Page 17 - HouseOnTheEdge

There’s another pause while the question journeys to the responsive part of my little brother’s brain. Eventually, he pulls the telescope away and concentrates on The Crack by my feet. The three- metre gash in our back garden that we’ve been watching like it’s a sleeping python since it appeared overnight a week ago. Noah bends closer. The sky seems to come with him, elephant grey and sombre, as if it’s inspecting The Crack too.
He cocks his head to one side and says, “Mmm” and “I see” like he’s some expert on Antiques Roadshow. Which he is in a way. Noah’s always been good at observing stuff, spotting things. Things that others don’t. He finds all the lost items people leave on the beach, and all the new objects the waves sweep in, when the sea’s having its spring clean. It’s why his bedroom permanently smells like an aquarium, and looks like a museum, since Mum stopped making him tidy it.
“I think it might have grown a little at that end; and got deeper there,” Noah points, scrunching his mouth up for “sorry”.
The House on the Edge by Alex Cotter Uncorrected Sample
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