The Footprints at the Brick Wall

The footprints stopped at the brick wall. Clara followed them from the garden gate, across the thin snow and into a corner where there was nowhere sensible for a person to go. No return prints, no open window, no sign of anyone having climbed over.

She stood in slippers beneath her coat and looked up. The wall belonged to the workshop beside her rented house. Above it was a shallow roof, beyond that the upper window of a building facing the next street. Nothing moved except a loose end of cable tied safely against the wall.

Clara had lived there for three weeks. She was not frightened of old buildings in principle. She was frightened of discovering that a stranger had entered her garden while she slept and left by a route she could not understand.

She took photographs before walking any farther, then returned inside and checked the doors and windows. Everything was shut. Her laptop, bag and the watch she left beside the sink were where they belonged. The mystery involved a visit, not an obvious theft.

Her landlord, Edwin, answered on the second call. He said nobody should have been there without telling her. The workshop was let separately to a woman who restored furniture. He would ask whether she knew anything, and Clara could send the photographs. He sounded concerned rather than amused. That helped.

By ten the snow was softening. Clara examined the prints again from the path. They were large, with a damaged patch on one heel that left a distinctive gap. At the wall there were also two narrow marks, parallel to each other, partly filled by fresh flakes. She photographed those too.

Her neighbour, Mrs Vale, saw her through the hedge and came over carrying a bag of bird food. She looked at the photographs and said the old workshop had once had a door there. It had been bricked up years ago. A previous tenant claimed to hear somebody knocking from the other side.

“Did she find out what it was?” Clara asked.

“I don’t know. She moved.”

It was an unhelpful answer delivered with obvious pleasure. Clara thanked her and resisted asking for the rest of a story that would make sleeping harder without improving the evidence. She worked as a legal secretary. Her days were full of people turning an unanswered question into a complete theory. She ought to recognise the temptation in herself.

At lunchtime Edwin called back. The furniture restorer, Jo, had been away for two days and knew of no visit. She offered to come and look after work. There had been no authorised entry into the house, Edwin repeated. Clara asked specifically about the garden. He paused, checked something and said he would confirm that too.

That distinction stayed with her. Everybody seemed to understand the house as one place and the workshop as another, while the garden sat between them in a category they assumed somebody else had explained.

Clara looked at the rental information, not searching for a hidden legal answer but for a practical note about access. It mentioned the workshop beside the boundary and an arrangement for notified maintenance. Nothing described a person arriving before dawn and apparently dissolving into brick.

Jo came at six. She was younger than Clara expected, carrying a torch and wearing boots that did not match the prints. Clara noticed herself checking and felt embarrassed. Jo noticed too, then smiled without being offended.

“Not mine,” she said. “But let’s see what we can actually work out.”

The garden was mostly wet now. Clara’s photographs were better evidence than the ground. Jo examined the wall, then the upper edge. She asked whether Clara had heard anything overnight. Clara remembered a vehicle stopping briefly around seven, but had assumed a delivery on the main road. She heard no engine in the garden, no raised voices, no crash.

Jo showed her the inside of the workshop. The old doorway was indeed blocked. There was no concealed passage or access through Clara’s house. The corner contained a tall cupboard, two chairs and an old sign awaiting restoration. Nothing there could explain a visitor walking through solid masonry.

Outside again, Jo pointed at a small pale mark near the roof edge. Something had rubbed against it recently. Clara compared it with the narrow parallel marks in the snow. A ladder seemed obvious once somebody allowed the idea into the conversation.

“Then where is it?” she asked.

“And where did the person go afterwards?” Jo added.

They could imagine answers. A ladder could be removed. Someone on the roof could leave elsewhere. Imagining did not identify who came, whether they had a reason or why Clara had not been told. Jo said a building firm had inspected the adjoining property recently, though she did not know what work was planned.

Clara sent Edwin a second message with the roof mark and the possibility. Then she went to bed with the curtains closed, annoyed that a few footprints had changed how the house felt. She did not want a ghost. She wanted an ordinary explanation sufficiently complete to make the ordinary rooms hers again.

The next morning a man from the adjoining property knocked. His name was Martin, and Edwin had contacted the building’s owner. There had been roof work, he said, but he thought it was arranged for the following week. He had a contact number for the contractor and was trying to establish who changed the date.

Clara asked to join the conversation rather than receive another summary. Martin agreed. They called from his front room, whose rear window looked over the workshop roof. The contractor confirmed a team had visited early the previous morning to inspect a small section before later work. Their contact sheet still named the former tenant of Clara’s house as the person arranging access through the garden.

“She doesn’t live here,” Clara said.

There was a pause. The contractor said the team should have checked. He would ask them for the precise sequence rather than guess from the booking. Clara appreciated the answer, though she was beginning to grow tired of people being helpful after the event.

Before the contractor called back, Martin showed Clara the view from the upstairs room. From there she could see a route across the dry part of the workshop roof to the rear access point. It had been invisible from her kitchen window. The wall was not the end of every possible journey, only the end of the one she could follow from the snow. She photographed the view with Martin’s permission and added it to her notes. A ladder was now more than a convenient guess. It fitted the narrow ground marks, the rubbed roof edge and a route a person could use without returning through the garden. What remained unknown was who had used it and why nobody had told her. Clara felt calmer for having separated those questions instead of making them all answer to the same frightening idea.

The sequence arrived that afternoon. Two workers brought a ladder through the garden gate. One stood on the cleared stone path while the other carried it across the snow to the workshop wall. The person who climbed went onto the section they had arranged to inspect. Afterwards he left through an upper rear access point in the adjoining building. His colleague removed the ladder from the stone path side, avoiding the snow where possible.

That explained one set of prints arriving and none returning. The parallel marks were the ladder feet. It did not yet confirm that these were the people in Clara’s photographs. She asked whether the team had taken work pictures showing the access arrangement. They had.

The image showed the ladder in her garden, the workshop wall and a corner of the blue cover she kept over a chair. It was dated to the relevant morning. In another image, a worker’s boot rested on a dry surface. The heel had a small damaged patch matching the gap in the snow.

Clara looked at both photographs for a long time. The explanation was ordinary enough to feel almost disappointing, then relieving. Her garden had not acquired a secret route. People had moved through it with a plan she was the only person not given.

The contractor apologised directly. He explained where the old contact information came from and said it would be corrected. Edwin called separately, acknowledging that the change of tenant should have prompted a clearer handover with the neighbouring owner. They agreed Clara would receive dates, names and a clear description before any future visit affecting the garden. She did not have to approve a mystery after it happened simply because the work itself was legitimate.

Jo came over that evening with biscuits. Clara showed her the images. They matched the ladder position to the marks and laughed at how quickly the corner had looked supernatural when viewed from the ground.

“The old blocked door didn’t help,” Clara said.

“It’s a better story than an outdated contact sheet.”

They stood in the workshop while Jo explained the sign she was restoring. It came from a shop Clara remembered from childhood. The conversation moved away from the wall into ordinary interests. Clara had wanted a quiet rental where nobody needed much from her. She had not expected to enjoy knowing the person beside it.

Mrs Vale asked about the footprints the following Saturday. Clara told her the full explanation, including the ladder, the roof and the worker leaving through the other building. Mrs Vale looked slightly disappointed, then said she always thought it must be something like that.

“You mentioned knocking and a tenant moving away,” Clara reminded her.

“Well, she did move.”

Clara smiled. There was no useful argument to have. She said she was glad they knew and went back to planting bulbs in a pot by the kitchen door.

The next maintenance visit came with a message in advance. Clara knew the date and the people expected. She was working from home, so she moved the chair cover and left the agreed route clear. When the workers arrived, they knocked first. One wore the boots from the photograph. In daylight he looked like an ordinary man wishing his colleague had remembered another tool.

Clara made no special effort to like them. She thanked them for checking, returned to her desk and found she could concentrate. The garden outside was wet, the wall solid and the workshop roof exactly where it had always been.

At lunch Jo waved through the window and asked whether Clara wanted a sandwich from the café. She said yes. They ate in the little kitchen with the door open, discussing a paint colour neither liked. The house sounded different with another person’s ordinary opinions in it. Later Clara closed the door, put away the spare cup and deleted none of the photographs. An explanation did not make the question foolish. It simply meant she no longer needed to keep asking it.