What Lives In The Storeroom
The next Saturday, the list had two tins of sardines.
Theo bought them. He walked the long path. He delivered the bag to Mr Eichmann.
This time, Theo did not say goodbye and walk straight home. He pretended to leave, walked round the side of the lighthouse, and crouched behind the low stone wall that ringed the old garden.
He waited.
Mr Eichmann came out of the cottage about fifteen minutes later. He was carrying a small dish. The dish, Theo could see clearly even from the wall, had a tin of sardines emptied into it.
Mr Eichmann walked, very slowly because his knees were not what they had been, around to the back of the storeroom. He set the dish down by the storeroom door. He waited.
Theo held his breath.
After a moment, the storeroom door — which was always closed but, Theo now noticed, had a small flap cut into the bottom — opened just slightly. A nose came out. Then a head. Then a small, very thin animal.
It was a fox.
A fox with one back leg held up funny — a leg that had clearly been hurt. The fox looked around carefully. It saw Mr Eichmann. It did not run. It crept forward and began to eat the sardines.
Mr Eichmann sat down on a crate, very gently, and watched it eat.
Theo realised, with a hot rush of understanding, that Mr Eichmann had been keeping a fox.
Theo also realised that he had been crouched behind the wall for ten minutes. His knees were aching. He