The blue carpet stops at a doorway.
You step over a strip of worn brass. There are floorboards beneath your feet now, and walls close enough to touch. Behind you, a voice is still speaking. You can no longer make out the announcement.
Ahead, someone laughs in another room.
You are in a house.
You recognise parts of it. The turn in the stairs. A chair with one arm worn smooth. You put your hand on the back of it, trying to remember where it used to stand.
You thought the fire had taken this.
There is someone you need to find. You have been carrying a warning for so long that you can no longer remember its exact words. But here are the rooms, still standing, and people moving between them. You need to tell someone what can happen.
You call out.
A conversation pauses beyond the wall, then begins again.
You follow it into a room full of people. Some of the voices are familiar. You wait for a face to turn towards you, for someone to recognise how long you have been gone.
You ask about the person you are looking for.
One of them glances towards the stairs. You turn before they can say anything more.
Upstairs, the doors are close together. You open one, then another. There are beds, windows, cups left on tables. In each room, something makes you think you have only just missed them.
At the end of the passage, you find a door with a small chip in the paint. You have already opened this one.
You open it again.
By the next doorway, you are running.
Your legs feel stronger than they should. You take the stairs several at a time, catch the banister and turn without slowing. Your footsteps carry through the house. Anyone here must be able to hear you now.
You are angry. You can feel it in your teeth, in the heat across your face. You call out again and your voice breaks halfway through.
You wipe your face with your sleeve. It comes away wet.
The next door opens easily.
They are sitting beside a window.
You stop so quickly that your hand catches the frame. For a moment, all you can hear is your breathing.
You have found them.
You begin to explain. About the fire, the distance, how long you have been trying to get here. The words come out in the wrong order. You start again.
They listen. Their hands rest loosely in their lap.
You wait for them to stand.
“The photographs have been shown,” they say. “She knows.”
You think of everything outside the frame. You begin to explain, then stop. They are already settling back into the chair.
There is a ledger on the table beside them. You hadn’t noticed it before. Their hand rests on its closed cover.
You know what you would put in it. The things you carried. The times you went back. You start arranging them in your mind, looking for something that would make the account come out differently.
Your hand moves towards the table.
But the ledger isn’t yours.
They turn back towards the window. Whatever is written there has been enough for them to put it down.
You are still worried about what might happen to them. After all the walking, after finding this room, you would still run through the house if they called.
You stand in the doorway with your hand half raised. There is nothing you need to add to the book that will change that.
You let your hand fall to your side. It trembles against your leg.