CHAPTERS

“Better be home before 7pm, we still need to get ready for school tomorrow,” Ivy’s mum yelled through the window.

Ivy sat on her bike in front of her house and put her Walkman headphones on. She rewound the cassette and pressed play. She could hardly hear her mum shouting in the background, she just waved her hand back at her and started peddling, focussing only on the song blaring from her headphones: Bicycle, bicycle, bicycle, I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike…

Ivy’s bike, which she had received from her father for her ninth birthday the previous year, was already quite knackered. There was a shiny sticker that read Flash on the top of the frame. That’s how Ivy named her bike. It wasn’t just any Flash sticker, but a sticker from Queen’s album Flash Gordon. She got it together with a white T-shirt with long red sleeves that had the same image printed on it. If possible, she’d always wear it whilst on her bike. She had put it on that afternoon as well, even though it hadn’t been ironed.

Before her mother could reprimand her, the boyish Redline BMX, without mudguards, lights, or chain covers, was already speeding in the opposite direction down the one-way Wincott Street in Kennington where they both lived.

There were ten entrances in a long row of houses, but you couldn’t possibly miss hers. It was the only one with the bright red doors that said so much about the personalities of the people who lived there. On the window next to the entrance was Ivy’s cat Grey, watching over the street as always. Before she got Grey, Ivy had never had luck with cats. She had three moggies before her, but they all met their untimely end under cars’ tyres. That’s why, when Ivy was five years old, her mum took her to the shelter to get a molly. Ivy and Grey bonded in less than two minutes. Who chose who remains a mystery, but their bond has remained unbreakable until today.

It had been almost five years since Grey arrived in the house with red front doors. At the end of Wincott Street, where it joins with Kennington Road, across the street on the left stands the Montgomery. Ivy always had a bad feeling when she went past this house. She could never figure out why a house needed to have its name written on the facade with such large letters. Even though it was just an ordinary, red brick, three-storey house, it reminded Ivy of a mental hospital. She felt like loonies could run out at any time and start chasing her down the street, so she always sped up there and never looked back. Luckily, she only had to go down a tree-lined avenue for another quarter of a mile before she reached Luisa’s house. White clouds were gathering on the last day of the summer holidays and, every now and then, hid the warm summer sun. August’s storms had already turned the days cooler, but to Ivy, that Sunday felt like a long spring day, when plane trees reached for the sky as if stretching after a long slumber and shook their leaves in joyful playfulness, as if to say hello.

She was screaming Luisa’s name at the top of her lungs before she reached the house. Bicycle Race was still roaring in her ears. Luisa’s greyish, light blue house was adorned with a lavish blue front door surrounded by creeping ivy in full bloom. Luisa was already standing on the balcony on the first floor with a beaming smile to welcome her friend.

“I’ll be right down” Luisa waved at her.