The Woman Who Walked Into Doors [antikvár]

I was told by a Guard who came to the door. He wasn't one I'd seen before, one of the usual ones. He was only a yoimg fella, skirmy and with raw spots all over his neck. —^Missis Spencer? He couldn't have been more than twenty. He looked miserable. —^Missis Spencer? I knew before he spoke. It clicked inside me when I opened the door. (For years opening that door scared the life out of me. I hated it; it terrified me. We had this screeching bell like an alarm that shook the walls when anyone rang it. It lifted me off the floor, the kids started bawling; it was fiickin' dreadful. You were caught, snared, caught in the act. You looked aroxmd to hide whatever you'd been caught with, things that Charlo had left in the hall, things he'd robbed and left there. He changed the bell, after I chewed his ear and nearly wet myself five or six times a day. Nicola, my oldest, wouldn't come round the back to get into the house. She wanted to come through the front door; it was more grown up. She rang the bell ten times a minute. —Forgot me jacket. —Forgot me money. —Don't like these jeans on me. I hit her — she was thirteen, or twelve, much too old to be smacked — the hundredth time she rang the bell 1