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| Image generated with OpenAI |
On the morning of his twentieth wedding anniversary, Henry Feathers woke to find that his back garden had disappeared.
It had been a difficult night. In keeping with his recent habit he’d stayed up late, flicking through the channels, before settling on a French film, which, after an hour, he realised he’d seen before. When he finally made it to the spare room, he lay fully dressed on top of the duvet, running through the forms of the verb manger and trying to summon the energy to get ready for bed.
He was woken by a loud cracking and sucking sound and a kind of wumpf that made him sit up, heart hammering. He wondered if the noise was part of a dream, and why he was still dressed in yesterday’s clothes. Pulling back the curtains, he expected to see the garden. Instead, there was a large hole.
He blinked and rubbed at the window with his shirt sleeve, as if the hole was a blemish on the glass. Then he looked again.
Well, he thought. This is different.
He stood on the small patio. Everything was gone – the shed and the compost heap, all the flower beds that had once held colourful multitudes but that lately had become overrun by weeds.
A set of footprints led to and from the hole. They looked like they had been made by someone no older than about eight or nine. Had one of the neighbours’ kids been in the garden? What if, right now, someone was lying at the bottom, dead or dying?
He skidded as he ran to the edge, almost losing his footing, but came to a halt just before he went over.
‘Hello?’ he called. Then again, ‘Hello?’
The hole was maybe ten feet deep and he could see nobody was lying there, dead or dying, or even injured. He was about to return to the house when he noticed something curious. Inside the hole was what appeared to be a series of evenly spaced grooves cut into the wall. They came to an end about halfway down, where there was another hole, leading horizontally into the earth. A tunnel.
The man from the council stood on the front step and told him he would have to leave immediately. It wasn’t safe. The house could be next. The whole street was being evacuated, just in case. Henry decided there and then that it would be best if he avoided his neighbours for the foreseeable future. The woman with the twins two doors down was already annoyed with him for leaving his bin out on the pavement.
It had been so long since he’d spent a night away from the house that he couldn’t recall where he’d put the suitcase. It wasn’t in the loft. It wasn’t on top of any of the wardrobes, or even under the bed. The garage turned out to be full of all sorts of stuff he’d forgotten, including a dartboard and a windbreak.
No suitcase, though.
There was only one place it could be.
He sat on the edge of the bed he no longer slept in and could not take his eyes off her wardrobe. A year ago, they’d celebrated their nineteenth anniversary – a meal at a fancy place during which Emma ate nothing. For months, she’d had no appetite. Henry recalled that she’d allowed herself a small glass of champagne, each sip of which made her screw up her face. He’d finished off the rest of the bottle, then thrown it all up in the restaurant toilets, knowing that the churning in his stomach had less to do with the alcohol than the fear about what he would do without her.
From the window, he watched as his neighbours left their houses, wheeling their suitcases, hefting their bags. The woman with the twins steered the double buggy around his bin, then looked up towards his window. Henry shrank back. Next time he peeked out, she was gone, but there were other people now, people he didn’t recognise. Were they neighbours he’d never seen? No, these people were different – they emerged from large vans, they carried cameras. One held a microphone. Somewhere, out of sight, a helicopter clacked and whirred.
The neighbours went, but the strangers stayed on. Henry saw one of them, a man in a baseball cap, make his way towards the house. A double knock exploded into the hallway and up the stairs, followed by a piercing bell noise that made him clench his teeth and close his eyes. Henry gripped the edge of the curtain and tried not to move. After a moment, the side gate rattled. Henry opened his eyes in time to see the man return to the front. He talked on his phone for several minutes, gave one last glance at the house, then got back in his car and sped off.
The helicopter, too, faded away. A line of birds settled on a wire connecting his house to another across the street. Then, suddenly, they flew up as one. They gathered in a cloud, pulsating for a few seconds like a giant black heart before wheeling away to the end of the road and out of sight.
Henry turned from the window and faced the wardrobe once more. Really, the decision was simple: he could not go into the wardrobe to extract the suitcase, therefore he could not leave. He did not want to see all her things hanging there, but he did not want to be apart from them.
He would stay, then, and he didn’t care if the house collapsed around him.
He watched the news. It was all bombs and money and fighting, but then a picture of a house appeared on the screen. The house he was sitting in. There was an aerial shot of the hole in his back garden. It was huge, like the crater of a volcano. Then the picture changed again and the face of the woman with the twins filled the screen. ‘A total shock…’ the face said. ‘You don’t expect…’ She was standing by the bin, his bin, and Henry wondered if she would take the opportunity to bring her complaint to a wider audience, but now the item was finished and somebody was saying something about the weather, which was looking a bit cold and rainy, which was fine, because he wasn’t intending to go out anyway.
Just then, in the corner of his eye, something moved. Henry snapped his head round and saw a flicker, out in the garden.
There it was again. Henry was at the patio doors before he even knew he’d made a decision to get up. Was it a child?
He slid open the door. ‘Hey!’ he called. ‘Be careful!’
The child froze. Henry stepped out. A spray of rain misted into his face. He narrowed his eyes against it.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he said, taking another step forward. ‘It’s not safe.’
‘Leave me alone,’ the child said.
Henry stopped. The voice was much deeper than he expected. Now he was closer he could see that this wasn’t a child at all. In fact, he wasn’t entirely sure what it was. It looked human, but at the same time it looked like something that wasn’t quite human. The features were all there – nose, eyes, mouth and so on, all in the right places – but the creature was short, under five foot, and had pale, almost translucent skin. Its hair hung in long, thin strands. It was wearing some kind of dress, or a tunic, or a kind of shift. The material might originally have been red, but the colour had faded to a light pink, mixed with patches of mud brown.
Henry rubbed his face. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’
‘How do I know that? You could be a murderer, for all I know.’
‘I’m not a murderer.’
‘I bet that’s what they all say.’
‘Can you move away from the edge? You’re making me nervous.’
‘You think the hole might eat me?’
‘What?’
‘You think the hole is a monster?’
‘Of course not,’ said Henry. ‘It’s just a hole.’
The creature snorted. ‘Oh, no, no. That’s not right. That’s not true at all. A hole is never just a hole.’
Henry blinked, then took a step back. Maybe he should go inside. Close the door. Pull the curtains to. Leave this – whatever it was – to sort itself out.
But no. He shouldn’t have to be the one on the defensive. He shouldn’t have to hide himself away. This was his garden.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t know who you are -‘
‘I don’t know who you are either.’
‘I live here,’ said Henry.
‘So do I.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I say “here”, but really what I mean is, I live down there.’
‘In the hole?’
‘Near the hole. The hole is not my doing. The hole was a surprise. There was a great big wumpf this morning and suddenly there it was. Nothing to do with me.’
‘Are you saying you live underground?’
‘Now we’re getting somewhere.’
‘But… but…’
‘Yes?’
Henry looked around. He was worried his neighbours might be watching, but then he remembered that his neighbours were gone.
‘Are you… are you human?’
‘Ha! Not quite. Humanoid, you could say.’
‘But you speak English?’
‘I speak lots of languages. You pick things up here and there.’
Henry heard a faint buzzing and realised the helicopter was coming back.
‘I have to go,’ the creature said.
‘Wait,’ said Henry. ‘What’s your name? If you have a name?’
‘Of course I have a name. But I doubt you’d be able to pronounce it.’
‘Try me.’
‘It’s Franklehosetonzzzjupp.’
‘Franklehosetonzzzjupp?’
‘Almost. Emphasis is on the third syllable. Franklehosetonzzzjupp.’
‘And that’s… that’s a male name?’
The creature looked offended. ‘Yes, it’s a male name. Anyway, how about you?’
‘Henry,’ said Henry.
‘Henry?’
‘Not quite. Emphasis on the first syllable. Henry.’
‘Male?’
‘Yes.’
‘How about if I call you Henrizztozzenlopp?’
‘If I can call you Frank.’
‘Deal.’
The helicopter came nearer. Henry could see it now, a black dot in the sky. He raised his hand to shield his face from the rain. When he looked back, the creature – Frank – was gone.
Just as Henry was about to eat, the landline rang. He wanted to let it ring until it was too exhausted to go on. But it was so insistent, the ringing, he could not bear it any longer.
‘Hello?’
‘Henry? It’s Julia.’
Julia? His boss. ‘Right.’
‘How are things?’
‘They’re… good.’
‘That’s great. Look, I’ll come straight to the point. I know this has been a really tough time for you, and it’s not my intention in any way to rush things, or to put you under any pressure. But we do need to start discussing a timeframe – a structure – for when you come back to work.’
‘Oh,’ said Henry. An image of a desk reared up in his mind. A computer. With a screen full of numbers.
‘It goes without saying, of course, that we’ll give you all the help you need,’ Julia continued. ‘Counselling and so on. If you want it. We can reintegrate you gradually, on your own terms.’
There was a pause then, and Henry didn’t know if he was supposed to say something. He couldn’t think of anything, and was relieved when his boss started speaking again.
‘Maybe what we should do is arrange a time for you to come into the office. Just for an informal chat. Just to see where we’re at. How does that sound?’
‘OK,’ said Henry. ‘OK.’
‘Good. Right. Shall we say Thursday? Ten o’clock?’
Henry looked up and saw Frank standing outside the patio doors.
‘Henry?’ Julia said.
Henry hung up and went to let Frank in.
‘I came to apologise,’ Frank said.
‘What for?’ said Henry.
‘For earlier. For disappearing so abruptly. I didn’t say goodbye. I tend to forget that humans have ways of doing things.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘But I do worry about it. I don’t want us to get off on the wrong foot. Isn’t that what you say? Is that how you put it? Can I come in?’
So many questions, but the answer to all of them appeared to be ‘yes’, so that was what Henry said.
Frank stepped in and looked around. He went to each corner of the room, then to the centre, looking up, down, sideways, picking objects up, putting them down, rubbing his bare feet on the carpet. Henry tried not to notice the mud Frank had brought in with him.
Frank came to a standstill. ‘It’s…’ he began. ‘And the whole of this dwelling is yours?’ Henry nodded.
‘Yours alone?’
Henry nodded again. Frank let out a long whistle.
‘It’s…’ Frank repeated.
‘Yes?’ said Henry.
‘It’s dry,’ said Frank, bending down to run his hands over the carpet. ‘Very dry.’
‘How long have you been… I mean, how long have you been living there, in my garden?’
‘Not long,’ said Frank. ‘Probably. How long is long? We tend not to stay in one place. We move around.’
‘How?’
‘We dig, of course!’ said Frank, grinning. ‘Once you get into the rhythm of it, it goes easily enough. And when you want to rest – when you feel like settling down for a bit – you can just carve out a bit more space and call it home.’
Questions piled into Henry’s mind. ‘But how do you breathe down there?’
‘We make air vents,’ said Frank. ‘You might have seen them – small holes in the ground. You might mistake them for rabbit holes. Actually, the rabbits mistake them for rabbit holes. They’re easily confused.’
‘I was going to ask about that,’ said Henry. ‘About other animals.’
‘The badgers are the worst.’
‘Really?’
‘Very territorial. Absolutely vicious if they catch you near one of their setts.’ He rolled up a sleeve to show a long, jagged scar on his forearm. ‘Once they get hold of you, they don’t let go. Unless you bash their heads in with your shovel.’ He sniffed the air. ‘What’s that smell?’
Henry looked down at the tray on the floor. ‘I was just about to eat. Why don’t you join me?’
Frank knelt, then leaned in further, his nose a few centimetres from the plate. ‘What is it?’
‘Lasagne.’
Frank poked a finger into the top layer of pasta, then scooped up a fistful of the meat and stuffed it into his mouth.
‘Do you want a for-‘ Henry said, but stopped as Frank raised a hand.
Frank stopped chewing and swallowed. ‘It’s good,’ he said. ‘Richer than what I’m used to. But good.’
‘What do you normally eat?’
Frank didn’t answer at first. He kept on scooping up the lasagne, at one point lifting a square of the pasta and nibbling at it.
‘Whatever comes along, usually,’ he said at last. ‘Bugs. Worms. I’m especially partial to beetles. Do you eat many of those?’
‘Can’t say that I do,’ said Henry.
‘You get that satisfying crunch before the juiciness kicks in.’ He paused, then said, ‘You not eating?’
‘I guess not.’
Frank shrugged. He polished off the food, then licked the plate clean, before standing and letting out the loudest and longest belch Henry had ever heard.
‘Taggglezzzippp,’ said Frank once the burp had finally come to an end.
‘Sorry?’
‘It’s difficult to translate,’ said Frank. ‘It’s like when you’re full and satisfied and certain that you’re not going to starve for at least another day. It’s that. Never pass up an opportunity to eat. It’s probably what we troggs think about more than anything else.’
‘Troggs?’
‘That’s us. Troglodytes. Actually it’s not just troggs who think about food all the time. All other animals you come across do too. It’s like the number one topic of conversation. “How’s your stomach?” is a typical trogg greeting. Moles will say, “May your belly be full!” when they take their leave. You humans are lucky if you don’t have to worry about hunger. Mind you, I can see you’re well fed -‘
‘Pardon?’
‘You’ve got the gut of a bear.’
Henry ran a hand over his midriff.
Frank stretched. ‘I bet you’re highly desirable to females.’
Henry couldn’t make out Frank’s stomach. It was hidden beneath the long, shapeless piece of clothing.
‘How long have you been wearing that?’ he asked.
‘This?’ said Frank, pinching at the material. ‘Oh, I don’t recall.’
‘It looks like a piece of human clothing.’
‘It is human clothing. You’d be amazed what you people leave out in your gardens. Just left hanging there for anybody to take. Normally, we don’t wear anything. It can get quite hot under the earth, even in the coldest weather. But we’ve learnt through bitter experience that it pays to cover up when we come to the surface. Now, I must be going -‘
‘But you’ve only just got here,’ said Henry.
Frank made a move towards the patio doors. ‘Busy, busy. May your belly be full!’
With that, he was gone, out into the darkness.
Henry picked up the tray and took it to the kitchen, dumping the plate in the sink. The window was like a mirror. He turned side-on. Yes, if his stomach was anything to go by, his was a fortunate, satisfied life.
Henry had dug holes as a kid. There was a time when the thing he liked to do most in all the world was dig holes. His father had an allotment, a patch of earth in between other patches of earth at the edge of town, and when he was six, seven, Henry loved to go there and help his father dig. He had his own spade, half the size of his father’s, because he himself was half the size of his father, and he loved the give of the ground when he put the edge of the spade into it, loved how when he turned over the soil there were so many things to see – worms and tiny potatoes and little bugs that scurried around and burrowed back down as if they were frightened of the light.
His father always had earth on him. It was wedged under his fingernails, blackening them. It was smeared over his clothes and smudged on his cheeks. It was in the cracks of his lips. When they ate their packed lunches, up there at the allotment, the earth was in their sandwiches and their crisps, and they ate it along with all their other food. It was like seasoning.
‘It’s good for you,’ said his father. ‘A bit of dirt never did anyone any harm. It’s the natural way of things.’
His dad had a favourite quote. It was from a book that Henry had never read, even though he was given it as a birthday present long after the allotment had been abandoned. Henry had promised to read it. He’d wanted to read it, had meant to read it, he really had, but words on the page did not come easily to him in those days. His father was always saying this one thing to him, though, this one thing from the book, and it had stuck in Henry’s mind.
‘The house is still but a sort of porch at the entrance of a burrow.’
Over the next few days, Frank dropped in regularly, usually at meal times. They sat facing each other in matching armchairs, trays on their laps. They swapped stories about how humans and troggs lived their lives, though, Henry reflected, he seemed to be the one asking most of the questions. Frank didn’t appear all that interested in how Henry lived, but maybe humans were more inquisitive.
‘How often do you see other troggs?’ Henry asked one lunchtime. They were eating pizza.
‘Oh, not very often,’ said Frank, drawing out a string of cheese from his mouth. ‘We’re solitary creatures, for the most part.’
‘But how do you… how do you, you know -‘
‘What?’
‘You know – meet other troggs, to, you know -‘
‘You mean to mate? There’s a whole season for that. And our young grow quickly. They’re soon self-sufficient. The minute they can dig, they’re off. And we can get back to doing what we do best – being on our own.’
Henry placed his half-eaten pizza on the floor and licked his fingers.
‘You don’t… miss them?’
Frank frowned. ‘I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at.’
Henry thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘A yearning? An overwhelming desire to see someone? To be with someone you like? Who you love?’
‘No,’ said Frank. He paused, then asked, ‘How many offspring do you have?’
Henry straightened. How best to reply? In the end, he decided to just come out and say it. ‘None,’ he said. ‘We had no off- …children. We couldn’t.’
‘Oh,’ said Frank. He nodded down to Henry’s plate. ‘You finished with that?’
They sat in silence for a while, Frank eating, Henry watching him.
‘But what will you do,’ Henry said eventually, ‘when they come to fill in the hole?’
‘Who?’
‘The people. The diggers.’
‘Diggers dig. They don’t fill in. Do they?’
‘The fillers-in, then. Whatever you want to call them.’ Henry swallowed a gobbet of irritation. Frank could be on the pedantic side, sometimes.
‘I can always move on,’ said Frank.
‘Just like that?’
‘Just like that.’
Frank brushed at his tunic. The material was beginning to wear through.
‘You could have some of my old clothes,’ said Henry. ‘If you want.’
Up in the bedroom, Henry rifled through the hangers in his own wardrobe. When did he last wear that shirt? There was a jacket he couldn’t remember having ever worn. And these suits. He had a sudden memory of doing up a tie. It all seemed so complicated. Tying himself up in knots.
‘Help yourself,’ he said, throwing things onto the bed.
Frank began to pull off his scraggy tunic. His legs were stick-thin and hairless.
‘Woah!’ said Henry.
Frank’s head reappeared through the top. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Are you wearing pants?’ Frank looked puzzled.
‘Pants,’ Henry said again. He pointed. ‘Anything under there?’
‘Oh,’ said Frank. ‘No, no. Like I said, we’re normally naked.’
Henry backed away to the door. ‘I’ll leave you to try things on. Give me a shout when you’re done.’
He retreated downstairs. Outside, a mist had descended. Henry slid open the patio door and was struck by the silence. The birds had gone. The people had gone. In this patch of the earth, there was only him and Frank. He took a step out and stopped. Was the hole getting bigger? Its edge seemed to be nearer to the house than before.
‘How about this?’
Henry turned to see Frank standing behind him, arms outstretched, a long, green dress hanging off him.
‘Why are you wearing that? Take it off.’
‘I like it. Fits me better.’
‘I said, take it off!’
Henry lunged at Frank, but Frank ducked.
‘What are you doing?’ Frank cried, as Henry came at him again, scrambling to get a hold.
‘Take it off! Take it off!’
Henry grabbed a sleeve of the dress. Frank pulled back, but Henry was stronger and Frank couldn’t get away. Henry swung his free hand and connected with Frank’s face. Frank let out a howl of pain, high and anguished, like an animal cry. Blood began to drip from his nose, onto the front of the dress.
Henry swung again. He had no idea where he hit this time. The mist from outside seemed to be in his eyes, and in his head. He could see nothing clearly, and all he could hear was a whimpering. He felt the material bunched in his hand. The dress, the dress. And he thought then of the restaurant and the champagne and how beautiful Emma had looked in this dress, and he tasted the vomit in his mouth, and remembered how he’d been asked to choose something for the body, something she had loved to wear, and he’d thought about the dress, this dress, but didn’t want to give it up, to be parted from it…
His grip weakened and he heard a scrabbling and the patio door slamming shut. He blinked and the mist cleared and he saw that he was alone.
Frank didn’t come the next day. Or the next. Maybe he’d gone, dug himself away from the hole, found a new place to stay a while. Well, good riddance. Henry didn’t want to waste any more time on him. He had other things to do. There was so much to sort out. He’d wallowed long enough. Time to get moving. Definitely time.
He was hungry, but there was nothing in the cupboards. A sentence came into his head. Somebody used to say something – ‘You’ve eaten me out of house and home,’ someone used to say. As if he was in the habit of munching on the walls and the carpets and the beds.
There was no mist now, but the wind bit at his face as he left the house. He walked round a bin that somebody had left on the pavement. He stood in the middle of the road, wondering why he was there.
This wasn’t right. Something wasn’t right. He went back into the house.
It began to snow. Henry watched the flakes hit the window and slide down the glass.
He didn’t mean to think about Frank, but he did.
Je mange, tu manges, il mange…
He stepped out of the patio doors. The snow had begun to settle, and the edge of the hole was rimed with ice, like salt on a cocktail Henry had drunk once, long ago.
‘Frank?’ Henry called. His voice echoed slightly. ‘Frank?’
There was no reply. Probably he’d gone. Or maybe troggs hibernated. How nice that would be, to curl up and sleep until spring. Humans were supposed to be the clever ones, but animals seemed to get more rest.
Henry turned back to the house, and as he did so he thought he saw something moving upstairs. It was nothing more than a glimpse, a shadow flitting across the window, and maybe it was just a trick of the light.
But no – a figure was moving about up there.
The patio door was locked. Henry slapped it and yanked it, but it was still locked. He stepped back and looked up, but saw nothing.
‘Frank!’ he shouted. ‘Are you in there? Stop playing silly beggars!’
For the next few minutes he alternated between yanking at the door and rattling the side gate. It felt like his brain was jiggling around inside his head. The snow was coming down heavily now and it was getting dark. He looked at himself and saw that he was wearing his pyjamas and slippers. If he stayed out here like this he would freeze to death.
He turned towards the hole.
Kneeling at the edge, he looked down at the tunnel. He lay flat on his belly, inching his legs over and feeling about until he found one of the footholds cut into the side. Sturdy enough, he thought. He shuffled backwards, getting a good grip in the earth around the hole’s lip, then easing himself down until he could feel the opening of the tunnel. With the light fading, he could only just see where he was going, but he saw enough to establish that there were tree roots latticing the tunnel’s entrance, which he could grab to swing himself in.
The tunnel was narrow, and he had to stay on all fours, but slowly he made his way along. He felt no panic or claustrophobia, and the air was surprisingly fresh – the air vents Frank had talked about also funnelled the last of the daylight to illuminate his journey.
The tunnel opened into a chamber. Henry couldn’t make out the full dimensions, but he could sit up and stretch. The floor was uneven, but there was a smooth dip at one end, as if it had been carved out. He nestled into it. There was a soft whooshing sound, perhaps a faint echo of the breeze, and it soothed him. It was like being in a big belly, a womb, and for the first time in ages he felt a profound sense of well-being.
When he opened his eyes, there were two shafts of light shining into the burrow from narrow vents in the ceiling. He grimaced as he shifted, his limbs stiff and unyielding at first. The burrow was about eight feet by six, with the ceiling around a foot above his head as he sat up. At the far end, another tunnel led out, further into the earth. The whole place was bare but for two things: a spade propped up against a wall, and an ivory-handled knife, which bore a tiny mark in the handle, a manufacturer’s name, TENNANT & SON. A human name, a human knife. Frank must have stolen it, and the spade, just as he’d stolen clothes. As he’d stolen Henry’s house.
He saw a beetle scurrying across the wall. It was big and black and at first Henry recoiled. But after a while, he relaxed. It couldn’t hurt him. He watched as it went up and down and left and right, then he placed his finger in its path. The beetle detoured, but Henry kept at it, putting his finger in its way until at last the bug climbed on. It hurried along the back of Henry’s hand and was about to disappear up his sleeve. Henry pounced, trapping the beetle between his thumb and forefinger. He held it up, admiring its shiny carapace, watching its legs wriggle. Helpless. So helpless and hopeless. Before he could think any further, he popped it into his mouth. It tickled his tongue, but Henry kept his lips firmly shut. He bit down with a satisfying crunch. The juice smacked against the back of his throat and he choked a little before swallowing.
Not bad. Nutty, rather than bitter or sour. Not bad at all.
Another beetle scuttled across the wall. Henry tried to trap it but it was too quick and disappeared into a narrow crevice. There was something else in there. Henry reached in and pulled out two square photographs. One was old and the colour had faded, and it was hard at first to make out the image. It showed a boy posing with a man and a woman in front of a Christmas tree. They were all wearing cracker hats. The second photo was in better condition and the image was sharper. It too showed a man and a woman with a child, this time standing in front of a post pointing to Land’s End. Henry looked more closely. There were some differences – the man in the photo was taller and had quite a tanned complexion – but Henry had no doubt that the person he was looking at was Frank.
There was no sign of him at first, but when Henry knocked on the patio door, Frank emerged from the dark of the living room. He was still wearing the dress, but Henry felt no anger now. They stood, separated by the pane of glass. It seemed to Henry that Frank was standing straighter than before, taller, as if he were growing into the world above ground.
When it became clear that Frank was not going to open the door, Henry held up the photos. He saw the flicker of recognition in Frank’s face. Henry bent down and propped the photos up against the door frame. When he stood, Frank nodded at him. Henry turned and retreated to the burrow.
A rumbling woke him. It was distant initially, little more than a vibration in the earth, but gradually it came nearer and the whole ground started to shake. It took him a moment to realise that the sound was that of an engine. It was coming from the rear of the garden, where the houses backed on to the park. It occurred to him that they would have to take down the fence, but that wasn’t his problem any more.
He knew his time here was at an end. He felt no qualm, no sadness. That part of his life was over. There was nothing keeping him here, in this patch of the earth. The future would be different, certainly, and full of unknown things, but that was OK. He was free.
Henry picked up the spade. The memory of an allotment surfaced, but it was faint, and gone almost as soon as he thought of it. The past did not feel part of him any longer.
Through the tunnels he went, the ones dug by Frank, until he came to a dead end. This was it. This was where he would start. He had no idea where he would end up, but he began to dig, and kept on digging.