Hiding in Gran’s wardrobe

Text 1: The Fourth Step, by Simon Achterberg

An original novel extract.

Gran’s wardrobe smelt of mothballs and old fur, and it was full of coats nobody had worn since before Theo was born. He had climbed into it to win a game of hide-and-seek with his cousin. That had been an hour ago. His cousin had given up and gone home, and Gran had gone to the shops, and Theo had fallen asleep among the coats with his cheek against a sleeve as soft as a cat.

It was the glass that woke him.

Not a crash. A careful, deliberate crunch, like somebody stepping on ice, and then a click, and then the back door opening with the little squeal it always made. Gran always said she would oil it. She never did.

Theo held his breath. Through the gap where the wardrobe doors did not quite meet he could see a thin slice of the bedroom: the end of the bed with its pink candlewick cover, the dressing table, the photograph of Grandad in his uniform. It was like watching a film through a letterbox.

Footsteps downstairs. Two sets. One heavy, one light. Drawers opening and closing, not urgently, but the way you might look for a tin opener in someone else’s kitchen. A low voice said something, and another voice laughed.

Then the stairs. Gran’s stairs had a creak on the fourth step and another on the ninth, and Theo had used them for years to know when she was coming up to say goodnight. Four. He pressed himself back into the coats. Nine.

A man came into the slice of room. He was younger than Theo had expected, with a grey hood and ordinary trainers, the kind everyone at school wanted. He went straight to the dressing table as if he had been there before, and opened the little drawer where Gran kept her rings, and Theo watched his hands, pale and quick, scooping them up like sweets.

Then the man stopped. He turned his head. He looked at the wardrobe.

Theo did not move. He did not blink. Inside his chest his heart was going so hard he was certain it could be heard through the wood, through the coats, through the whole silent house.

Explore how Simon Achterberg uses language and structure to build suspense as Theo hides in the wardrobe.

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