Hide And Seek. Amy Bird

       Chapter Thirteen

      -Will-

      We reach my parents’ house at midnight. I wanted to wait until 2am, but Ellie says they will have been asleep for hours, and if we leave it any later, they’ll probably get up to use the loo. She has a point. She also has a pick and a wrench. So witching hour finds us standing at the end of the drive, looking up, checking the windows are dark. They are. I put a foot out to step on the gravel, but Ellie holds me back.

      “Too noisy,” she whispers. “Use the flowerbeds.”

      I look at the flowerbeds round the edge of the drive up to the front door. They are full of flowers. And soil.

      “You sure?” I ask Ellie. She nods and gives me a little push. I put one foot then the other in the flowerbed and creep towards to the door of the house. It’s a small jump from the flowerbed to the flagstones by the front door. I go first. I land just short of the flagstones, on the gravel. There is a crunch. I hold my breath. No lights go on inside. We are still undetected. I turn back to Ellie and hold out my hand for her to jump towards me. She judges the jump perfectly and lands silently. Critically, she keeps hold of the champagne. It’s our cover story: if caught, we claim we wanted to leave a gift by way of surprise, to say thank you for the crib.

      Next, the key in the lock. I have never heard the lock click so loudly. Then comes the moment of truth. They never used to put on the burglar alarm or chain the door when I lived here. If they do either – or worse, both – our mission will fail. We will have to shut the door and run, hoping we can make it back across the gravel before they turn on the light and open the curtains. Hope that the local police will not bother to take footprints from the flowerbed. I push the door open a fraction, then a little more. Thank God. No chain. And no alarm. But I hadn’t realised that the door scraping over the doormat actually makes a sound. I am about to push the door shut behind us, but Ellie stops me. She very gently edges it towards the frame, but leaves it ever so slightly ajar, so there is no sound of it shutting. She takes off a shoe and wedges it by the door. I take my shoes off too, partly to be quiet, partly so as not to tread soil into the house. That’s how I’ve been brought up.

      At that thought, I wonder what I’m doing; why am I betraying my upbringing to sneak around my parents’ house in the middle of the night? If I was twelve, I could pretend it was a game of spies. Now, aged thirty-four with my five-months-pregnant wife in tow, that will not wash. I am not convinced the champagne really works as a cover either. But better, we decided, than claiming I needed a document urgently. What need could have arisen between the end of sociable hours today and be required before tomorrow morning? Logically, we have our reasons, but emotionally it does not do. My parents know me. They know I do not creep into houses in the middle of the night delivering Taittinger.

      Ellie does not seem to have these concerns, though, because she is ahead of me. On tiptoes, she is heading for our target zone: the study. I follow. The door starts to creak as she opens it. Of course it does; the whole mission is ill-fated. She freezes. I freeze. We look upwards, into the dark of the staircase. Still no lights. Still safe to continue. Ellie manages to slide herself through the gap in the door, with a millimetre to spare – a few weeks later, and we would not be able to do this exercise – and I, thanks to the swimming, make it too, with the champagne.