sign was still up, the village had given up.
The third: he started to walk past the front of number 14 every morning on his way to school, and every afternoon on his way home. He looked, very carefully, at the front door. The post-flap. The doorstep. The path. The dustbin at the side.
After two weeks, Pim had — written in his small notebook — three small observations:
One: the front doorstep is — twice — slightly cleaner than I would expect for an empty house. Somebody is, possibly, brushing it.
Two: there is, twice this week, a faint smell of bread coming from somewhere near the back of number 14 in the early morning. I do not know whose. The neighbours on either side do not, normally, bake bread.
Three: the dustbin at the side of the house, which has been empty for two years, has — last Friday — had a single small bag in it. The bag was tied. I did not, of course, look in it.
Somebody was living in number 14.
Pim was thirteen. He had to decide what to do.
🤖 The author declared this story as written with the help of AI.