The Wall Read Free Page B

movements, walking through the gardens of the demolished house, getting closer and closer to The Wall, and at any moment simply ghosting through it to the unknown place on the other side.
    It’s a strange idea: not just passing through The Wall, but also the above-and-belowness of it. Usually the world just feels like a flat skin you walk around on, then sometimes you remember that every place is more than just one patch of land, because there’s also the air above it and the ground below it. Each spot is actually a column, going right down to the magma at the centre of the earth, and up, into the sky and beyond, for ever. People forget that when you go upstairs, you are actually standing right on top of the people who are downstairs. Think about it hard enough and it’s properly freaky. If floors and ceilings had to be made of glass, people would go crazy. They wouldn’t be able to take it, and everyone would end up living in bungalows.
    It’s useful to have things like this to think about when you’re doing something scary, because I have no idea how long I’ve been crawling, or how far I’ve gone, at the moment when my torch picks up a patch of something greyish-white. I stop and extend the torch in front of me, peering into the gloom, squinting to try and form the shifting blob of colour into a recognisable shape.
    Another metre of crawling gives me my answer. It’s a coil of rope. I’ve got to the end of the tunnel. I’m on the other side.
    â€˜You’ve done it!’ I think to myself, in a booming military voice. ‘A daring and risky mission executed with determination, courage and skill.’ If I believed in medals, I’d award myself one right there and then. In fact, I hate medals. They gave one to my dad. Mum has hidden it somewhere and I don’t even care where.
    All I need is a quick look outside. After that, I can head home. I grip the rope and give it a tug, checking it’s firmly attached, then switch the torch off and put it in my back pocket. In pitch darkness, one knot at a time, I begin to climb.

The cover over the opening wobbles with just a gentle touch. It’s made of metal, but is thinner and lighter than the one at the entrance. Or maybe this is the entrance. That all depends on who the tunnel was built for, and why.
    I gently slide the cover to one side, creating an opening big enough for my head, then work my feet up to the next knot. All I have to do now is straighten my legs, and my head will be poking out, giving me my first view of the other side.
    I come up in an alleyway between a ragged concrete building with bricked-over windows and The Wall, which on this side looks unrecognisable. It is the same size, of course, and the same concrete, but unlike the bare grey surface I’m used to, this side is entirely covered for the first two metres of its height with graffiti: a mixture of drawings, slogans and random scrawls. None of it is in my language, so I can’t read a word. One image, of a huge, old-fashioned key, is repeated in a long line above the text, twenty or thirty times, so high it must have needed a ladder to do it.
    At one end of the alley, a high chain-link fence blocks the way through to what looks like either wasteland or an abandoned garden. In the other direction my view is obscured by a pair of large rubbish bins, but I can see a few passing feet and a glimpse of the odd car. This is the way to the town, but the tunnel exit (or entrance) is set up so you can get in and out without being visible from the street. I check again that no one can see me, swivelling my head in all directions, then push aside the tunnel door and haul myself out. As soon as I’m up, I push the cover back over the tunnel with my feet.
    I stand dead still, not daring to move. Through a gap between the bins I can see a sliver of what looks like normal life: cars, motorbikes, pedestrians, people going here and there doing the things that