SHE WAS YOUNG, but not so young she couldn’t hear them talking.

‘Davey, what’re we goin to do?’

A volley of coughs, then a thick sound like her granny slapping sheets into the mangle, and at last her father’s small, watery voice.

‘I – din’know, Sheila. We’ll get by, some – how.’

Violet closed her door, hugging Mr Edward till they both fell asleep on the clippie-mat.

*

The next morning her mother bustled around the tenement kitchen making odd little trilling noises, like a bird trapped in the coal hole.

‘Mammy’s goin to go see a man about a job, Violet. You eat up, lovey, an I’ll take you down to Mrs Riley.’

Dressed her in her Sunday best, she looked in on her daddy, then headed down the stair. Her mother lifted Violet up so she could grasp the bell-pull. It tinkled inside. As footsteps came to the door, the girl retreated into her mother’s skirts.

‘Sheila. All ready?’ Mrs Riley peeped around the skirt. ‘Hello! I’ve been looking forward to seeing you all day.’

It was only a bit past eight – Violet still had sleep in her eyes – but the old lady’s voice was so high and sweet she smiled back.

‘Who do we have here?’

Violet held out the bear, resplendent in his new plaid waistcoat.

‘Mr Edward.’

‘Well, Mr Edward!’ Mrs Riley shook his paw. ‘Nice to meet you. Come along in.’ For a moment she held the mother’s eye. ‘Don’t worry about the time, dear. Take as long as you need. Away you go.’

*

A small blue chair stood ready beneath a similar-sized table.

‘Here we are.’

Violet put Mr Edward on the table, fiddled with him till he had one paw by his side, the other held up in a wave.

‘Just right,’ said Mrs Riley.

‘Whose table is this?’

‘Well, it belonged to my own son, John.’

‘Doesn’t he need it?’

‘Oh, no! He’s all grown up and away now.’

‘Can I use it to draw?’

Mrs Riley nodded, opening the press and taking out a big roll of butcher’s paper, some fat coloured pencils. ‘I’ll make us a drink.’

But in her mind the girl was already down the stair and out into the back green, its great higgledy wall and overhanging trees unspooling from her fingers.

*

In the afternoon they made a flipbook (a little man tumbling down the side of some expired Scotmid coupons), played tiddledywinks and snakes-and-ladders, and quite lost track of the time. Mrs Riley looked up.

‘Oh, we’ll miss the light!’

The stair outside was still full of her father’s ragged coughing, and the old lady sped her out to the green. Here were the morning’s pictures made flesh, colours muted in the half-light. They sat on an iron bench and a pigeon fluttered by. The sounds of a woman lugging washing came from another stair, then a man’s heavy following tread. Violet saw a whisk of white.

‘Mrs Riley!’

‘Oh – yes. Shhh!’

The fox crept past, a faint tawny ghost. Only his brush looked healthy: high, thick and sinuous as a match flaring in the gloom. The rest of him was skinny and pale, his legs just quick stutters against the wall. In a second he had slipped into the hedge and was gone.

‘That fox looks hungry!’ said Violet.

Mrs Riley gave a smile.

*

Over the next few afternoons, they tried milk, bread-and-dripping, chicken bones with their leftover flaps of dried skin, but when they went out into the winter dark everything lay untouched.

‘Doesn’t he want his tea?’

The old lady shook her head.

‘He’s testing things, dear. Just pushing along till it’s safe. You’ll see.’

She wanted to go and ask her daddy, but whenever she went to his door her mother put a hand on her shoulder.

‘Not now, lovey – daddy’s tired.’

‘He’s always tired!

‘Violet.’

Her mother scooped her up. ‘It’ll be alright, you’ll see. Mr Reid wants me Saturday. Will you be fine with Mrs Riley?’

Violet thought for a minute, then nodded. Another high, ripping cough, then the sound of a weak hand striking plaster came from the bedroom. She nodded twice more in quick succession.

*

‘Now,’ said Mrs Riley. ‘I’ve got something special.’ She picked Violet up and set her on the counter beside the remains of Friday’s fish supper. ‘Smell it?’

She did: a high, keen whiff like the docks in summer, when her daddy walked down to see his pals.

‘Does the fox like chips?’

Mrs Riley laughed. ‘No, dear. I ate those myself.’ Inside the newspaper was most of a fish, grey ridges and specks of orange showing where the batter had peeled away. ‘Irresistible!’

‘It stinks.’

‘Ah, but you’re not a fox.’

Outside, the gloaming was filling up the back green. They laid the fish out on a paving-stone, retreated to their bench.

‘You know, they’re quiet when they think we can see them, but noisy when they’ve the place to themselves.’

‘Who?’

‘The foxes, of course! I don’t suppose you’ve heard them, but sometimes they come late and screech and spit down here like it’s the end of the world.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, who knows. Making friends, or fighting. Who knows why half the noises happen on a stair? But – ’

Violet had heard them, thought they were monsters and cowered till they went away, but the old lady’s hand was pointing at the wall.

Just a wisp at first, then like a russet train emerging from the tunnel of the hedge came the rest of him. The fox sniffed his way by, turned till his jaws could address the food while his eyes missed nothing. He dipped his head, took the whole package in his mouth, then slid into the other hedge. For a minute the garden was silent, save for the sound of silky leaves, then a pigeon hooting. A car backfired, streets away. The old lady and the little girl looked into each other’s eyes.

‘Go on, dear,’ Mrs Riley said, gesturing at the door. ‘He didn’t go up the stair, after all. Go and tell your daddy.’

Violet ran into the empty doorway, the news quick on her lips. But the stair was quiet now, from floor to skylight, its small, cracked window impossibly faraway up there, dark and silent as the stars.

James Roderick Burns’ work has appeared in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Flash Fiction Magazine and La Piccioletta Barca, as well as a short-fiction chapbook and three poetry collections. His story ‘Trapper’ (Funicular Magazine) was nominated for Pushcart 2020. He lives in Edinburgh and serves as Deputy Registrar General for Scotland..