The Custodian

He should have run for the bus. The day crowd would soon be starting their commute into work and he liked to have finished his journey home by the time they started theirs. Security handed the reception desk over to Luca at 9pm. His job was to stay awake and react if something happened. It never did. His real work was on his book. A science fiction story about aliens from Mars landing in New Mexico in the 1940s. Now they are living among us. Trying to stop us from destroying our planet.

His first bus took him to Camberwell Green. He got off a few stops earlier to wait for his other bus. This stop didn’t have a stand, but he could shelter from the rain under a tree while he sat on the garden wall of a house whose two garden gnomes were staring at him. It was too early for anyone to be awake inside.

As he sat back his hand brushed the side of a small black notebook sticking out from between some bricks. Its shiny hard cover was slightly damp and must have been placed on the wall to protect it from the rain. Luca opened it and found ruled pages. Dates, but no years and entries written in a neat cursive script. He closed the book before shoving it under the light jacket which hid his suit.

A woman appeared from a side street and slowed down as she approached the bus stop. She was wearing heeled boots which added to her height and her red hair was swept up in a ponytail. Her brows were creased as her eyes darted backwards and forwards. She was too close to him now. She looked around the bus stop, the gutter and then behind the wall he was sat on, but Luca didn’t move. She made him feel uneasy, but he didn’t know why. He would have stood up to get out of her way, but he looked taller sitting down and he didn’t want to encourage her to stay. If this were one of his stories, she would be an official hunting the Martians.

She crossed to the bus stop on the other side of the road and looked around before turning right and walking back up towards Oval tube station, concentrating on the ground as she walked. The address on the inside cover of the notebook was an SE5 postcode and according to his phone a four-minute walk. For some reason he knew if he left the notebook at the bus stop the woman would come back and find it. But he knew she should never find it. It didn’t belong to her.

The address led to a flat, the basement, the downstairs of a Georgian house with all the curtains drawn firmly shut. What could have been a front garden was covered in concrete and paving slabs with weeds popping up wherever they could grab some light. Something compelled him to go in. It was where the notebook belonged.

The windows were covered in dirt, the inside was dark, but the dusty floor told him no one had been there for a while. There was no answer when he knocked on the door. It wasn’t difficult to shimmy open the window. The metre it opened was enough for him to climb through. He had plenty of experience. His parents would even call him now if they ever locked themselves out of the house. They left a bathroom window open just in case. No real burglar could fit through.

He closed the window as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. The room smelt sweet, and the dust caught in his throat, but he didn’t want to let himself cough. Piles of newspapers covered every surface, their yellow edges hiding partial dates but telling him they had been there since the 1990s. He wanted to touch the bed to know if it held any warmth. Look in the kitchen and find a half-eaten piece of toast letting him know someone had been here only moments later, but the only footprints in the dust were his own.

Luca hadn’t wanted to read any of the entries at the bus stop, but it didn’t feel as much of an intrusion now he was in the flat. He imagined whoever wrote it sat on the bed as newspapers slowly piled around them, writing each entry as every day came to a close.

He sat on as little of the corner of the bed as he could without falling, opening the book on his lap in front of him. The book needed to be opened. It wasn’t possible for someone to write it and not assume someone else would end up reading it.

He opened the book towards the centre and an entry marked July 2nd.

‘I am sat here waiting. Part of me imagines you having the life you always dreamed. Celebrating your special day. Perhaps I’ll do the same. I could see myself on a boat with nothing but waves surrounding me. I want to imagine better things than loneliness. I want to imagine adventure. I want to be anywhere but here in this stifling room. People walk past all day and most of the night. I wait for the footsteps to stop. I wait for the clicks of your heels to make their way back down to me.’

The handwriting made him think it was written by a woman but there was no other reason to have that thought. His own handwriting was impeccable, but his style tended towards blockier letters with more capital letters than needed. It was always neat, but never legible.

‘It’s your birthday my love and I am still saving our money. We’ll do all the things we couldn’t do before when you weren’t well. When I wasn’t well. I know our time is coming.’

His heart clenched as he sensed a movement to his left. He froze thinking, for a brief second, if he didn’t move, he wouldn’t be seen. He shouldn’t be here. If someone found him, he could be arrested. He would lose his job. They wouldn’t let a burglar work in security. He was the intruder. He had broken in.

He sat in silence, barely breathing and not daring to even focus on the words in front of him. He heard a faint meow moments before a black and white cat appeared next to him. Its mouth had a faint black zig zag over it which made it look like its mouth had been crossed out. The cat sat down next to him before jumping onto the open notebook in his lap.

Luca could live somewhere like this. His flat came with two flatmates who were kind enough to work during the day, but there was always the overlap as he got ready and they were winding down for the evening. It should have been his time to relax alone before work.

A mouse appeared from the end of the room. It sniffed the air before starting to move forward. The cat waited a few moments before it pounced chasing the mouse back into the kitchen.

Luca took the opportunity to open one of the cupboard doors. It felt like he was peering into a different room. If this was his place, he would get rid of it. It was at least double the depth of a normal cupboard. He could only just see its back wall. There was a pile of clothes in the back corner and a couple of shoe boxes. On the far right was a larger box. The length and width of one suitcase, but the height of two. There was only the one room in this flat, but what else did he need?

Suddenly, the creek of the window and the shadow which cast itself over the room caught his attention as she pressed her face up against the glass. But it was darker inside than out and she couldn’t see him. Luca saw a flash of red hair. He stepped into the cupboard as he heard her pushing against the front door turning the handle and rattling the door against its hinges until she came crashing through, landing on the floor. She sneezed as the dust engulfed her and hid his own trail.

She was soon on her feet, but she moved forward cautiously. He could peer out from between the cupboard doors as he held his hand over his mouth to quieten his breathing. If she went into the kitchen, he could run out the front door and away up the stairs. He would run towards Camberwell Green and jump on to any bus. He shouldn’t be here, but he knew she shouldn’t be either. Her eyes stopped on the bed before she looked back towards the wardrobe doors.

If he was any taller she would have looked him straight in the eyes, but instead she just saw darkness. Luca stepped backwards as she turned towards the kitchen instead. A mouse popped out from the top of the large box behind him. If it was a body it would be rats, not mice wouldn’t it?

‘I lost it,’ she said. At first he thought she was talking to him, but she was on her mobile. ‘I must have dropped it getting off the bus, but I had the address anyway so I’m here. I know he has money. He doesn’t need it and we do. He will never know it was us. I’ll make sure.’

She hung up as she came back into the room. She was getting closer to the wardrobe, but all Luca was thinking was she didn’t have the same boots on. She was wearing trainers. Dark black canvas trainers with light blue laces. She had her hand on the doorhandle when she shrieked as the cat leapt from the kitchen landing on her head. She screamed as she pulled at its body, a few drops of blood running down her forehead. The cat leapt off on its own, straight onto the bed where it arched its back and hissed at the woman. Luca stepped back as the woman did the same heading towards the door. She closed the door, pulling it tight before he heard light footsteps running up the stairs.

He needed to leave, but he wanted to know what was in the box and he was too scared to open the cupboard door and leave yet. The torch from his phone sent another two mice scurrying away as he opened the notebook looking at the latest entry.

‘I know I haven’t looked after myself. I thought I had to punish myself for not looking after you. I worry someone is going to try to steal our savings. The woman with red hair introduced herself to me as Sarah and then Nancy and then Jasmine. She wants people to think I am losing my mind. The code is your birthday.’

He opened the large box holding his breath anticipating a rancid smell and more mice. Their attention had been on some biscuits, which might have been digestives, and what was left of the several dozen cardboard boxes they came in.

The safe was hidden in the corner, cemented to the ground. He had almost missed it. It was hard, even with small hands, to punch in the numbers 0207 which he guessed, but when he did the door opened with a buzz. There were letters bound together with a ribbon and notes spread out in four envelopes each labelled 5,000 in the same cursive script as the little black book.

He would get to the bottom of all this. He would read the journal and decide what to do. He would have to come back. This wasn’t stealing. It was preparing.

‘Come on kitty,’ he said. ‘You can come home with me if you like. We’ll come back. I promise.’