Chapter 28: The Teacher's Door

Rook was reading to the lane when they turned into it. He had a carrying voice and he aimed it at the upper windows as much as at the door. "To take the roll of the former Lower School as property in dispute, wherever found." "Wherever found, Mrs Wick. That includes your dresser." Slate Lane ran downhill between narrow stone houses, and the gutters ran with last night's rain and coal ash. Number nine stood halfway down, an oak door in a rubble jamb, the step scoured white. Two bailiffs and two branch men in grey coats stood on the cobbles around a squared log laid in its rope sling, the iron cap on its nose still wet. Neighbours leaned from windows on both sides. A woman held a child on a sill. A man with a pipe had stopped smoking it. Tamsin had spent two days on the school…