Free Mouse by D. M. Mitchell Page A

the man leaving his white Ford Cortina to study the old building through a pair of binoculars.
    The car drove off and he was left battling a number of conflicting thoughts and emotions. He was upset, that’s all. There were millions of white Ford Cortinas on the road.
    But there was only one Laura Leach and now she’d been snatched away from him by another. Faint heart never won fair lady, he pondered bleakly. Why couldn’t he have plucked up the courage to talk to her? Yet he never had the chance, did he? No, that’s not true; he could have made the chance. That was just an excuse. His entire life was one big excuse, he thought, feeling doubly sorry for himself.
    The sight of his cold, lonely home didn’t make him feel any better either. So he carried on pedalling around the streets till exhaustion finally forced him inside. He went to bed without eating. He felt he would never be able to eat again. What was the point?
     
     
    *  *  *  *
     

10
 
Slippers under a Bed
     
    One of the most dangerous jobs at the Empire had to be changing the light bulbs in the ceiling high above the auditorium. Vince remembered the time the Deputy Chief Projectionist took him on his first tour of the old building. They ascended a flight of rickety old stair s and passed through a tiny door at the top. Michael , sucking loudly on a sugared almond, flicked on his torch.
    ‘Follow me, and be careful,’ he said. He was a man of few words and every one of those was like he was spitting out something that was causing a bad taste. ‘Tread only on the joists,’ he warned. ‘If you put your foot in the middle you’ll go right through the ceiling and kill yourself.’
    That alarmed Vince. That and the dark. There could be anything lurking up here – mice, spiders, rats. Michael went on to show him how to reach the units that held the bulbs in place, how to remove the spotlights and replace them. Vince remembered how Michael pointed through the hole. Way down below, too many feet to be comfortable, he saw the auditorium seats looking like they’d been made for dolls. He felt sick with apprehension and overcome with giddiness. Michael, he recalled, chuckled at his discomfort. But he had to overcome his fear, because when a bulb popped it was his job to replace it. He’d actually gotten quite used to it over the years, no longer afraid of the dark or the imagined rats. He still didn’t like the feeling of looking all those feet down to the floor, so he avoided the temptation to peep through the holes when he changed the bulbs. And he was always very careful, of course, to only step on the joists.
    He felt a little like the Phantom of the Opera, scuttling through the dark bowels of the ancient theatre. What he did eventually discover during these excursions was that he could access other areas of the cinema via a small door at the far end of the vast expanse of ceiling. He found most of the ceilings of most of the upper-storey rooms could be accessed in this way.
    On this particular morning he heard the hum of faint voices carrying up from below. The ceilings were thin and if you listened carefully almost every word could be discerned. He’d learned an awful lot about the lives of the cleaners from snatches of overheard conversations. All about their periods and it being that time of month; about not being able to get cheap stockings to stay up; about buying tins of paint for the bathroom and where fig rolls could be bought the cheapest.
    These particular voices, though, weren’t discussing how to get the cheapest anything. There was some kind of an argument going on and it appeared to come from the direction of Martin Caldwell’s office. Vince crept silently across the joists, bending down to where the sounds were the clearest.
    ‘So what am I supposed to do?’
    He recognised Caldwell ’s voice straight away. There was no mistaking Monica’s shrill tones either as she responded with some gusto.
    ‘What are you supposed to do?