Clacks would crash through, with creaking age bearing heavy on beams and struts. Dust would swirl and rest, at mercy and whim of crack-borne gusts through worn brick and plaster. Dusk would come and go, with an evening caress felt only by slats and boards. It was a house of great-grandparents and time ticking slower than usual, of hearts trimmed to a beat a minute and memories in smoke stained ceilings. The three stories held the roof just, and the cellar grumbled in monthly throes from damp and solitude. It was feared but not respected, its stoic façade the neighbourhood target for stones collected from hedge and undergrowth.

Its only friend a spider of prodigious size, not from feeding, just the space to grow, to stretch it legs and body ‘til it filled the corridors and halls, and echoed with insect tap on wooden floors. It ran and jumped, and slept and spun, and grew and shrank with season's hum. The house would curse and laugh at the spiders time spent with care of freedom known, not the victim of hurt cast from careless fists and gurning scorn. But hums and cracks held no malice for the bustling tenant, happy for body-filled scuttle and footfall thud tapping again on rugs and tiles, thumps and tacks know better than to waste the brief shared life of youth in flower.