A woman went missing from Marchese Parade in the eighties. She’d grabbed breakfast, coffee and a bacon sandwich from one of the café’s, paid with a five pound note and vanished from the face of the earth. Despite a lengthy police investigation, they never found her. It made national news. Eventually, people forgot her, and then they forgot Marchese Parade too.
“She was unlucky,” Kate’s mother said, back when her faculties were intact. “Sometimes dreadful things happen for no good reason.”
Visible across the field, Marchese Parade was black and angular and deserted. The once thriving mall was a mausoleum with a carpark full of weeds and discarded rubbish. Kate pulled the coat tight around her neck, for all the good it did; the downpour was heavy and persistent. She paused under a streetlight and removed a sheet of notepaper from her pocket. The address, written in her own looping cursive, was beginning to smudge. Luckily for her, the words running down the paper were also signposted on the corner ahead.
She turned onto a dead-end street, her destination the last property on the right. She couldn’t get there quick enough, rain now bouncing knee-high off the pavement. The streetlights were further apart here and struggled to penetrate the dark. Garden walls flanked the road on both sides with gaps where gates used to be. Disused paths led to mountains of rubble. A digger sat amongst them; its claw bent like an arthritic hand.
Four stories tall and constructed from white stone, Irwell Bank was at the end of the street, the last property standing. Kate opened the gate and walked up the footpath. A gas lamp flickered above the entrance, shadows waltzing over the flower beds and across the lawn. The door was ajar, as it often was in these places. Visitors always welcome.
The deluge doubled its efforts, falling in unbroken lines. Fat droplets soaked Kate’s hair and ran into her eyes. Wiping them away, she took a final look at the condemned street and the silhouette of Marchese Parade, pushed the door open and stepped inside.
