The Twelve Chimes of Maligna Manor

The Big School Rules

Ben had been awake for a few hours but was too nervous to knock on Sara's door. It was only four in the morning, and he wouldn't wake her up needlessly. He would just have to spend some time on his own. There had been a time when Ben would have delighted in that. But a lot had changed since his dad died.

Ben just felt alone, even with Sara. Things had never been easy in their house, but they had been stable. He knew where he was and had some idea of what was to come. But now he felt like a castaway left adrift in the world's smallest lifeboat. He had no idea where he would end up, but wherever it was, it wasn't home.

At Least Sara was in that lifeboat with him. She had no more power to help their situation than he had, but a problem shared was a problem halved as someone somewhere had said. Ben wasn't sure if he could have coped without her.

Their dad's death must have been as much a surprise for him as it was for them because he had never created a formal will. This had left Ben and Sara in legal limbo for over a month, where no one was quite sure what to do with them. There was their mum, but no one seemed to know where she was. Ben had entertained a fantasy of her rushing into the care home shouting their names. They would rush down, and they would hug, and she would be crying and saying how sorry she was for leaving, but she would stay this time. She would promise, and she would keep it.

If their mum had ever heard the news, then she had never called. Ben had thought they would just have to stay in the care home forever or wait until a stranger took pity on them. Sara had been upset when she had heard about Tia Maggie trying to get custody of them, but Ben was overjoyed.

True Tia Maggie was as good as a stranger to them, but she was family. There was something there to take hold of. It was alright for Sara to say she would rather stay in care. She would be free to leave when she turned sixteen in the summer. Ben would be stuck there for at least another five years and worse if Sara left, he would have no one.

True their dad hadn't liked Tia Maggie, but then he hadn't really liked anyone in the end. She was trying, and Ben liked that. It had been a long time since Ben had felt wanted.

He had to admit though that now he was here he felt a little weird. He had never been particularly close to his dad. Sara would talk about times when he had taken her places like the Deep, the cinema or even, once, Pleasure Island. The man Sara described had never been Ben's dad. Ben's dad had never really been there. He was always just somewhere else. He would say words in Ben's general direction, and Ben would reply, but no talking ever took place. It was like the two were separated by stained glass. All Ben ever saw was a static image with vague shadows of something real beneath.

It was strange then to be sat in his dad's old bedroom. He looked at the walls and saw posters of bands and films that his dad must have loved at some point. He saw the books still in the bookcase. Had his dad ever liked any of these or had they just been bad Christmas gifts?

There were aircraft models strung up on the ceiling. Spitfires and hurricanes suspended in imagined flight. Ben tried to picture a young boy spending his Saturday meticulously glueing them together piece by piece and the pride he must have felt when he finally held the complete model in his hands.

As Ben sat pondering all that surrounded him, he began to hear sounds coming from the living room. These were only slight sounds of moving chairs and shuffling feet, and their origin was no great mystery.

Sara hadn't left her room and, whilst Ben hadn't heard Tia Maggie leave hers, who else could it have been? Ben probably spent a good half hour debating whether or not he should go downstairs.

Would Tia Maggie be annoyed that he wasn't asleep? Mum had always hated it when she found Ben wandering the flat in the dark and even after she had left, Ben felt a residual fear of disapproval whenever he struggled to sleep.