? The last time he’d been to Bury, he’d come with his parents. He must have been about seven. The thought unsettled him, reminded him of the loss. The thought that, one day, he’d be without his parents would never have occurred to his seven-year-old self. He wished he could be seven again.
    “It’s a park,” he murmured, his eye drawn to the watchtower-like edifice. “They turned the Abbey ruins into a park for kids.”
    Isabel hopped onto the windowsill.
    “A strange township,” she mused. “Whatever possessed them to turn ruins into a park?”
    “People like them,” Nicholas said. “Makes them feel, I don’t know… Part of something, I guess.”
    He noticed the cat peering up at him. The depths of her eyes sparkled like gems. Nicholas remembered there was a crystal called ‘tiger’s eye’, and thought the name apt. Then, in a flick of her ears, she was staring out of the window again; had dismissed whatever she’d been thinking.
    Nicholas gazed longingly at the freshly-made bed and wanted nothing more than to collapse into it. His stomach grumbled and he decided he’d offer Aileen a hand in putting some of her air raid supplies to good use.
    Downstairs, a kettle whistled on the hob and Aileen bustled about, crashing crockery onto the kitchen table and mopping up with a green dishcloth. She even performed a little hop as she went from the table to the sideboard, humming as she went. Nicholas thought of Tabitha, the neighbour who’d looked after him after his parents died. Aileen and Tabitha would probably get along famously.
    “I’m sorry about your son,” Sam was saying.
    Aileen nodded, busying herself at the counter.
    Something had happened to Aileen’s son? When the landlady offered no further response, Sam lowered himself into a chair at the kitchen table. Nicholas noticed that the top button of his shirt was undone. It struck him immediately because to Sam, unbuttoned shirts were for youths and tramps. It was hot in here, though. The temperature seemed to have risen again and Nicholas felt weak with the heat.
    As he joined Sam at the table, he caught movement out the corner of his eye. An immense shag of tabby fur unfurled in a basket on the windowsill. A squashed, fanged face surveyed them. It was the ugliest cat Nicholas had ever seen.
    When the creature spotted Isabel, who was sitting by the pantry, it emitted a bleak hiss.
    “Rudy, stop that,” Aileen said in a horrified whisper. “Excuse him, thinks he’s king