The Blue Front Door

There’s a house on the edge of a green. It’s surrounded by other houses. They look like they were painted by numbers, all alike. Uniformly red bricked, white doored, three windowed houses. One house stands out from the rest though. It wears its blue front door like a badge of honour, setting it aside from all the other houses. Its windows are yawning open trying to catch a breath of air. The air is hot, humid, the hottest on record for thirty years, so they say. The trees stand statue still in the no breeze. The insects flit lazily about trying not to disturb the birds who’d like to eat them if only they could be bothered to move.

The blue front door opens and a football comes flying out of it. It stops in the middle of the green and looks expectantly at the door. It is swiftly followed by a boy who could be six and then a girl who might be ten or maybe eleven. The boy has curly blonde brown hair and is wearing a red tie-dyed tee shirt and denim cut off shorts. He shouts to the girl and she chases him. She has long brown hair and is wearing a tiny summery dress. She has bare feet and laughs as the grass tickles her toes when she runs.

The girl and the boy run for a minute and then flop star fished onto the dry green grass. It scratches the boy’s neck and the backs of his knees but the girl loves it. She could lie here in the hot sun all day. The boy’s insistent chatter stops her. Why is the sky blue? He asks. I don’t know she mumbles. How come the birds don’t fall down? What makes the clouds? Where does the sun go at night? Is the moon hiding? When’s mummy coming home? Why do you get to look after me? Why can’t I look after you? Will you play with me? I’m hungry... Shut up she snaps. She’s too hot now. She gets up and kicks the ball at the boy. He laughs and kicks it back to her. They make goal posts out of piles of grass and take it in turns to try and knock each others heads off with football grenades.

It’s his turn in goal. She places the ball carefully. She turns, takes a step back and then, bang, with all her football playing skills her bare foot connects with the ball at a million miles an hour. He dives. He misses. The ball goes flying into the road. The boy jumps up. He runs. He doesn’t stop to look.

The girl sees it and hears it at the same time. She still doesn’t believe it. The brakes shriek. They sound like a wolf she thinks. She’s never heard a wolf howling before but she’s sure that that’s how it would sound. The thud is an unreal, indescribable noise. It sounds like nothing she knows. The boy lies still in the road. A man stumbles from the car. He is shaking. His hand is shaking as he fumbles with the phone he is holding. His feet are shaking as they try to hold his body in one place. His voice is shaking as he says Ambulance please, there’s been an accident.

Sirens. Voices. Friendly police officers. Mother returning home from work. Snippets of conversation filter in and out of the girls ears. Words float over her head. She feels the tears slide silently down her sunburnt face. As she watches the stretcher being lifted into the back of the ambulance she sees a red droplet splash delicately onto the road. She thinks It should have been me. She thinks I should have known better. She thinks God, if you’re real I promise I’ll be good ‘til I die if you just make this right. She thinks That’s my brother.