Next Door, by Anjali Mistry
An original short story extract set in the twentieth century.
When Mrs Halloran went into hospital for her hip, in the wet spring of 1996, she gave Priya a key on a loop of string and two pounds a week to feed Biscuit and bring in the post. ‘Nothing else,’ she said. ‘Don’t touch anything. I know exactly where everything is.’
For the first four days Priya did exactly that. She let herself in after school, filled the cat’s bowl, stacked the letters on the hall table, and left again in under five minutes, because the house was dark and smelled of lavender and old carpet and she did not like the way the grandfather clock in the hall seemed to wait for her before it ticked.
On the fifth day the letters were gone.
She stood in the hall with her school bag still on her shoulder. She had put them there herself, a neat pile of brown envelopes and a seed catalogue. Now the table was bare, and the cat’s bowl in the kitchen, which she had filled the evening before, was full again, and not with the dry food she used but with something wet and fishy from a tin.
She told herself that Mrs Halloran’s niece must have called. She did not stay to think about it.
On the sixth day there was a mug on the draining board, rinsed but still warm. On the seventh the television was ticking as it cooled, the way televisions do when they have been switched off a minute before. Priya put her hand flat on the top of it and felt the heat come into her palm, and then she heard, quite distinctly, the creak of a floorboard in the room above.
She should have run. She knew she should have run; her mum would have said so, and the police, and anybody with sense. Instead she found that she was walking up the stairs, slowly, holding the banister, because if she ran now she would never be able to come back, and Biscuit would starve, and she had promised.
The back bedroom door was half open. Inside, sitting on the edge of a narrow bed with his hands hanging between his knees, was a man of about thirty with a beard and a hospital wristband still on one wrist.
They looked at each other.
‘You’re the girl from next door,’ he said. His voice was soft and very tired. ‘She told me about you. She said you were reliable.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Michael. I’m her son.’ He rubbed his face. ‘We haven’t spoken in nine years. I went to see her on the ward on Sunday. First time. She gave me her spare key and said I could stop here till I sort myself out.’ He tried to smile. ‘She also said not to frighten you. I’ve made a mess of that.’
Priya looked at the wristband.
‘I was in for something else,’ he said. ‘I’m out now. I’m all right.’
She did not know whether to believe him. She thought about the warm mug, and the letters he had taken, and the tin of fish he had opened for a cat that was not his. Then she went downstairs and let herself out and stood on the pavement in the drizzle with her heart going, and she did not go home and tell her mum. She went to the phone box on the corner and rang the hospital, and asked for Mrs Halloran on Ward Twelve.
It was a long time before anybody came to the phone.
“Priya is presented as brave rather than foolish.”
To what extent do you agree with this view?
You should write about:
You must refer to the language used in the text to support your answer.
120 exam-style questions on Eduqas GCSE English Language 1.3 Critical reading and comprehension, covering 1.3.1 Identifying and interpreting themes, ideas and information, 1.3.2 Reading in different ways for different purposes, 1.3.4 Supporting a point of view with textual evidence, and 1.3.6 Reflecting critically and evaluatively on text. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.