Soul Music

working clocks in the house, except the special one in the hall. Any others got depressed and stopped, or unwound themselves all in one go.
    Her room looked as though someone had moved out yesterday. There were hairbrushes on the dressing table, and a few odds and ends of makeup. There was even a dressing gown on the back of the door. It had a rabbit on the pocket. The cozy effect would have been improved if it hadn’t been a skeletal one.
    She had a rummage through the drawers. This must have been her mother’s room. There was a lot of pink. Susan had nothing against pink in moderation, but this wasn’t it; she put on her old school dress.
    The important thing, she decided, was to stay calm. There was always a logical explanation for everything, even if you had to make it up.
    SQEAUFF.
    The Death of Rats landed on the dressing table, claws scrabbling for a purchase. He removed the tiny scythe from his jaws.
    “I think,” said Susan carefully, “that I would like to go home now, thank you.”
    The little rat nodded, and leapt.
    It landed on the edge of the pink carpet and scurried away across the dark floor beyond.
    When Susan stepped off the carpet the rat stopped and looked around in approval. Once again, she felt she’d passed some sort of test.
    She followed it out into the hall and then into the smoky cavern of the kitchen. Albert was bent over the stove.
    “’Morning,” he said, out of habit rather than any acknowledgment of the time of day. “You want fried bread with your sausages? There’s porridge to follow.”
    Susan looked at the mess sizzling in the huge frying pan. It wasn’t a sight to be seen on an empty stomach, although it could probably cause one. Albert could make an egg wish it had never been laid.
    “Haven’t you got any muesli?” she said.
    “Is that some kind of sausage?” said Albert suspiciously.
    “It’s nuts and grains.”
    “Any fat in it?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “How’re you suppose to fry it, then?”
    “You don’t fry it.”
    “You call that breakfast ?”
    “It doesn’t have to be fried to be breakfast,” said Susan. “I mean, you mentioned porridge, and you don’t fry porridge—”
    “Who says?”
    “A boiled egg, then?”
    “Hah, boiling’s no good, it don’t kill off all the germs.”
    “BOIL ME AN EGG, ALBERT.”
    As the echoes bounced and died away, Susan wondered where the voice had came from.
    Albert’s ladle tinkled on the tiles.
    “Please?” said Susan.
    “You did the voice,” said Albert.
    “Don’t bother about the egg,” said Susan. The voice had made her jaw ache. It worried her even more than it worried Albert. After all, it was her mouth. “I want to go home!”
    “You are home,” said Albert.
    “This place? This isn’t my home!”
    “Yeah? What’s the inscription on the big clock?”
    “‘Too Late,’” said Susan promptly.
    “Where are the beehives?”
    “In the orchard.”
    “How many plates’ve we got?”
    “Seven—” Susan shut her mouth firmly.
    “See? It’s home to part of you,” said Albert.
    “Look…Albert,” said Susan, trying sweet reason in case it worked any better this time round, “maybe there is…someone…sort of…in charge of things but I’m really no one special…I mean…”
    “Yeah? How come the horse knows you?”
    “Yes, but I really am just a normal girl—”
    “Normal girls didn’t get a My Little Binky set on their third birthday!” snapped Albert. “Your dad took it away. The Master was very upset about that. He was trying .”
    “I mean I’m an ordinary kid!”
    “Listen, ordinary kids get a xylophone. They don’t just ask their granddad to take his shirt off!”
    “I mean I can’t help it! That’s not my fault! It’s not fair!”
    “Really? Oh, why didn’t you say?” said Albert sourly. “That cuts a lot of thin ice, that does. I should just go out now, if I was you, and tell the universe that it’s not fair. I bet it’ll say, oh, all right then, sorry you’ve been troubled, you’re let off.”
    “That’s sarcasm! You can’t talk to me like that! You’re just a servant!”
    “That’s right. And so are you. So I should get started, if I was you. The Rat’ll help. He mainly does rats, but the principle’s the same.”
    Susan sat with her mouth open.
    “I’m going outside,” she snapped.
    “I ain’t stopping you.”
    Susan stormed out through the back door, across the enormous expanses of the outer room, past the grindstone in