Welcome to sleep stories with Steph your go-to podcast.
That offers you a calm and relaxing transition.
Into a great night's sleep.
It is time to relax and fully let go.
There is nothing you need to be doing now.
And know where you need to go.
Close your eyes.
And feel yourself sink into the support beneath you.
And let all the worries of the day go.
Drift away.
This is your time.
And your space.
Take a deep breath in through your nose.
And let it out with a long sigh.
That's it!
There is nothing you need to be doing now.
And know where you need to go.
Happy listening.
Chapter 4 It was Cathy who first suggested Mrs Bantry.
Though I'd been thinking it myself.
It was the morning after Bradley joined us and we were in the shed on our crates.
And the question on the table was the same one as it had been the night before.
What do you do when you found a child alone in a house and you're 11 years old and have no authority whatsoever?
You find someone who does.
Not a parent,
Said Sam immediately,
Because we all knew what that meant.
Grounded.
Confiscated.
The whole thing handed over to adults to make it official and frightening and out of our hands.
No,
Not a parent.
I agreed.
So Mrs Bantry it was.
Even Bradley was sitting slightly apart from the rest of us on an upturned flower pot he'd found outside.
Knotted slowly.
He was trying,
I'll give him that.
He'd been quiet all morning and hadn't told anyone anything,
Which for Bradley Button was practically heroic.
Jack was already standing up.
He loved Mrs Bantry with a wholehearted devotion that had everything to do with her baking and nothing to do with the fact she was a white witch.
Although,
Even he acknowledged that could come in handy every once in a while.
She'll know what to do,
He said with complete confidence.
Then he picked up his jacket.
We all went to Mrs Boundary's house.
It was the mirror image of ours,
Same red bricks,
Same proportions,
But where our house was neat and tidy,
Hers was unapologetically a mess.
The window boxes were spilling over with herbs.
A wind chime made of driftwood and old keys hung next to the front door.
There was a boot scraper in the shape of a hedgehog and beside the front door there was this funny old bell.
A small brass fixture,
Very ordinary looking.
The sort of thing you'd walk past without a second glance.
But when you pressed it,
This funny song came.
Mrs Bantry called that her magic bell and she said simply,
No one else's bell would ever be the same as hers.
We had,
Of course,
Tested rigorously over the years,
Pressing it and running away.
But now we were friends,
So today was not going to be one of those days.
She opened the door in her apron.
That was a good sign.
It was the large one,
The deep blue cotton one with the wide front pocket.
There was flour on it and something dark and sweet smelling and we started to get excited.
She,
On the other hand,
Looked at us the way she always looked at us.
She was expecting us,
But she was busy.
So to hurry up and get along with it.
Mmm,
I sense something in the air.
Yes!
But why are there six of you?
Bradley?
Well,
We've kind of let him join.
I said,
Before anyone else had a chance to say things to the contrary.
He was,
After all,
On probation.
We'll just have to see how it went.
But for now,
They seem to be doing alright.
Like you are then come on in.
We filed into Mrs Bantry's kitchen,
All six of us.
And the smell that met us was so lovely,
Even Sam stopped thinking about electronics for a change.
He even managed to sit still!
That's dedication for you.
It was surprising just how dedicated we all got when we knew a tin of buns was coming out the oven.
But this was even better still.
Blackberry pie made from the very same blackberries we picked only the days before.
She pulled them out and stuck them on the counter and left them to cool on a wire rack.
They were proper ones and all,
Gold and crusted,
With a small decoration pressed into each of the lids.
There was a leaf,
A star,
A moon,
And one with a little funny shape that she said she always made for love.
I think it was supposed to be a clover leaf but I'm not quite sure.
Waving us to the table,
She poured some lemonade from a ceramic jug and sat down with us.
Now tell me,
She said,
What has been going on?
So I did.
I told her everything.
I started with the light in the round window and I ended with the toy gun and the little face pressed against the glass.
Mrs Bantry listened without interrupting,
Which was one of the things I love most about her.
Most adults in our lives interrupted.
But Mrs Bantry listened as though what you were saying was the most important thing in the whole world.
Somehow that made us feel better.
When I finished,
She was quiet for a moment.
How old would you say he was?
She said with a strange look in her dark,
Mesmerising eyes.
I said perhaps eight.
7.
Said Kathy.
And they were alone.
As far as we could see,
I said.
Mrs Bantry nodded,
Then she got up,
Moved to the counter and stood looking at the pies for a moment with her arms folded.
It didn't take a genius to work it out.
There were more of us now than she thought there would be.
And Mrs Bantry always liked to be one step ahead.
OK,
I'll have to just cut them into pieces and you can make do with that,
" she said unapologetically.
Now,
Going back to the funny house,
You are going to need a reason to knock on the door,
She said,
Cutting them with a knife.
A proper one.
Something natural.
She looked at Jack and me and a smile crossed her face.
I guess it was because we're brother and sister.
She lifted the pie with a star on the lid and set it in the table in front of him.
You can take that one,
The pairier.
Tell him you're the children from down the lane,
You were blackberrying along the back wall and you think you might have left something in the garden.
Could you come and have a look?
And could he help you because obviously he knows the garden.
When you offer something to people,
They're always more themselves,
You know.
It might help break the ice.
Kathy was already nodding.
But I was not so sure.
Why would he open the door?
He'd seen this before and he hadn't opened the door yet.
Then again,
He might be hungry.
If he was in there by himself,
A nice blackberry pie would go a long way to making him feel better.
See what you can see,
Said Mrs Bantry after we'd all had a big chat about it round the table.
Then she looked at each of us in turn.
Bradley straightened up slightly at this.
He'd been very still throughout the whole thing.
I noticed he was looking at the pies with an expression that was hard to read.
Maybe this was the early stages of a decision.
What do I do in all this then?
He said suddenly.
Mrs Bantry regarded Bradley for a while,
She'd known him his whole life,
And she knew what he was.
But she knew what he could be if only he was given the chance.
She decided something too.
You can stay where Kathy puts you,
She said,
And you can watch.
You're good at watching,
Bradley.
This time.
You could be the lookout.
Bradley seemed to like the idea of that.
And I must say,
I didn't mind it either.
He always was a bit of a nosy parker.
And this way,
Us original five got to stick together.
After all,
It was us who made the discovery,
Not him.
We went to the big house that afternoon.
The front of it faced a narrow lane on the other side of the allotment wall.
Each one of those old service lanes that towns like Mountford grew without meaning to.
They were too thin for proper traffic.
Kind of half forgotten.
We approached from this side anyway and it felt strange,
Almost formal,
Because we were coming at the house through the front gate like visitors rather than scrambling over the back wall like the trespassers we actually were.
The garden at the front of the house was worse than the back.
A cracked path led to the front door,
Through which had once been beds of some kind,
But they had all gone to seed.
The gate hung at an angle and when Elliot pushed it we let him go to the front because he was feeling really pleased with himself that he managed to get rid of his brother.
It kind of made a whining sound.
The path was damp and dark under the overgrowth of an old apple tree.
Jack carried the pie in both hands all the time,
As careful and level as a surveyor's instrument.
I,
Meanwhile,
Had my notebook in my bag.
We'd agreed on our story three times over and now we were ready.
Kathy and Elliot and Sam disappeared round the side of the house through a gap in the hedge.
Bradley was a little way down the lane,
Silent for once and focused.
Meanwhile,
Jack and I walked up the path.
I knocked.
There was nothing.
I knocked again.
Still nothing.
Every second we waited seemed like a second too long.
What were we doing here anyway?
This was none of our business,
Was it?
We belonged on the other side,
On the cheap side of the lane where the smaller houses were.
Not at this front door of this massive house that God knows who lived in and God knows why.
Then all at once the door opened.
It was a man.
A very tall man.
Tall and broad across the shoulders with a face that had been weathered by a considerable amount of living.
Deep lines ran from his nose to his mouth.
He had heavy grey eyebrows.
His eyes were dark and sharp and took us both in at once with an expression that was not really a kind one.
He was staring at us.
He wasn't frightened or surprised,
Just staring with those wide serious eyes.
As if people knocked on this door every day and he was in the habit of watching to see what came of it.
Then he waited.
I had to speak.
I couldn't let it go.
I said,
I'm Chloe and this is my brother Jack.
We live down the lane.
We've been picking blackberries along your back wall and we think we might have left our bucket in your garden.
We're terribly sorry to bother you.
And we wondered if we might possibly.
.
.
I had so much more that I wanted to say,
Loads more in fact,
I planned it all out carefully,
But suddenly Jack,
Who'd been holding the pie with extraordinary concentration this whole time,
Stepped forward and held it out and said,
We brought you this.
Mrs Bantry made it.
She lives in the lane and she makes them every year with the blackberries.
And it's got a star on it.
The man looked down at the pie.
But still,
Nothing seemed to happen to his face.
It was like watching ice trying to become water but refusing.
I didn't know what to do.
I wanted to run.
I wanted to run away as fast as we could.
But we knew there was a little boy in there somewhere and it looked like he needed help.
You better come in.
Shed the Man.
Jack looked at me and I looked at Jack.
We were really unsure what we were doing.
Then suddenly we heard something moving inside.
If this little kid needed our help,
We were the only ones that were going to do it.
Stepping inside cautiously,
I insisted we leave the front door open.
Jack was a bit too embarrassed,
But I had to say something.
We had to protect ourselves,
Didn't we?
Then he took us into the kitchen.
It was a large scrubbed pine affair with mismatched chairs,
An old table and a general atmosphere of mess.
That's the only way I can put it.
He was cluttered.
It had been used hard for years and there were tins stacked around,
A drying rack of small clothes,
A pair of small boots by the back door recently cleaned.
Well,
That was something,
I thought.
If this little boy was really in trouble,
No one would have bothered to clean his boots.
I saw on the counter there was a loaf of bread at the end and there was a little bit of strawberry jam.
But everything around us was in need of attention.
That was the only kind way I can put it.
The hallway runoff was fraying at the edges,
The paintwork had gone grey,
There were damp patches along the lower walls no one had got round to addressing.
And the ceiling of the kitchen had a stain spreading from the corner that suggested some kind of flood.
Jack looked very uncomfortable and I must say I shared his opinion.
But before we had a chance to change our mind and run away,
There appeared the little boy.
He came in,
Smiled faintly.
And stood huddled in the corner.
As though we were the weirdest people he had ever seen.
