The Darkening Hour Read Online Free PDF Page B

hisses.
    ‘Hey,’ mumbles the son, without looking at me.
    ‘Don’t use street speak,’ Dora says. ‘Get up, please, and greet Mona properly.’
    He stands up, not removing his eyes from the screen, holds out a huge hand and shakes mine, then slumps down again.
    ‘These are Barley Twist banisters,’ Dora says as we climb the stairs. ‘These houses are the oldest in the area. For some reason, they demolished all the others – thought
they were unsuitable for habitation. It brought the area down-market. But this street remains desirable. You can’t replace these wonderful old terraces. So, you see, now we arrive at the
piano nobile
.’
    She pushes open a door. The room is a pit of ashtrays, dropped clothes, beer cans and magazines.
    ‘Leo sleeps in here,’ she says.
    I make a noise with my tongue.
    ‘What was that?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘No, you said something,’ she says. ‘I didn’t catch it.’
    I shake my head, shrug.
    ‘He’s a bloody fright when it comes to tidying his room,’ she says. ‘And as you can see it could do with a good clean.’
    There’s a large desk-top computer in here like the ones the kids taught me to use at Madame’s house – not the iPads that people were using on the plane. If I can remember the
things Madame Sherif’s children showed me – how to use Google, for example, how to do a search – I can start to look for Ali. My heart-rate increases. I’ll come in here as
soon as Dora’s at work and Leo’s out. If he ever goes out. He looks sealed to that sofa down there.
    ‘Now,’ Dora says. ‘Up we go.’
    The house is tall, one room on top of another. I follow her up the next flight of stairs to the bathroom.
    Of all the rooms I’ve never had, a bathroom is the one I most desire. I’ve always yearned to lie in a tub of warm water, in a cloud of bubbles like they do in films. Madame Sherif
refused to let us use hers, though she had several. Dora’s let this one decay. The carpet curls up at the corners, the taps are dull, the windows grimy.
    ‘The laundry room’s here, next to the bathroom – there’s the washing machine and the airing cupboard.’ She holds the door open to a small room, with the scent of
washing powder and ironed linen, that takes me back to the garment factory where I worked before I had Leila.
    We make our way up again to Dora’s bedroom.
    This room’s as broad as the house with two windows overlooking the street.
    I touch her bedspread. ‘Very nice,’ I say. ‘Did you buy it here, in England?’
    ‘I bought it when I was in India with my husband. Many years ago.’
    There’s a dressing-table with bottles of perfume and pretty glass jars of cotton-wool balls, a jewelry box. I’ll find out what it contains when she’s out. You can learn a lot
about a woman from her jewelry. There’s a photo beside her bed – Dora with a man.
    ‘That’s about it. There’s one more room – the guest room, here, at the back.’
    She opens the door onto a smaller room with a white bed and a window overlooking the garden. The bed looks soft and comfortable.
    ‘There,’ she says, ‘that’s about it. Now you know.’
    ‘I’ll clean it,’ I say. ‘Then to keep it nice, I’ll do it every day.’
    ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘But remember you’re here to look after Daddy. You can do the house after you’ve seen to him. I have to work long hours, and he needs
watching.’
    ‘What is your work?’
    She straightens up as she replies, ‘I present a radio show.’
    ‘Local radio?’
    ‘No,’ she says. ‘Not at all. It goes out to the whole of southeast England.’
    ‘This is very beautiful, I think, this work?’
    She doesn’t reply to this, just gives a superior smile as if I can’t possibly understand how important her job is.
    ‘My point, Mona, is I am indispensable at work. I want you to look after Daddy as if you were me. As if indeed he were your own father. The house won’t suffer if it’s left for
a while. Daddy