The warehouse is where our house once stood. Back in the day, we were two families to a floor sharing a cooker with a toilet in the yard at the back. My father couldn’t find work, so my mother took in mending. The money she got was never enough. My stomach was never full. We were always hungry, and the baby died before she was a year old.
It’s been a while since I’ve been here. All I remember is a dank, cold house, the other family on our floor arguing and kids crying. I find you walking the floor, head down, as if searching for something. When I call out your name, you turn, then your shape fades and you disappear through the wall.
I lived in the late 1800’s, a world away from today with all its technology and household gadgets. I was playing in the alley a few streets away when the fire raged through the building. The only one left was you. We pored over the ashes, but there was nothing left, except that silly box you carried around all the time.
I became apprenticed to a cobbler and he let me sleep in the attic room over the shop. He was kind and gave me a good start. You found a job in service. The cobbler had no family of his own and when he died, he left me the shop and all his money. By then, they had built new houses on our old street. These were upmarket dwellings, and I had enough money to put down a deposit. I asked you to come and live with me, but you said you wanted to go your own way now. You had a sweetheart. There was talk of marriage.
I was too old to fight in the first war and was in the Nag’s Head in the second when the bomb landed on my new house. I was back to living in the attic room over the Cobblers.
You had moved out of London with your husband some years ago before. We lost touch.
I felt as poor as I had as a child, yet the years hung on me. Once more I pored over the ashes of my home, and when the air raid warning went off a second time, I didn’t move. I wasn’t sure I wanted to live anymore. And so it was I became a wanderer in the other world.
Sometimes I searched for you, but I couldn’t find you in the living world or the other world. I was lonely.
Now suddenly you are here, weaving between boxes, fading through walls. My eyes scan the warehouse where boxes sit piled to the roof. A little truck zips round, removing boxes, and taking them to a lorry outside. The next time I see you, you laugh, a girlie laugh I remember so well. When you run out of the warehouse, I follow you into the lorry park and turn the corner into a strip of land where wildflowers grow. You walk through the flowers, trailing your fingers through cornflowers and daisies before stooping down. You have something in your hand. I call out, but you either don’t hear me or choose to ignore me. As I approach, you slowly turn, eyes sunken, older, but your hair is as lovely and golden as it was when you were a child.
‘I’ve been looking for you,’ you say. ‘I should have guessed you’d be here.’ When I hold out my hand you place your tiny one in mine.
We return to the warehouse. We seem to be constantly drawn back here. It wasn’t a great life, but despite the cold and hunger, there was laughter. You place a key in my hand. I frown. It’s not the front door key of our old house. ‘What is it?’ I ask.
‘The key to my tomorrow box,’ you say.
I laugh. ‘What’s that?’
‘Don’t you remember? It was all I could find in the ashes when the house burnt down.’ From your skirt you pull out the box. Scorched and dented, the little brown box my father made sits on her palm. She inserts the key, turns it and opens the lid. Light floods out, a beam so bright it hurts my eyes. When I dare to look inside, I recognise the faces of mother and father and all our brothers and sisters. Even the baby is there, yelling excitedly.
‘We can all be together now’, my sister says. She grabs my hand again. ‘All you have to do is jump.’ So I do.
by Heather Walker
Heather Walker’s work has been published previously in Aayo Magazine (Tools of the Trade and Flashes). She has also been published by Ink Sweat & Tears, Seaborne and Popshot magazine. She writes poetry, short fiction and has published two novellas.
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