After Brock by Paul Binding Page B

will get to sleep with it pressing on my mind. But I no longer have an exam to wake up early for. So why not, once Doug has left, and Mum is in her room, creep out of the flat, out of the whole building, and follow one of our local foxes – or better, a pair of them? Sleuth them to their dens, or stopping places? I love their slinking gait, their graceful muscular jumps of walls and defiance of gates or fences, their capacity for rapid movement while completely keeping their cool. There’s nothing London foxes like better (this is hard fact) than fish and chips, so a good place to wait for them is the qui-etest spot near a chippie you can find. If you’re properly patient, a pair will emerge from somewhere you’ve never suspected any creatures could be hiding, and – snap! – like lightning they’ve snatched a bit of batter-soaked cod or a few greasy congealing chips spilled from some wrapping. Then off they dance with their finds into the recesses of Herne Hill and Camberwell gardens and backyards. And I like to go with them.
    Â Â Â 
    Next morning, I didn’t celebrate No School by dawdling over breakfast in the kitchen after Mum had left for work. Instead I left the building, crossed the road, and made for the 68 bus stop. Amazingly a bus came along as soon as I arrived. But traffic was heavier than normal and was held up for so long at Camberwell Green that I was tempted to get off and walk. But it’s a long haul to where Camberwell Road becomes Walworth Road, and Dr Pringle, I knew from the number on his card, lives at least halfway up. And I didn’t want to arrive at his home sweaty and breathless, but cool and collected, with both my curiosity and my social skills intact.
    I could, of course, have rung him beforehand to check he’d be at home, but I hate speaking on the phone to someone I don’t know well. And though I had his email address, I’d no idea how often the doctor looked at his messages. Mine might hang around in cyberspace a long time, possibly for the rest of the week, which wouldn’t suit me at all.
    His house was in a perfectly ordinary terrace on the Kennington side of the street, less well looked after than its immediate neighbours and, like every other in the row, divided up into flats. I guessed the doctor went out to teach pupils rather than saw them in this unprepossessing place. I felt nervous and bold, both together, as I walked up to the door. Above the second bell from the bottom I saw the name PRINGLE in handwriting, tacked on with a piece of sellotape.
    â€˜Yes? Hullo? Who is that?’ came the voice through the speaker. It didn’t sound quite like the voice I’d heard at Josh’s yesterday, as it was speaking in a whisper, but on the other hand it didn’t not sound like it either.
    â€˜It’s Nat Kempsey!’ Considering his reaction to my name yesterday, I couldn’t rule out a strong response today. Perhaps he’d give a strange cry and faint dead away up there in his flat… But in fact his disembodied voice betrayed no surprise that it was me down there on his doorstep, which I found odd in itself.
    â€˜Nat?’ he repeated, and this time he sounded, like, pleased. ‘Well, you must come on up? I’m on the first floor.’
    And seconds later the door gave a little squeaky sob, and opened for me.
    The hall and stairs were as depressing as I’d expected from the house’s exterior: lino and cheap drugget, and a faded brown wallpaper, torn in places, with a pattern of cream leaves.
    Dr Pringle, dressed as yesterday, was on the landing outside his private front door, to greet me. In the stairwell’s half light he looked younger than yesterday, but then, of course, he’d just finished playing, which must be tiring. ‘I thought you’d come and see me,’ he said quietly (and very nicely), ‘but I hadn’t, I must admit, predicted it would be