Philippa waited until the man was gone from the street. She walked backwards from the window and even though she bumped into a table on her way to the kitchen and even though she was alone she still stood still at the noise she had made and continued to stare at the front door, her eyes darting to the window. When she reached the kitchen, she opened a small side door and crouched to get in the small space. She moved a small slide out of the way and behind it a small landing in front of a staircase. She squeezed herself through and moved as silently as she could through the old creaky building. The stair opened up to a catwalk and the backs of other small doors that she knew had long been sealed on the occupants' side. She rapped on one of the doors and made her way through without waiting for an answer. She found herself in a cozy carpeted room all dark burgundy and light wood and light streaming into the attic room. She padded through the room reflexively pulling a cobweb out of her way even though the path had been clear and there were no spiders that made their way there. She cleaned the way herself. She maintained the way herself. She felt at home in the old woman's house and made a small call so as not to startle her. They had agreed the way would be used for emergencies.
The old woman making tea in her own kitchen stood still to listen. The girl. She pulled out another teacup. She knew the house sounds before the door opened upstairs. She knew the difference between a cat and something several times its side. When Philippa cleaned she was less careful and quiet but Robin didn't think it necessary to tell the girl that. She had lived here long enough to know also, that the other tenants would chalk the noise up to old house sounds like the marbles in the pipes, the creaking, the yawning in the walls from a tired frame. She didn't hear the faint click of the door or Philippa's footsteps but a small whistle as if from a bird. A small, high-pitched, faint tremolo. By the time the girl started descending the carpeted stairs the old woman was passing with a teacup looking up curious.
"I thought I might have heard a nightingale," She said chuckling. "Tea?"
"Sorry," the girl said. "I didn't want to startle you,"
She wasn't really a girl the old woman observed. But then the old woman wasn't really old, she thought. The landlady knew someone might come for Philippa again. When she rented the flat, Robin sensing she had one last question, opened her small, warm landlady face and asked patiently if there was anything else Philippa would be needing to let the flat. "Doors", the girl had said unflinching. It had startled the landlady. Philippa would have said it eventually, she had had too. She could fake the length of a stay, she thought but, Robin had let rooms and flats and houses her entire life. She knew what a woman running away looked like. She knew a patchwork renter's history when she saw one. She called the other references. All on time but broke every lease. Every single one of them and over such a short period of time. The next time Philippa came back, Robin asked and the woman told her. Not everything she was sure but it took her back all the same. It startled her, the woman's candor and resolve and that she could articulate what the problem was. Either she didn't recognize how disarming it was or didn't care or was sick.
"The doors. What did you mean, doors?" Robin asked.
"To get out of. Like a door," Philippa replied flatly.
Robin could sense the woman's sarcasm even as she told the landlady, not in so many words, that she needed to run away but something about Philippa reminded Robin of a younger version of herself or rather, the person she had always imagined she could become: clever and unafraid.
Anyways, Robin had always been told that crazy people didn't have a sense of humor so she let Philippa the flat. The woman stayed and when Robin was certain, she showed Philippa the path on her move-in date.
"All the others were bricked up. You can check if you like but you'll see once you get inside. This flat and mine were left."
Robin started talking about her life as a little girl. Her parents had acquired a flat for sale in those days which was unheard of at the time. In England? Her mother worked at the resorts and knew that the white man selling it was trying to drive down housing prices when other Jamaicans moved in. Robin's mother didn't care and neither did her father and so they purchased the flat that Philippa would let and then the one next to it and the next until they owned the entire building. The white man who sold it could then buy the buildings next to it when the property value sank and in less than a generation, the property value would go back up and he could resell those same buildings for an unreal sum. Philippa listened impassive. Her face still. The landlady assumed she was boring the woman and stopped mid-sentence.
"Go on," Philippa said.
"Oh, well, then they…" Robin had lost her train of thought.
"The London flat". Philippa said.
"Well," the landlady went on tentative, looking to the floor and Philippa for reassurance and instead was met with her stillness. Robin thought she droned on as she got to how her parents acquired so many more places. Rented out just for blacks originally but then someone kicked up a fuss as if anyone else but the islanders had been knocking down the doors and her parents had barred anyone for renting in the first place. Robin wrang her hands together. Philippa's expression didn't change. It was made all the stranger by the men moving the woman's furniture in. They were standing in the kitchen making a soft commotion all around. When one would ask Philippa a question she would answer without changing expression directing them through a home she'd never been in as if she had lived there the entire time. That she was listening to everything around her at once and had divined the very essence of the flat and the people in it at the time. Robin felt as if she had bored the woman long enough and that Philippa would rather unpack in her stoic peace and yet when the landlady paused in a strange place or made to leave Philippa urged her on.
It made the landlady nervous and she found it off-putting but reminded herself that Philippa was running away after all. Or maybe not. It crossed Robin's mind that Philippa might be the problem in whatever story she did not tell the landlady but brushed the thought aside. She continued her story getting to the part where she was finally old enough to have her own place.
"Well anyway, my parents moved to live where my flat is now and I lived here." Philippa smiled and nodded.
The woman nodded. Philippa had heard this story somewhere before, that's how the she acted. Maybe the old woman had told it already but when? Maybe she was getting old. They were sitting in silence now. The movers getting things placed upstairs. The sound of the heavy feet something the landlady could focus on. She smiled at Philippa less assured. Robin felt like somewhere a clock was ticking at an unnaturally high volume.
"When they leave, the door?"
"Yes!" the landlady said too cheerful given the quietness that sat in front of Philippa's question. Robin was just thankful to have a reason to make a noise, some evidence that she was still alive and hadn't slipped into death and that the remainder of eternity wasn't just sitting here in silence forever.
This felt very familiar. Robin had a tenant not unlike this one. Several. As she got older, she managed her parents' properties and met many tenants off their rocker. This one paid in coins or tried to barter in bread knuckles, this one hit his wife, this one cooked cat meat said this nosy neighbor whose cat was missing but also who cooked food that smelled like it might have been cat meat... Robin had heard it all, seen it all, fixed so much of it and it shocked so many people to learn that this small woman managed the properties and even owned some of her own. The old woman sighed.
"I'll be back later to show you though I cant go in myself anymore." she smiled as much to herself as to Philippa. I am old. This is a little girl, Robin thought. The Philippa nodded and ushered Robin to the front door.
"Until then," said Philippa who stood at the door as if she would shut it even as the movers brought in the remainder of her things.
When the landlady looked behind her Philippa was gone from the doorway. Robin looked at the expanse of the flat and walked to her own from the outside. When she got back she padded up the stairs. Everything still there she snorted. Still the same place, the same warmth, the same smell. She inhaled deeply and went upstairs, opened the door to the attic upstairs and checked the door. Still closed. She slowly crouched down and opened the door peering in and looked both ways. Same as ever. A little dusty but overall ok. She smoothed a cobweb out of her hair as she went back into the room. Robin sat on the floor cross legged. Since she wasn't thinking about it, she got up much smoother than she got on the floor in the first place. She straightened her skirt with a mission on her mind. She went to the drawer and pulled out a set of keys of the many, went back to the little door and locked it for the first time in a very long time. She would visit the girl tomorrow and let her know about the door in her kitchen. She would let her know about the path to her flat and her door and listen and decide and compose herself before hand. She would be prepared and not look like a little, old fool next time. Would she tell Philippa about the war years, the old, old war years when they built flats like this so that neighbors could hide in the walls and- no. Robin was old but, also knew that, for all those years, some people were younger but had lived more, so to speak. She would leave her encyclopedic knowledge of crawl spaces and wars and architecture and property law out of it. And they would go from there.
***
Robin went to the kitchen to grab the second cup of tea and went upstairs to sit in the small attic room with the young woman. She set the teacup on the table and stirred her own, sipping quietly. By now she was used to this girl and her quietness.
"My friend has died," Said Philippa in the same even tone she used when she first met the landlady.
The old woman's heart lurched. It wasn't fair but it was life. Young people died young too.
"I knew but someone just came with the news. This was the emergency." Philippa drew in deep measured breaths into her nose before folding over.
If Robin hadn't been that old she might not have been able to tell that Philippa was crying at all. When Philippa finally looked up at the ceiling wiping her eyes, the only evidence that she had been crying were her red eyes and sniffling her voice remained strangely even, even monotone. Of course her friend's death was bad but what did that mean she already knew? Robin wondered. Of course, that wasn't the emergency. The landlady asked Philippa is she was safe. Philippa breathed and said nothing but they both knew she heard. When the landlady was about to set the teacup down, Philippa said, yes, she thought so.
"I think, maybe, I might be now. Maybe I was never in danger to begin with." She turned to look at the window over her landlady's shoulder and smiled in a far off absentminded way. "Thank you." said Philippa.
They made their way down the stairs in Robin's home, Philippa carrying a cup of tea she hadn't sipped from and left it in the kitchen. Robin walked her to the front of the door. Philippa looked both ways as she crossed the street and it was now the landlady who stared out of her window. The woman did not ever speak to her more than fifteen minutes ever again. For Robin's part, how would she have known that Philippa had locked the door on her side again? For Philippa's part she crossed the street thankful that someone had asked her a question she was afraid to ask herself and that she answered and believed what she had said. Maybe she had never been in danger at all. In any case she no longer believed she was now.