My First Colouring Book Read Online Free

garden gate was half on, half off. I could see nothing unusual about it – the house was typical of many dozens like it in the area. Just a bit run down.
    But Jonathan was absorbed by it. Been to that house on the left many times, bloke had a stroke three years ago, he said in a conspiratorial don’t-tell-anyone-else sort of voice. I’ve also been to the house on the right a couple of times, but I’ve never seen a single movement in the middle house. And yet I get the feeling there’s someone in there… after all, the holiday homes tend to be well looked after.
    Perhaps someone died and there’s no heir, I said. You get that sometimes – houses left to rot because nobody owns them and no-one knows where the deeds are.
    And so we left it. He took me home and we said farewell. That was that, I thought. A bit of seasonal madness, really. My car was a write-off and I’m on the buses for a while, since I’ve got my OAP pass and there’s no real need for a car of my own any more – in fact I’m thinking of doing without one now. Do my bit for the planet, now I’ve done my bit to wreck it.
    So I pass that house of Jonathan’s twice a week on the bus, on my way to Llandudno – I meet an old friend there for a chat and a pint, and if the weather’s fine we go for a walk along the prom. Usual thing – we’re old work friends so we chew the cud and keep each other up to date on ex-colleagues heading for the departure lounge. Many have already left for the world’s only remaining place without a Rough Guide. As I pass that house of Jonathan’s on the bus I take a good look at it. I even started carrying a camera so I could record any movement; as the bus approached the trio of houses I’d prime my digital Fujifilm and take a snap, in case there had been any changes.
    Until a few weeks ago I’d collected 134 pictures of the house, all stored in a separate folder on my computer. A couple are blurred and a few are mottled with raindrops on the bus window but they all tell the same story – I never saw anything or anybody in the proximity of that house. Zilch. Until recently. Then, as I passed one day, I swung the camera to the window and took a picture which instantly told a story. I’ve studied it countless times. Picture 135 is different from the rest. It has a human figure in it, walking up the path, carrying two plastic carrier bags. Spar bags with six-pack and bottle shapes – a very old image in my mind. Some of my friends have been alkies; this was a morning trip for some recovery juice.
    As the days passed by I began to wonder: should I tell Jonathan? Big, big question. After all it was his house – his mystery. On the other hand I was left asking myself: would I want to know about my house if he saw someone moving there ? Would I want my illusions shattered by a standard digital photo sent by email, showing Mr and Mrs Normal and their two normal children in front of my lovely abnormal house? Or a lonely man walking up a garden path, feeling like death warmed up, convulsed with shame and morning sickness?
    I chewed on this question until it was a mushy pulp. I worried it like a puppy with a slipper, I didn’t let it out of my sight for an hour, day or night. I was so restless at night the wife made me sleep in the spare room. So I hung Picture 135 on the wall in there. She thought I was overheating in the upstairs department. It was like a scene from Blow-Up with David Hemmings looking at that ‘murder in the park’ photo over and over again. I didn’t tell Jonathan or anyone else about the picture. Perhaps that was a mistake, because soon afterwards my eye fell on a headline in the Daily Post : Doctor ‘critical’ after house incident .
    When I went to see him in hospital he was on the mend, though still virtually unrecognisable. His face had been stitched up, the bruised flesh criss-crossed with