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Transcript

The House That Was Not There Yesterday · Muggle Snuggle: A Boring Harry Potter Podcast to make you Sleep

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: It is half past three in the morning. I am
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: standing in the middle of Bramble Lane in my dressing gown,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: with a torch in one hand and my notebook in
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: the other, and twenty feet in front of me, in
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: a gap where there has been nothing but a brick
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: wall and a hedge for ninety years, there is a house.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: A tall, narrow house, with lit windows and a blue door,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: and I am going to walk up to it.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Right. Now, while you listen.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Because last time, three nights ago, I watched it from
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: my window for 20 minutes, and it vanished while I
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: refilled my flask. And I swore, standing in my kitchen
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: with an empty flask and a full notebook, that if
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: it ever came back, I would not watch it from anywhere.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: I would meet it at the door.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Stay with me.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: By the end of this hour, you will know what
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: the council records say about the gap between 11 and 13,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: what Mrs. Older's mother used to leave by that wall,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: and what I saw in the upstairs window in the
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: 17 seconds before it all went away again. Good evening,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: and welcome to Muggle Snuggle. My name is Hugh, I
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: am 28 years old. I live at number 4, Bramble Lane,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: and as of this week, I am a man who
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: walks up to impossible houses in his dressing gown, which
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: is either journalism, or the beginning of the end. and
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: my sister has already voted. If you are new here,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: here is the short version. I notice things. Owls delivering post.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Strangers in long coats. Lights flashing from behind drawn curtains.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: I write it all down in a notebook, and every
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: evening I tell you what I have found. If you
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: are back from last time, welcome back. And yes, this
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: is the episode I promised you. The House The gap.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: The blue door. It took me three nights to be sure,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: and one more night to be brave. And tonight you
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: get all of it. To the regulars, first, because regulars
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: first is the rule of this house. And by this house,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: I mean my actual house, number four, which exists on
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: all known maps and has never once vanished during a
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: flask refill.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: Thank you for coming back.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: And before we go a step further, three things that
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: have happened since last time because the street has not
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: been idle while I have been writing.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: One more.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Dave, the postman, delivered my letters yesterday morning, looked me
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: dead in the eye over the garden gate and said, quote,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: still letterboxes, Hugh, end quote, completely unprompted and walked on.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Still letterboxes. He listens.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: He knows I know he listens. The prepared statements had
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: become a correspondence. Two. The Henderson's new dishwasher, the fourth,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: different brand, blessed with tap water, has completed six full
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: cycles without incident.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: A street record.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: And Gary told me this over the fence with the
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: shining eyes of a man who has beaten something he
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: cannot name. I'm happy for the Hendersons. I'm watching the dishwasher.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Three.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Priya Patel waved at me from the bus stop yesterday morning.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Same as always, except that this time she did not
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: point at the sky. She pointed at me, then at herself.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Then she held up her hand with two fingers raised,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: palm toward me, clear as print.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: Two watchers, I reckon. Her and me.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: The ledger grows on both ends now. Thank you for
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: coming back, all of you. Thank you for the messages
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: about the owls and the flashes.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: And Mrs.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Alder, who was heard about the show, by the way,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: and whose exact words were, quote, tell them I said
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: mind their own business, end quote, followed immediately by a
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: plate of biscuits for, quote, the listeners, end quote.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: That is Mrs. Alder all over. Deny everything. Feed everyone.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: To the new listeners, and there are more of you
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: every evening, which thrills and terrifies me in equal measure.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Thank you for pressing play. You have picked a remarkable
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: night to start. Pour something warm. Settle in. This one
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: is best heard with the lights low and the curtains open,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: so you can check your own street at the end.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: You will want to. Trust me on that.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: This show is perfect for putting on in the background
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: while you cook, or fold, or drive, or do whatever
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: your evening asks of you. I will be here either way,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: notebook in hand, doing the noticing. And if you enjoy tonight,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: do subscribe so tomorrow finds you on its own, and
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: do share us with the nosiest person you know. Every
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: street has one. Angled La Valley Road in Leeds. It
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: is apparently a woman called R with her own flask.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: And R, if you are listening, tonight's episode is partly
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: your fault, because your letter taught me that the strange
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: streets are plural, and I have not stopped thinking about
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: that since. Your fox, by the way, has started something.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: I have had three more letters this week describing foxes
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: on schedules, one from Bristol, one from York, and one
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: from a village in Kent I cannot pronounce, all of
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: them describing night visitors with excellent timekeeping and no respect
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: for fences. I am starting a fox's page in the
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: notebook's fresh section, right after the ledger, and your entry
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: stays first, Exactly where it belongs. First watcher, beyond the lane.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: First flask, beyond mine. History will remember. Now, something practical
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: before we walk up that path together, and I will
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: be brief, because the house only gave me 17 minutes,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: and I intend to spend most of them on the house.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: A few of you have asked how to keep this
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: show standing. There are two ways, both linked in the
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: show notes. The Supporter Club on Spreaker is the quick one.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: Write where you listen. Patreon is the one with early
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: episodes and extra uncut material for the truly committed. Same lane,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: same watcher.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: Pick your door. Write. Torch on.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Notebook open. Slippers laced. To the extent that slippers lace.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Let us go and look at the gap between 11
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: and 13. First, I owe you a correction, and corrections
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: go first, because a watcher who cannot correct himself cannot
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: be trusted to watch anything. Last time, I told you
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: the houses on my side of the street go 11
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: and then 13 because the council skipped the unlucky number
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: 90 years ago. I have since checked, and I was wrong.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: 11 then 13 is simply how odd sides work. Everyone
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: knows that. Everyone except me, apparently. for six years. What
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: is true, and what I should have said, is that
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: the gap between eleven and thirteen is far wider than
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: it should be. Wide enough for a house. A tall,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: narrow house, as it happens. With room for a wall
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: in front and a hedge behind. I had always assumed
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: a number was skipped because the space so obviously wants
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: a building in it. It turns out the space wants
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: a building in it because, twice in the last four nights,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: there has been one. Here is the gap in daylight,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: described the way I would describe a suspect. Forty feet
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: of old brick wall, chest high, capped with crumbling concrete,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: running along the pavement between the two houses. Behind the wall,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: a hedge, you, I believe, dark and dense and at
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: least ten feet tall, untrimmed for what looks like years.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: Behind the hedge, from what I can see over the
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: wall on tiptoe, a strip of garden gone wild. Brambles, obviously.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: It is Bramble Lane. The lane is named for them,
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: or they are named for it, and either way they
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: have seniority. No gate, no path, no sign that anyone
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: has set foot in there in living memory.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: Number 11 belongs to the Whittakers. Quiet couple, greenhouse, known collection,
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: I have counted twice.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: Number 13 belongs to old Mrs Pemberton, who is 91
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: and formidable, and once told me my bins were, quote,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: an editorial on modern youth, end quote. Neither household has
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: ever mentioned the gap. So naturally, I visited both households
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: this week, separately, casually, the way you do everything on
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: this street, which is to say I asked Mrs. Alder first,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: and she told me what they would say. The Whittakers, first.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: Number 11. Quiet couple.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Greenhouse, gnome collection I have counted twice. Currently 14 gnomes,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: arranged by height along the front path, which I mention
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: because it tells you the Whittakers notice everything in their
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: own garden and nothing outside it. I caught Derek Whittaker
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: repotting something spiky on Saturday morning, and I said, Derek, mate,
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: odd question. The empty bit between your place and Mrs Pemberton's.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Have you ever noticed anything about it?
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: Anything at all?
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: At night, for example, he did not look up from
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: his spiky thing. He said, quote, rats, end quote.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: I said, rats.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: He said, quote, big ones, come through the hedge, after
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: the birdseed, end quote, after the birdseed. The Whittakers live
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: next to 40 feet of impossible architecture, and what they
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: have noticed is rats commuting for seed. I asked if
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: the rats ever behave oddly. Derek considered this the way
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: he considers everything, slowly. The way compost considers things, he said, quote,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: they cue, end quote.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: They cue. Rats. Cueing by the hedge.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: In single file, according to Derek, who has watched them
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: from his greenhouse on summer evenings. Single file, in and
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: out through the brambles like commuters. I wrote it down.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: I did not know what else to do. Rats that cue.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: On a street with parliamentary pigeons and a timetable no
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: one gave me.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: Of course the rats. Cue.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Why would the rats not cue? Everything else on Bramble
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Lane has a system. I thanked Derek.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: I complimented the gnomes. All fourteen.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: By height, he was pleased. Nobody compliments the gnomes. I
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: am telling you this so you understand that I pay
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: for my information in gnome compliments and chocolate fingers and
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: the exchange rate is brutal. Mrs Pemberton next, number 13,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: 91 years old. Famissible the way weather is formidable. I
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: knocked on Saturday afternoon with my notebook hidden, because Mrs
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Pemberton does not approve of notebooks or pens or me.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: And I said, Mrs Pemberton, I hope you do not
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: mind me asking, but the empty bit between your house
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: and the Whittaker's, has it always been empty? She looked
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: at me for a long moment over the top of
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: her glasses, the way headmistresses look in films about headmistresses.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Then she said, quote, the gutters, end quote. I said,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: I beg your pardon. She said, quote, the gutters on
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: that side want clearing, young man, end quote. I am 28,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: to Mrs.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: Hoon.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Pemberton, I will always be a young man, possibly forever,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: possibly including at my own funeral, I said.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: I will clear your gutters gladly, Mrs. Pemberton.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: But about the empty bit, she said, quote, it has
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: always been empty and it will always be empty and
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: now the gutters, end quote. Then she closed the door.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Then she opened it again. Then she said, quote, Tuesday,
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: bring your own ladder, end quote. Then she closed it
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: for good. Always empty. Will always be empty, said flatly finally.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: The way you say a thing you have decided will
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: be true. I am clearing her gutters on Tuesday. I
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: own a ladder now This show has cost me a
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: larger flask and a ladder in a single week and
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: I regret nothing. Because here is what I reckon about
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Mrs Pemberton. And I write this with care. Because she
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: is 91 and she frightens me. I reckon she knows.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: I reckon she is always known. I reckon the gutters
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: are real. They do want clearing.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: I looked.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: But they are also the fastest subject change on Bramble Lane.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: Deployed the instant the empty bit comes up. the way
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Dave deploys letterboxes and Emmanuel deploys pigeons. Everyone on this
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: street has a sentence they hide behind.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: Mrs.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: Pemberton's sentence is about gutters, and behind it, I would
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: bet my new ladder, stands a tall, narrow house with
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: a blue door that she has been not seeing for
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: 91 years.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: The empty bit.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Forty feet of wall and yew and wild garden that
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: nobody looks at twice, until three nights ago, when it
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: had a house in it. Let me take you back
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: to that first night properly, because last time I gave
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: you the teaser version, all lit windows and vanishing, and
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: the full version has details I have been holding until
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: I was sure. It was half past three in the morning.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: I know the time exactly because I had just logged
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: the grey isle crossing toward the town centre late home,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: and I was writing up the entry with the landing
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: light off. Movement, out of the corner of my eye,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: down the street to the left. Not a bird, not
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: a fox.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: A lightning.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: That is the only word for it. The gap between
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: eleven and thirteen, which had been dark hedge and darker wall,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: began to lighten. The way breath fogs a mirror, the
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: way a photograph develops in a tray, Edges first. A
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: vertical edge on the left, straight as a ruler. Then
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: the blue. A door, tall and narrow, painted the deepest
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: blue you have ever seen at half-past three in the morning,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: with a brass letterbox that caught the streetlight and threw
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: it back at me like a wink. Then windows above it,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: three of them, stacked tall, all lit from inside with
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: warm yellow light. Then the rest of it, all at once.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: The way you suddenly see the whole face in one
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: of those puzzle pictures. A tall, narrow house, three stories,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: slate roof, chimneys, sitting exactly where the wall and the
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: hedge had been, as if they had never been there
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: at all. As if the house had been there all along,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: and I had simply never looked properly. I watched it
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: for twenty minutes. I timed it. Twenty minutes of lit
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: windows and blue door, and absolute silence. No movement inside
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: that I could see, though the curtains, and there were curtains,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: heavy ones, the colour of dried blood in the lamplight,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: though one of them, on the middle floor, was not
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: quite drawn, and through the gap I could see what
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: looked like a picture on a wall, a portrait, dark frame.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: I could not make out the face. I have excellent
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: binoculars and twenty minutes and I could not make out
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: the face. And that detail has bothered me more than
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: all the rest put together. Because faces are what I do.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Curtains and doors and windows. Those are architecture. A face
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: in a lit window is a person. And I could
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: not see it. At ten to four, my flask ran dry.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: I am telling you this part exactly as it happened.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: Because this show only works if I tell you the
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: stupid parts as well as the brave ones. My flask
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: ran dry. And I looked away, down at my lap,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: to set it aside and reach for my pen, because
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: I wanted to write down the portrait detail before I
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: lost it.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: One moment.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: Perhaps three seconds, perhaps five, and when I looked up
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: the gap was a gap again. Wall, hedge, wild garden,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: no house, no door, no lit windows, nothing. Twenty minutes
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: of impossible architecture. gone in the time it takes to
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: put down a flask. I sat there until dawn. I
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: did not write for the first hour, because my hands
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: were shaking, and not from the cold. I just sat,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: looking at the gap, which looked back the way gaps do,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: which is to say, it did not look back at all.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: It simply lay there, being forty feet of wall and
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: hedge in the grey morning light, daring. Me to insist
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: on and half past five with the sky going pink
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: behind the church, I did something I am not proud of,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: but I am telling you anyway, I whispered, out loud,
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: into my empty landing, quote, I saw you, end quote,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: to no one, to the gap, to whatever develops like
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: photograms and leaves like breath. And a blackbird started singing
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: in the hedge, right on cue, the way blackbirds do
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: at dawn, and I nearly came out of my armchair,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: because after a night like that, a blackbird sounds like
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: an answer. When I finally wrote, I filled six pages,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: and I want to read you the physical details from
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: those pages, because the physical details are what separate a
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: sighting from a dream, and I need this on the record.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: My binoculars were pre-focused from the owl watch. magnification adequate,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: lenses clean, wiped, that evening, no smears, no excuses. The
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: weather was clear and cold, no mist, visibility the full
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: length of the street. The streetlight outside number 11 was
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: on and steady with no flicker. As for my condition, tired.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: I will admit tired. Four nights of short sleep, but alert,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: stone-cold alert. The way you get when something impossible is
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: happening and your brain finally stops arguing and starts recording.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: It lasted 20 minutes by my watch, checked twice, started
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: when the edges appeared, ended when I looked down.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: And the portrait.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: I have drawn it three times since, from memory, and
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: all three drawings are terrible because I cannot draw faces
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: to save my life, which is ironic for a man
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: whose whole profession is faces. But all three agree on
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: the essentials.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: Dart frame. Pale oval.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: Eyes that caught light. I have taped the least terrible
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: drawing into the notebook opposite page one of the house log.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: It looks like an egg in a doorway. It is
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: the most frightening egg in my possession.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: I showed it. To Mrs. Older.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Because there are some things you cannot keep to yourself.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: And she studied it for a long moment over the fence,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: turning it this way and that, and she said, quote,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: Needs eyebrows, Hugh.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: End quote. Needs eyebrows.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: I have added eyebrows. It now looks like an egg
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: in a doorway with opinions. Some evidence improves with peer review.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: Some evidence gets eyebrows. The notebook accepts both. And the
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: last line of the sixth page, underlined three times, reads
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: as follows. IT waits until you look away. I do
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: not know if that is true. I know it is
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: what happened. And I know that the next night... and
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: the night after, I watched the gap until dawn with
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: a full flask in both eyes, and nothing came. The house,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: whatever it is, does not perform to a schedule. It
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: comes when it comes, which, as it happens, was last night.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: But I am getting ahead of myself.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: First, daylight. First, the records. First, Mrs.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: Alder's mother and her saucer of milk. That is Act 1,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: and here is what it gives us. A gap 40
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: feet wide that everyone ignores. A house that develops like
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: a photograph. A blue door with a brass letterbox. Three
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: lit windows. Curtains the colour of dried blood. A portrait
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: I could not see.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: 20 minutes.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: And a flask that ran dry at exactly the wrong moment,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: which I have replaced with a larger flask, because I
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: learn from my mistakes, even the ones that cost me
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: a house. Daylight investigations are the backbone of this show,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: because the night gives you wonders and the day gives
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: you paperwork. And paperwork, I am learning, is where Bramble
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Lane hides its strangest sentences. The house gave me three
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: lines of inquiry, the records, the neighbours and the wall itself.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: I worked all three, in that order, and all three answered,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: which on this street is rarer than a quiet night.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: and every answer raised the stakes. The records first. Two
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: days morning, I went to the library on Martins Lane,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: which holds the local history archive in a basement room
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: that smells of dust and good intentions, and I asked
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: the archivist, a wonderful woman named Mrs Quinn, who wears
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: half-moon glasses and knows where everything is, the way Mrs.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Elder knows beans, for anything on Bramble Lane between the wars...
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: Electoral rolls, planning registers, anything with addresses in it.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: She brought me.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: Three boxes and a pair of white gloves and left
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: me to it, with the air of a woman delivering
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: treasure to a pirate she trusts. Here is what the
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: paper says. The 1936 electoral roll for Bramble Lane lists,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: between number 11 and number 13, an address that does
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: not exist on any modern map. Bramble House, Bramble Lane.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Three registered voters. Arthur Velikot. Edith Velikot. And, in handwriting
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: that slopes like it was written in a hurry, a
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: third name I had to sound out twice. Thomas in
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: a Velikot.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: A family. In a house. In the gap. Ninety years ago.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: I sat in that basement with white gloves on, and
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: I stared at those three names, until Missy. Pring asked
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: if I was all right, and I said I was fine.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: which was not true, but librarians have enough to deal with.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: It gets stranger.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: The 1937 roll lists nothing between 11 and 13. No
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Bramble House.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: No Velikots.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: The Gup goes from a family of three to 40
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: feet of nothing in a single year, with no demolition
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: order in the planning register, no fire report in the
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: local paper, no sale record, no nothing.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: I checked twice.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: Mrs Quinn checked with me, because by then she was invested,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: the way archivists get invested when the paper misbehaves. Houses
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: do not leave the rolls without paperwork. People move, houses
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: get numbers, numbers get retired with forms in triplicate, but
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: Bramble House did not move, or burn, or sell. It
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: simply stopped being listed. The way, three nights ago, it
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: simply stopped being there when I put down my flask.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: paper and street, 90 years apart, telling the same story. Here,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: and then not here, with nothing in between.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: I asked Mrs.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: Gwynne if anyone had ever asked about Bramble House before.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: She paused for a moment, the way people do when
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: they are deciding whether to tell you something. Then she said, quote,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: a gentleman, years back, asked after the Velikots, end quote.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: I asked what gentleman. She said she could not recall
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: his name, only that he wore a long coat, even
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: though it was summer. and that he copied the three
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: names into a small black book without touching anything else
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: in the box.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: A long coat.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: In the archive, copying the Velocots, I thanked Mrs Quinn.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Or rather, I started to thank Mrs.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Quinn, and she held up one finger, the way archivists
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: do when they have remembered something, and she disappeared between
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: the shelves. And she came back with a bound volume of...
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: of the local paper, 1936, second half. And she opened
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: it to a page she had clearly marked in her
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: memory years ago. News in brief.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: Four lines.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: They were Bade Batters, gated the 14th of November, and
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: I am going to read you those four lines exactly
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: as they were printed, because I copied them into my
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: notebook on the spot, and I have checked my copy twice.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: Quote.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: Quote. Police were called to Bramble Lane in the early
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: hours of Thursday following reports of a dwelling where no
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: dwelling is registered. Officers found no such dwelling. The caller,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: a night watchman, declined to give his name. No further action.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: End quote.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: A dwelling where no dwelling is registered. 1936. A night
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: watchman calling the police about a house that was not
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: there 90 years before I stood in front of one
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: in my dressing gown. I sat in that basement with
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: the bound volume open in front of me and I
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: felt the floor tilt slightly, the way floors tilt when
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: the past reaches up through them. Mrs Quinn stood beside
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: me with her arms folded and she said, quote, he
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: declined to give his name, end quote. Just that, as
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: if that were the strangest part. And perhaps it is.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: A night watchman sees a house that should not exist,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: calls the police and then will not give his name
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: because he knew, He knew what happens to people who
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: report houses. They get written up in four lines.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: In brief.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: No further action. I copied all four lines. I thanked
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Mrs Quinn properly this time. I returned the gloves. And
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: I walked home past the gap. All forty feet of wall.
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: And you. And nothing.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: And I want you to know that I touched the
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: wall as I passed. Just laid my hand flat on
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: the brick for a moment. It was warm from the sun.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: Ordinary brick. Ninety years of ordinary brick. With three names
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: underneath it, somewhere that nobody has spoken aloud in living memory.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: Arthur. Edith.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: Thomas Siena. I say them here so the record shows
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: someone said them. Someone with a notebook and white gloves
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: and shaking hands. The neighbours next. I started, as one
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: always starts, with Mrs. Alder. over the garden fence, with
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: a packet of chocolate fingers as tribute, and my notebook
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: already open, because with Mrs Alder you write fast, or
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: you lose half of it. I said, Mrs Alder, what
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: can you tell me about the empty bit between eleven
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: and thirteen? She did not hesitate. She did not even
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: look surprised.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: Which, from Mrs....
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Alder it is the equivalent of anyone else gasping and
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: dropping a tray. She said, quote, My mother used to
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: leave a saucer of milk by that wall, end quote.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: Just that, I said, for a cat. She said, quote,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: there was never a cat, Hugh, end quote. I said,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: then who was the milk for? And she looked at me,
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: over the fence, the full teacup look, and she said, quote,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: whoever lives there, when it is there, love, end quote.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: Whoever lives there when it is there. Present tense. Conditional
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: and current at once. As if the house comes and
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: goes the way weather comes and goes, and her mother
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: simply factored it into.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: The routine, the way you factor rain into washing day.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: Milk by the wall. For whoever. I asked how long
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: her mother did that. Mrs.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: Aldous snipped a dead rose head, neat as ever, and said, quote,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: Every night of her life, Hugh, and she lived to 94,
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: so it cannot have done her any harm.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: End quote. Every night.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: 94 years. I went home, and I stood in my
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: kitchen for a while. Then I bought mink. Then I
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: stood in my kitchen some more. The saucer question, listeners,
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: is still open. I will keep you posted. If I
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: start leaving milk, you will be the first to know,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: and my sister will be the second, and her reaction
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: will be described on this show in full.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: Second neighbor, mister.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: Fenwick, found in his front garden tying up the last
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: of the runner beans, because October is for tying off
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: and putting away, and Mr Fenwick does everything in season.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: I did not ease into it. With Mr Fenwick, you
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: ask straight or you waste his beans, I said. Mr Fenwick,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: was there ever a house between eleven and thirteen? He
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: tied off his string. He put down his twine. He
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: looked at me with those watery blue eyes for a
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: long moment and he said, quote, I have lived here
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: forty years, Hugh.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: End quote.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: Then he picked up his watering can. Then he said, quote,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: There has never been a house there.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: End quote.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Then he watered one bean plant, slowly, completely, the way
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: he does everything. Then he said, quote, There has always
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: been a house there.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: End quote. And he went back to his beans. Never. Always.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: From the same man in the same minute. I walked
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: home turning those two sentences over like soil. They contradict
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: each other. They are both true. That is Bramble Lane
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: in miniature and Mr Fenwick, who is 74 and grows
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: prize marrows and names owls, understands it better than anyone
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: because he has stopped trying to choose.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: Never. On paper. Always in the night.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Both.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: At once. For 40 years.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: Third neighbor, and this one I saved, because vicars keep everything,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: and this vicar keeps seals in his drawer.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: Reverend Phelps, St. Aldhelm's.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: I found him polishing the same brass I have seen
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: him polish twice before, which suggests either very dirty brass,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: or a man who polishes when he is expecting company.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: He saw me coming up the aisle, and he smiled,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: all six foot four of kindness, and he said, Quote, Hugh,
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: have you come about the house?
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: End quote.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: Have you come about the house? The way he said
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: owls last time, unprompted, as if the parish newsletter had
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: carried the story. I said, Reverend, what house? He set
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: down his polish. He led me to the vestry. He
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: opened a register I am fairly certain members of the
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: public are not normally shown, and he turned to 1936,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: And there it was, in faded ink, in the hand
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: of the vicar of the time.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: A baptism. Infant daughter.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: A dress given as Bramble House, Bramble Lane. And in
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: the margin, in the same hand, three words. God Keeper.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: I read them twice. Reverend Phelps let me read them twice.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: Then he closed the register, gently. The way you close
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: something that matters.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: And he said... Quote, Tomasina. End quote. Just the name.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: He knew the name. The parish remembers what the council forgot.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: I asked him what happened to them, the Valicots. He
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: put his hand on my shoulder. Enormous kindness. Enormous hand.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: And he said, quote, All God's children, Hugh, even the
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: ones between numbers.
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: End quote. Between numbers. Eleven and thirteen. between numbers.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: I walked home past the gap in the afternoon light
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: and the wall was a wall and the hedge was
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: a hedge and somewhere behind them 90 years deep a
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: vicar's hand had written god keep her in a margin
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: and i said the name once more under my breath
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: as i passed the way you would say hello to
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: a house you cannot see thomasina there is one more
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: daylight line i worked and i saved it for last
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: because it involves getting my hands dirty truly dirty, and
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: the notebook respects that.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: The wall itself.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: Wednesday afternoon, armed with a trowel, which is becoming my
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: signature daytime prop, and a carrier bag, and absolutely no
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: permission from anyone, I went down to the gap, and
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: I examined the base of the wall the way crime
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: dramas examine things. Slowly, on my knees, getting stared at
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: by a robin. Here is what Forty feet of ninety-year-old
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: brickwork looks like up close English bond. Lime mortar, crumbling.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: Moss in the shaded stretches. And at the eastern end,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: near number thirteen's side, where the wall meets Mrs Pemberton's fence,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: something the Uroots have been pushing up for years. I
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: cleared the brambles back with the trowel, carefully because brambles
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: fight dirty.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: And I found glass. Green glass. Thick, old glass.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: A milk bottle, complete, unbroken, lying on its side in
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: the soil, like it had been laid there deliberately. And
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: beside it, half buried, a shard of white china with
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: a blue rim. A saucer shard. Broken edge, old and smooth.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: I sat back on my heels in the damp and
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: I held both of them for a long time. A
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: bottle and a saucer, buried by the wall, where Mrs
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: Alder's mother left milk every night of her life. Ninety-four
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: years of saucers. This one did not make it home.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: I took them home. I washed them in my kitchen sink, gently,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: the way you wash anything that has been waiting ninety years.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: The bottle has raised lettering on the side, worn nearly smooth,
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: and I held it under my desk lamp, and I
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: read it letter by letter, with the notebook open.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: Dairy. That is all I could make out.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: One word.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: Dairy.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: No farm name. No town, just dairy. The way the
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: depot has buses and the street has owls. The platonic
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: ideal of the thing with no further details offered. The
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: saucer shard fits in my palm. Blue rim, white glaze,
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: gone crazed with age. I have put them both on
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: my desk. Next to the feather, next to the notebook.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: The feather from the owls. The bottle from the wall.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: My desk is becoming a museum of things Bramble Lane
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: has handed me, and I dust it with genuine reverence
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: because every object on it arrived the same way, left
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: where I would find it, by someone, or something, that
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: knew I was looking.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: So that is Act Two. Three names on a roll.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: A coat in the archive.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: Milk every night for 94 years, never and always from
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: the beans, a baptism with a margin note, and a bottle,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: and a saucer shard in my kitchen, drying on the
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: rack like ordinary washing, paper and milk and vicars, all
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: pointing at the same forty feet of nothing. Which brings
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: us to last night. Which brings us to the walk-up.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: Which brings us, finally, to the blue door. But first,
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: a pause for the practical, because even impossible houses run
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: on torch batteries. You know how this goes by now.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: Two ways to support the show, both linked in the
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: show notes. the supporter club on Spreaker if you like
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: it quick, and where you listen. Patreon if you want
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: early episodes, and the uncut pages I cannot fit into
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: hours like this one, same street either way, same watcher,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: same notebook which is nearly full, and no, I do
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: not know what I will do when it runs out.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: Beyond buying another one and numbering it volume two like
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: the professional I am pretending to be.
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: Done. Practical over. Deep breath. Slippers on. Last night.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: Last night, I did not watch from the window. That
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: was the whole plan. And it was the entire plan,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: and I wrote it on a fresh page in capitals,
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: so there could be no confusion. Do not watch from
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: the window.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: Go down there.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: Because the first time the house waited until I looked away.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: And a watcher who has learned one thing has learned this,
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: you do not beat that by staring harder, you beat
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: it by standing close enough that looking away stops mattering.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: So at half past two in the morning, with the
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: street dark and the owls quiet, and my new larger
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: flask full to the brim, I got dressed, I went downstairs,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: I let myself out of my own front door as
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: quietly as a man can when his heart is doing
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: the washing machine thing. and I walked down Bramble Lane
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: in my dressing gown. Past number six, where the net
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: curtain did not move. For once, because even Mrs Alder
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: sleeps sometimes, or pretends to. Past number eight, dark and ordinary.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Home of people I have never properly spoken to, which
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: bothers me more with every episode, because there might be
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: a third watcher in there, and I would never know.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: past number 10, where someone's cat sat on a wall
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: and watched me pass with enormous green eyes. The way
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: cats watch everything.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: Like landlords.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: The street at half past two is a different country
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: from the street at half past ten in the morning.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: Same houses, same pavement, completely different terms. Everything narrower.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: Everything. Listening.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: My slippers sounded enormous, my breathing sounded borrowed. I have
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: walked this lane a thousand times in daylight, and I
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: have never once heard it the way I heard it
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: last night. Which is to say, I have never once
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: heard it at all. Because in daylight, the lane talks
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: over itself, and at night it goes quiet and lets
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: you hear yourself coming. Which is, I suppose, the point.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: The lane hears you coming. It has always heard you coming.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: I reached the gap between eleven and thirteen. and I
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: stood in front of forty feet of brick wall and
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: yew hedge, and I waited. The wait was forty minutes.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: I am telling you that first, because waiting is most
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: of watching, and nobody tells you that at the start.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: Forty minutes of nothing. Wall. Hedge.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: My breath in the cold air. A fox barking somewhere
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: toward the allotments, once, twice, then quiet. Marjorie, or possibly Chairman,
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: crossing high overhead without a sound. And then, at ten
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: past three, the lightning began. Right in front of me,
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: ten seat away, the way breath fogs a mirror.
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: Edges.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: First, straight as rulers. Then the blue, rising out of
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: the dark like something surfacing from deep water. Then the windows, lit, warm,
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: three of them, stacked. Then the whole house, all at once,
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: tall and narrow and impossibly ordinarily there. the way your
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: own house is there when you come home late. Except
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: that my house does not have curtains the colour of
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: dried blood, and my house does not have a portrait
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: in the middle window, and my house, I can say
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: with complete confidence having lived in it for six years,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: has never once developed out of a hedge while I watched.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: I want to describe the door properly, because the door
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: is what this act is about. Tall, narrow, painted blue,
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: the deep blue of old post boxes and older promises,
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: grass letterbox in the middle, polished to a mirror, brass
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: knocker above it in the shape of, and I stepped
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: closer to be sure of this, in the shape of
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: an owl.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: An owl knocker.
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: On a blue door. On a house that is not there.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: I stood in front of it with my torch off
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: because the windows gave enough light to see by, warm
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: light falling across the pavement the way light falls from
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: any house where someone is home, And I did the
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: thing I had come to do. I raised my hand.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: I took hold of the owl knocker, which was cold.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: Real cold. Metal in October cold. And I knocked. Twice.
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: The way the visitors knock at number nine. Two knocks. Measured.
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: Borrowed courage. Borrowed rhythm. Nothing happened. No footsteps.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: No curtain movement. No sound at all from inside. which
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: was strange in exactly the way number nine was strange
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: that Friday with the banana bread. The same total absence
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: of house noise, no clock, no creak, no hum of anything.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: I stood there with my hand still raised, feeling the
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: cold of the knocker fade from my palm, and I
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: was deciding whether to knock again when the middle window changed.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: The curtain, the one that was never quite drawn, the
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: one with the portrait behind it, moved.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: Not much. Just a shift.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: The way a curtain moves when someone stands beside it.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: And through the gap, clearer than the first night, close
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: enough that distance was no longer an excuse, I saw
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: the portrait.
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: Dark frame. Pale oval face. And eyes. I swear to you.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: Eyes that caught the lamplight the way the letterbox caught it.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: I could not make out the features. Faces are what
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: I do, and I could not make out this one.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: But I will tell you what I felt, standing there
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: in my dressing gown at ten past three. With my
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: hand in the air, I felt seen, noticed.
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: The way Mrs.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: Glover's silhouette noticed. The way the fox noticed. The house,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: or something in it, knew I was there. And it
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: did not open the door. It showed me a curtain
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: moving instead. Which is, when you consider it, an answer.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: Not the answer I wanted. but an answer in the
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: same way Mrs. Alder's viewing instructions were an answer. Here,
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: but not for knocking. Not like this, not yet. I
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: lowered my hand. I stepped back, one pace, then another,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: and I did the thing I always do. The thing
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: that makes me me. I reached for my notebook. I
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: looked down to find a clean page. Two seconds, perhaps three.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: And when I looked up, the gap was a gap.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: Wall Hedge. Wild garden.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: Seventeen minutes. Start to finish. Timed on my watch the
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: way I time everything. Seventeen minutes of house. Ended by
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: a glance downward. I waits until you look away. Twice now.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: Twice is a pattern. Twice is the notebook ruling underlined
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: in red. Whatever the house is, it does not vanish
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: on a timer. It vanishes on attention. It stays while
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: you watch and goes when you do not, which is
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: the exact opposite of everything I believed about watching, because
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: I believed watching was passive, I believed I was an audience,
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: and it turns out I might be structural. It turns
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: out the house might need me looking the way a
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: story needs telling. I do not know what to do
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: with that notion. I have circled it twice and left
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: three blank pages after it, because some notions need room.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: I walked home slowly. Past thirteen, past eleven, with the
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: wall and the hedge, ordinary again behind me, forty feet
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: of nothing that had just been a house, the way
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: a stage is just boards after the play. Past nine,
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: with its red door closed and its brass number winking.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: Only this time, for the first time, the brass nine
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: looked different to me. All evening I had been thinking
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: about numbers, eleven and thirteen, Thirty-six and thirty-seven. Forty years
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: of never and always. And here was number nine, polished
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: like a coin. Certain of itself, the only number on
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: the street that has never once been in doubt.
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: I stopped in front of it. I do not know why.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: Perhaps because after a house with no number at all,
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: a house with a definite number felt like solid ground.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: I stood there for a moment, and I nodded at it,
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: The way you nod at a fellow regular across a shop.
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: Acknowledgement between professionals. Then I walked on, past eight, past
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: the cat, which had gone. Past six, where a net
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: curtain shifted as I passed.
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: Because Mrs.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: Alder misses nothing, not even dressing gowns at dawn. I
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: raised one hand as I went by.
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: Just raised it. No wave. No signal. And the curtain
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: shifted again. Once again.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: The smallest movement, the way you would nod back. We
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: understand each other, Mrs.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: Older and I. She watches people.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: I watch everything else. Between us, the street is covered.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: Past four, my own door, my ordinary house that has
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: never developed out of anything. Inside, I made tea with
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: hands that shook, and I sat at my desk, and
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: I looked at the museum for a while before I
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: wrote a word. The feather, the bottle, The saucer shard.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: Three objects, three stories, all handed to me the same way,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: left where I would find them. I touched each one
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: in turn. The way you touch lucky things, though I
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: do not believe in luck, I believe in notebooks. Then
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: I opened to a fresh page, and I wrote for
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: two hours straight, and when the sun came up I
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: was still writing, because some nights fill pages the way
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: rain fills gutters. When I finally stopped, the sun was
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: fully up, the milk bottles were out, Dave the postman
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: was starting his round with his bad knee and his
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: good cheer, and Bramble Lane was, to every eye but mine,
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: the most ordinary street in England. I stood at my
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: landing window with my third cup of tea, and I
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: watched Dave deliver to letterboxes all down the street. The
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: ordinary post for ordinary people. And I felt something I
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: have not felt since this all started.
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: Not wonder.
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: Wonder is easy now. I felt protective.
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: Of Dave. Of the milk bottles.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: Of the whole daylight operation that runs alongside the night
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: one without ever meeting it. Two posts, two streets, one lane,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: and me in the middle with my notebook, keeping the
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: minutes for both. Here is the line I ended on.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: Here is the sentence this whole episode has been walking toward.
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: The house showed itself to me, twice. Not to the street.
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: To me.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: Either I am the only one watching at half past three,
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: which is possible because the hours are terrible, or the
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: house chooses. And if the house chooses, then last night
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: it chose a man in a dressing gown with a
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: borrowed knock and a full flask. I do not know why,
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: but I know what misses. Glover would say, because Mrs
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: Glover says everything with bins. Long nights ahead, Hugh, long
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: nights ahead. So that is Act Three, and that is
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: the whole of the house as it stands. Two appearances,
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: 37 minutes total. One touched wall, one cold knocker, one
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: moved curtain, one portrait with eyes. Free names from 1936.
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: Milk every night. Never and always.
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: God Keeper.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: And a saucer question I still have not answered. Though
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: I will tell you this. The milk is in my fridge.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: The saucer is clean and waiting by the sink. And tonight,
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: after this episode goes out, after the street goes quiet,
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: I am going to walk down to that wall in
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: the dark, and put it down. For whoever lives there
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: when it is there, because Mrs. Alder's mother lived to ninety-four,
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: and I would like some of whatever that was, Features time,
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: and tonight the notebook comes first, because the house log
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: deserves to be read aloud in full, the way evidence
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: deserves daylight. From my notebook, page headed The Gap. Written
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: over four nights. Abbreviations expanded for the listeners.
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: Night one. Half past three. Lightning from the left edge. Ludor.
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: Brass letterbox. Three lit windows. Curtains dried blood red. Portrait
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: middle window. Face unclear. Duration 20 minutes. Vanished during flask refill.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: Six pages.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: Night two. Watched until dawn. Nothing. One line. Underlined. IT
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: knows when you are ready. Night three. Watched until dawn.
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: Nothing.
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: One line. Patience is also watching. Night four. Last night.
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: Walk up.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: Forty minute wait. House at ten past three.
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: Owl knocker. Cold. Two knocks. Borrowed.
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: Curtain moved middle window. Portrait eyes in lamplight. Felt.
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: Seen. Glanced down for notebook. Gone. Seventeen minutes. Final line.
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: Three underlines. IT waits until you look away. That is
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: the whole log. Four nights, 37 minutes of house. And
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: a ruling I never expected to write, because I started
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: this notebook believing I was recording a street, and I
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: am ending this page suspecting the street is recording me.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: And now, Owl of the Week, regular show edition. And
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: I will keep the ceremony brief, because the house has
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: used up most of tonight's drama, and the owls... to
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: their credit, were quiet all through it. Not one delivery
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: during either appearance, not one wingbeat over the gap. Make
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: of that what you will. I make of it that
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: even the owls give the house its space, which is
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: either respect or jurisdiction, and I do not know which
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: unsettles me more.
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: The shortlist. The grey one.
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: For the stare, for the guitar case, for attending parliament.
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: Chairman of the belfry, for eleven midnights of watching the watchers.
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: And Marjorie.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: Marjorie the barn owl. Forty visits and counting. The feather
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: on the doorstep. The first owl I ever named, though
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: technically Mr Fenwick named her. But I wrote it down first,
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: and writing it down first counts for a great deal
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: on this show. The award goes to Marjorie.
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: Overdue. Unanimous.
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: For services to chimney pots for the feather. for being
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: the owl against which all strangeness is measured. Marjorie, wherever
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: you are roosting tonight, this one is for you. Owl
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: of the week, again, as it should be. As it
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: will be again, I have no doubt, because some owls
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: are simply built different, and Marjorie is chief among them.
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: One more piece of post before we close, because the
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: ledger grows whether I am ready or not. A second
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: listener letter this week This one from Bristol, from a
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: man who signs himself T, which makes him, alphabetically, R's
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: neighbour in the file. And I have seated them together,
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: on purpose. T writes that his street has no owls
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: and no foxes, and nothing in the sky at all.
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: And for weeks, he felt left out of the watching game,
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: sitting up with his own flask and seeing nothing. Until
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: last Tuesday, when at half past two in the morning,
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: someone knocked twice on his neighbour's red door.
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: Twice. Measured.
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: And his neighbour, who is 83 and profoundly deaf without
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: her hearing aids, which she removes at night, opened it
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: within seconds, in her dressing gown, smiling, and took in
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: a visitor in a long dark coat, and he watched
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: the whole thing from his window, with his tea going cold.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: And he ends his letter with the sentence, I have
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: been turning over ever since. Quote, Hugh, my street has
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: no owls, because my street does not need owls. The
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: post comes to the door here, end quote. The post
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: comes to the door. Different streets, different arrangements, same operation.
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: Owls wear owls' suit. Foxes wear foxes' suit. A knock
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: wear knocking suits.
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: Tee.
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: Your street is entered into the National Ledger as entry
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: number three, and your sentence about the post is going
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: on the open questions page as a possible answer to
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: question two, which is more than any sentence has earned
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: in weeks.
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: Keep watching. Keep the flask full. And T. R.
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: If either of you ever meets the other, and I
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: have a feeling you might, tell each other. Q says hello.
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: The watchers are finding each other. It was only a
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: matter of time. So here we are, at the end
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: of our second evening together, and I want to tell
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: you what the house has taught me, because it is
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: the opposite of what the owls taught. And I need
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: both lessons, the way I need both eyes. The owls
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: taught me that the street keeps secrets from me until
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: I am ready. The house is teaching me that some
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: things keep themselves from everyone until someone is watching, not ready, watching, present, there.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: in a dressing gown, at half past three, refusing to
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: look away. The owls revealed a world that was already running.
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: The house might be running on me, on attention, on witness.
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: And if that is true, if Bramble Lane has places
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: that exist because someone stands in front of them and
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: refuses to blink, then this show is not a record
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: of the street. It is part of the street. The
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: notebook is not paperwork. It is participation.
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: I came here to watch.
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: I appear to be holding something up by looking at it.
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: I do not know what happens if I stop. I
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: do not plan to find out. Before I go, the
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: usual three things plus a fourth because the house earned it.
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: First, thank you.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: For tonight, for last time, for the messages, for R,
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: in Leeds, for every listener who has checked their own
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: street since this show began and found it, I hope,
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: slightly less ordinary than before, do subscribe So tomorrow finds you,
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: and do share us with the nosiest person you know. Second,
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: our sister shows, Stories Edinburgh and Your Quiet Moment for
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: the hours between 8 and 8.
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: Third, The Practical.
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: Last time tonight, brief as ever. Links in the show notes.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: Support a club on Spreaker for quick. Patreon for early
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: and extra. Same gap, same wall, same hue. Designing about milk.
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: And fourth, the open questions page updated who lives at
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: number nine, unchanged. Who runs the post, expanding weekly what
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: the letters say. Still nothing, still promised. Who else is
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: watching growing what is coming? Closer, I reckon. Closer every night.
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: And new tonight, question six. Written in capitals with the date.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: What is Bramble House? Not where, not when. What, a
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: house that develops like a photograph and vanishes on a glance,
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: is not a building. It is something else, and the
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: questions keep coming. Question seven, the smallest one, written in
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: pencil at the very bottom of the page. Will the
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: milk be gone by morning? Because the saucer goes down tonight.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: new saucer, white with a blue rim to match the shard,
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: bought specially this afternoon from the charity shop on Martins Lane,
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: where the woman behind the counter asked if it was
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: for a cat and I said yes, because some lies
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: are load-bearing. Full milk, whole milk, the good stuff. Set
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: down by the eastern end of the wall, where the
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: yew roots pushed up the bottle, at midnight tonight, after
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: this episode goes out, And in the morning, before Dave
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: starts his round, before the milk bottles land on any
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: other doorstep, I will go down there and look. Gone
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: means someone drank it. Full means no one did. Either way,
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: I will write it down, because the notebook records everything,
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: including sources, especially sources. And here is what I will
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: do in each case, decided in advance, because a watcher
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: without a plan is just a man staring at milk.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: If it is gone, I will refill it the next night,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: and the next, until I learn the schedule of whoever drinks,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: the way I learned the owls and the flashes. If
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: it is full, untouched, beaded with morning dew and nothing else,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: I will leave it one more night, and then I
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: will bring it home, wash it, and put it on
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: the desk with the shard and the bottle and the feather.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: Evidence either way. The saucer always answers. The only question
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: is what it says. And either way, I will tell
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: you tomorrow. That is a promise. The milk will be
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: the first thing I mention. Before the owls. Before the Patels.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: Before everything. Watch this space. Watch the saucer. What bramble
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: house is under its borrowed shape I do not know.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: But I know its door is blue. I know its
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: knocker is cold. And I know it showed itself to
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: me twice. Which means it will show itself a third time.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: I will be there.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: Flask full, eyes open, note-cook ready, and this time I
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: will not look down. Not for anything, not even for
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: the pen. And now, the reason you must come back tomorrow.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: Because while I have been standing in front of impossible houses,
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: something else has been happening in daylight. Something small and
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: warm and waved from a bus stop.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: Priya Patel. Number seven.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: The girl who pointed at the sky and mouthed the
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: two words that started all of this.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: You saw.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: I have been saving the Patels, because some stories deserve
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: their own evening, and tomorrow evening is theirs. What the
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: family at number seven knows, how long they have known it,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: why their wheelie bin wobbles, and what Priya said to
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: me yesterday morning that made me drop my keys in
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: the gutter. I have been saving the Patels, because some
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: stories deserve their own evening, and tomorrow evening is theirs,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: what the family at number seven knows. How long they
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: have known it, why their wheelie bin wobbles, and what
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: Priya said to me yesterday morning that made me drop
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: my keys in the gutter. Tomorrow evening, same time, I
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: am going to tell you about my neighbour getting post
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: by owl. Sleep well, keep one eye on your own street,
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: and Hugh will see you.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: At eight.