The Door That Led to Where by Sally Gardner Page B

with an unsteady hand. ‘Got to go.’
    Walking towards them, in a gaggle of glittering girls, was Sicknote, the Cleopatra of Stokey, coming to claim her slave.
    Slim threw the fag away.
    AJ looked on, disgusted, as Slim almost ran to her.
    â€˜Just be careful, that’s all,’ he said to no one in particular.
    Outside Leon’s block, AJ found Leon’s sofa leaning against the wall along with two mattresses and several black bin bags. His clothes were mixed up with the rubbish. They all stank. So that was that. For what it was worth, Rangers had reclaimed the dump. There was no point in seeing if he could get in. Anyway, it was dark and hard to see with eyes that needed matchsticks to keep them open. He focused on his oversized brogues. One step, two steps, three. He had to put his faith in something and shoes seemed a good bet. He saw Moses’s gang hanging out in the doorway.
    Keep your eyes off those geezers and concentrate on the shoes, he thought. They were moving in the general direction of Bodman House. He rang Elsie’s bell.
    Dear old Elsie. London may tumble, St Paul’s might crumble but Elsie would always be there. She’d been just a little kid during the Blitz, had seen the houses round about go down. She even had an Uncle Stan who had been shot by a Stuka on Church Street.
    â€˜He was a stubborn bugger,’ she’d said. ‘He wouldn’t lie down on the pavement when the plane flew overhead – he just stood in the road with his fingers in a V-sign and, lo and behold, if that Stuka didn’t double back and shoot him full of holes. No one else, just my Uncle Stan. Daft as a brush, he was.’
    Elsie opened the door.
    â€˜Give me those,’ she said, taking his smelly clothes. ‘Cup of tea? You’re all done in. What a day, what a day. I take it you haven’t seen Leon?’
    â€˜No. I’ll have the tea and then I’m going out searching and I will find him.’
    The idea that you could just boil water and make tea at the flick of a switch struck him for the first time in his life as a luxury. Maybe you needed to see the past to appreciate the present.
    Elsie, the queen of the practical, put both hands on her hips. She had just had her hair dyed blue and the tightness of her curls and the lines on her face made her, in the dim light of her lounge, look beautiful to AJ.
    â€˜You  … ’ she said slowly, as if measuring out each word to see if they had the right amount of weight to them, ‘you are not responsible for Leon or for Slim.’
    AJ stood up to protest.
    â€˜I haven’t finished. You need to take care of –’ Elsie stopped mid-sentence. ‘What are you wearing?’
    AJ was too muddled to understand what she was saying. Her words drifted in and out of his consciousness. She showed him into the bedroom that had once belonged to her son Norris.
    â€˜You can stay here for a while, if you like,’ she said.
    He took off his waistcoat and shirt and lay down on the bed, and before Elsie had brought him tea and Marmite toast, AJ was fast asleep.
    The next morning he had a bath and realised that he felt a human being again. A human being with a plan. He would look for Leon after work. He would find him even if it meant tackling Dr Jinx. Elsie was in the living room, sitting in her armchair. The ironing board was out and all AJ’s clothes had been washed and pressed.
    â€˜You shouldn’t have bothered,’ said AJ. Elsie was staring into space. ‘Elsie?’ he said. ‘Are you all right?’
    â€˜Where did you find those?’ she said, pointing to the shirt and waistcoat Ingleby had given him.
    â€˜Oh – I don’t know.’
    â€˜That’s what Norris said when I asked him the same question, a week before he went missing.’
    â€˜Norris, your son?’
    â€˜Yes,’ said Elsie. She stood up and went into the kitchen. ‘Coffee?’
    Some