The Accidental Read Free

fence and tells Astrid and Rebecca they should come and play on the court next to the one she and Zelda Howe are playing on, and then the winners of each game will play each other to find who out of the four of them is the best. Astrid looks at the court she and Rebecca are supposed to play on. Its surface is all pieces of broken glass. She is about to say no but Rebecca says yes. But look at the glass, Astrid says because it is insane. Coward, Zelda Howe says. We knew you wouldn’t do it. They have put the broken glass there on purpose as a test. If you want to play on broken glass you’re an idiot, Astrid tells Rebecca. Rebecca goes into the court and crunches about on the broken glass. A man comes. He is one of their fathers. She is going to tell him about the glass but before she can he calls everyone except her over to the fence and breaks a Cadburys fruit and nut bar into four equal pieces. He gives a piece to each of them. She looks to see if he’s eating the fourth piece himself but she can’t make out his face, he is too far away. There is something in her hand. It is her camera. If she can get this on film she will be able to show someone everything that’s happening. But she can’t lift the camera. It is too heavy. Her arm won’t work. A doorbell rings, miles away. It is at home. There is no one at home but her. The hall is as big and empty as a desert. Astrid runs along it to answer the door. The hall seems never to end. When she does get to the door she is doubled over, she has run out of breath and she is frightened that whoever is behind it will have gone by now because she took so long. She opens it. A man is standing there. He has no face. He has no nose, no eyes, nothing, just blank skin. Astrid is terrified. Her mother will be furious with her. It is her fault he is here. You can’t come in, she tries to tell him, but she has no breath. We’re not here, she breathes. We’re on holiday. Go away. She tries to shut the door. A mouth appears in the skin and a great noise roars out of it like she is standing too close to an aeroplane. It forces the door back. She opens her eyes, rolls straight off the bed on to her feet.
    She is on holiday in Norfolk. The substandard clock radio says 10.27 a.m. The noise is Katrina the Cleaner thumping the hoover against the skirting boards and the bedroom doors.
    Her hand is asleep. It is still hooked through the handstrap of the camera. She unhooks it and shakes it to get the blood back into it.
    She puts her feet on top of her trainers and slides them across the substandard carpet. It has had the bare naked feet of who knows how many hundreds of dead or old people on it.
    When she looks in the mirror above the sink she sees the imprint of her own thumb below her cheekbone where she slept on her hand ! ! She is like the kind of pottery things her mother buys that have been made by real people (not factories), actual artisans working in hot countries who leave the actual marks of their hands in it as their signature i.e. she has signed herself in her sleep!
    She presses her thumb into the indentation it made. It fits perfectly.
    She flicks water over her face and dries it on the sleeve of her t-shirt rather than the horrible towel. She pulls her trainers on properly. She picks up the camera again and lifts the latch on the door.
    There are two ways to watch what you’re filming: 1. on the little screen and 2. through the viewer. Real filmmakers always use the viewer though it is harder to see with it. She puts her eye to the viewer and records her hand making the latch go up then down. In a hundred years’ time these latches may not exist any more and this film will be proof that they did and will act as evidence for people who need to know in the future how latches like this one worked.
    The battery sign is flashing. The battery is low. There is enough power to record Katrina the Cleaner gouging with the hoover tube at the inside of each stair. Katrina is something