House of Doors by Chaz Brenchley Page A

all smell the same when they’re wet. That was Major Dorian’s I found you cuddling up to, in the cloakroom there.’
    Oh, dear God. Was it? She’d seen him wearing it, of course, earlier. At the sing-song. And, yes, of course he used bay rum. She’d smelled it on him at their first encounter – but she smelled it on everyone these days. Every man, as Judith said. And accused them all, silently, for not being Peter.
    No surprise, that it had been that particular man’s overcoat that ensnared her. Of course she was going to blame him, even if he wasn’t actually occupying it at the time. It was his fault that she was here, after all. So everything that happened to her here, that must be his fault too. By definition. Yes.
    Whatever she made happen, though, now that she had come here, that would be her own responsibility. She didn’t need to be feeble, always pushed about by men. She could make her own decisions. Chase her own bullet.
    Yes.
    Choose her own friends, that too.
    She sat with Judith on her bed there and sipped cocoa so hot it burned her lips, and talked a little about Morwood – shop talk, the house and how it worked as a hospital, Matron and how she kept it working – and a lot about childhood, friendship, discovery. Not at all about Peter, nor whatever secret adult sorrow Judith cherished, that had laid a path to draw her here. There would be time enough for that. Six months. That was time enough for anything.
    And so goodnight, the slightly foolish formalities of parting with a near stranger when you’re only going two doors down; and one last gift as she was leaving.
    â€˜You’ll need this until you learn your way around, learn where the switches are and how to find your way in the dark, this place is a maze.’
    A heavy torch that Ruth took under protest and with gratitude. She peeled off her clothes and sank into a bed that only seemed this soft because she was this tired, and so to sleep.
    And so to wake, sometime in the dark. She couldn’t remember where she had put her watch and wouldn’t be able to read it anyway, it wasn’t luminous, and it didn’t really matter anyway, what the time might be. What mattered was that she wasn’t sleepy, not at all. Of course not, after that long nap last afternoon. Her inner clock was out of all kilter.
    Well, she was used to that. The regular sleeping patterns of her young life had been broken long ago. Night shifts and raids and anxiety and grief had all contributed in their turn. She had strategies for dealing with wakefulness, but they all depended on her being at home or else at work, where there was always something that needed doing.
    Here, well. One thing she knew, that there was no point lying in bed and hoping to sleep again. Up, then. A robe across her shoulders, because the days might be warm but the nights apparently were chilly this far north, this far into the year. Last night she had shivered on Darlington station and blamed the cold stare of the stars. Tonight she shivered in her own room under a strange roof, and went to stare out of the window.
    Something monstrous crawled across the sky, a great foreboding. More like spiderweb than smoke, she could still glimpse stars through the strands of it and it had purpose, she thought, there was a will behind it somewhere.
    And of course it was only cloud-shadow, wisps of cloud on the wind, utterly meaningless. Meaningless and gone now. She could look down into the courtyard and see quite clearly, by brilliant starlight quite uninterrupted in its fall.
    She could see men moving, shadows themselves, figures of darkness drifting silently towards this wing of the house. She might have seen something mystical in them too, her mind was so uncertain and they seemed so unearthly – except that they moved like broken ghosts, hints of damage that was all too physical and real. It was almost comforting that she could read their hurts at