Attica Read Free Page B

catching the end of the conversation. ‘You lot going to the cinema?’
    ‘We might do later,’ Jordy had said. ‘Is it all right?’
    ‘What about lunch?’ Ben had asked. ‘Are you going to eat thin air?’
    ‘We’ll grab a bite in town,’ Jordy had said, and knowing Ben was disapproving of hamburgers added, ‘from the Italian sandwich bar.’
    Once Ben had gone Chloe andJordy found themselves at the trapdoor of the attic, climbing through, armed with torches. Once more the dust and dead air assailed Jordy’s nostrils, but this time he wasn’t so worried by it. He had a means of light with him and he had Chloe. Still, once he was standing on boards inside, shining the torch into the recesses of the attic, a strange feeling came over him. It was as if they were trespassing on the sacred burial ground of another culture. There was the sense, not of being watched, but of being felt by something or someone. The first step he took he walked into a cobweb and covered his face with sticky threads.
    ‘Urrgh!’ he grunted.
    ‘What’s wrong?’ Chloe was whispering for some reason. ‘Step in a cow pat?’
    ‘Very funny. There are spiders up here.’
    Chloe said, ‘Don’t try to scare me. I’m not worried about spiders.’
    ‘I am,’ said a deep voice behind her, sending a shock wave through her. ‘I don’t like ’em.’
    It was Alex, who had changed his mind after he’d accidentally snapped the spine of his home-made kite.
    ‘Don’t do that!’ she hissed at him. ‘You made me jump.’
    ‘Nearly gave me a heart attack,’ said Jordy, his voice coming out of the darkness.
    Alex shone his torch around the rafters. The beam found some hanging flimsy cobwebs, grey as old bread. ‘They’re dead,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t mind dead ones.’
    The three of them split up, each searching separate corners of the attic, ducking and weaving under rafters and stepping over beams. Jordy’s area contained the water tank and when he shone his torch in there he was disgusted by the dead insects floating on the surface. ‘We drink this stuff,’ he called to the others. ‘It’s filthy.’
    ‘No we don’t,’ corrected Alex, ‘unless you drink your own bathwater. That tank feeds the boiler.’
    ‘All right, I wash in it. It’s still filthy.’
    They rooted around in the oddsand ends that were up there, kicked aside old cardboard boxes, gingerly lifted clumps of dirty clothes with their torches. They were looking for that glint of old silver which would perhaps tell them they had found the treasure they were looking for. Now that they were up there, Jordy actually felt they were on a wild-goose chase. The watch could be anywhere, if it was there at all. Who could trust an old man’s memory? Mr Grantham might have thought he’d thrown it up there, all those decades ago, but maybe he threw it somewhere else? Or maybe the watch didn’t exist at all?
    A beam of light came near him, as he turned over a cardboard box full of clothes with his toe. A woman’s mouldy hat lay flattened beneath it, the ribbon around the crown a sort of pale yellow colour.
    ‘Where’s Alex?’ asked Chloe, the person behind the light. ‘I can’t find him.’
    Jordy shone his torch around the attic, finding different shapes, but none of them belonging to Alex.
    ‘Alex?’ called Jordy. ‘Alex?’
    No answer. Suddenly his torch caught some bright shining eyes that looked up at him balefully. Jordy jumped back, alarmed. Then a familiar sound came from the creature who owned the eyes.
    ‘Nelson! What are you doing up here? How did you get up those steps?’ He stroked the cat’s back then said, ‘Did Alex go down again, d’you think? Maybe he got bored?’
    Chloe replied, ‘No, he’d have said something. One minute he was just here, to my left, and the next moment he’d vanished.’
    ‘Which way was he going?’
    Jordy was suddenlyafraid that his step-brother might have hit his head on a beam and was lying unconscious