by Polly Crosby
It was cold in the pantry, and I shivered as I got to my feet, the smell of urine mixing with the years-old dried herbs that sat in jars on the shelves. I could still hear my mother on the other side of the door. I put my eye to the keyhole and I saw her, pacing. She was whispering to herself, her hands to her face, and then her knees buckled from under her and she let out a strange guttural moan, collapsing like a broken marionette onto the floor.
‘Mum,’ I whispered, ‘Mummy? Are you all right?’
She lay on the floor, silent now, her hands still over her face as if she couldn’t bear to look at anything. Then she pulled herself up and brushed herself down, and, without looking at the pantry, walked out of the kitchen.
I stood up and looked around me. There was a small square grate at the back of the little space. I reached up on tiptoe and wiggled my fingers through its lattice pattern, hoping someone would see and come and rescue me.
My arm was aching from being so high up and my fingers were growing numb and tingly, when, ‘Who’s there?’ came a familiar voice. Relief flooded through me.
‘Stacey?’ I whispered.
‘Romilly? Why are you sticking your fingers out like that? I thought they were a bunch of worms.’
‘Stacey, help me.’
‘What are you doing in there?’ she said, her voice so close now I could feel her warm breath on my fingers.
‘Mum shut me in the pantry,’ I whispered. ‘Can you come and let me out?’
‘I don’t think I’m allowed in your house. I don’t think your mum likes me.’ She sounded scared.
I tried not to whimper. ‘Then can you find my dad? He’ll be able to let me out.’
‘I’ll try,’ she said, and I felt the tips of her fingers briefly clutch at mine. I jumped at her touch.
‘Stacey?’ I whispered urgently, but she was gone. I sat down on the floor and waited.
A high, breathless child’s voice lingered in my ear, whispering me awake. I lifted my head, my cheek creased from the tiles on the pantry floor. I was shivering with cold.
The voice was still there, a soft caress in the hard, cold room. The pantry was dark, despite the light trickling in from the grate, and I shifted around, trying to get my bearings, looking for the source of the whispering voice.
‘Stacey?’ I said quietly, cautiously, but there was no answer.
I was alone.
My stomach rumbled. How many meals had I missed? Maybe I would die in here, I thought with a gulp. I remembered that it was important to drink if you wanted to stay alive, and I got up gingerly and started feeling along the shelves, running my hands over the glass bottles and jars. My fingers found a fat, brown bottle. I squinted in the gloom at the label, sounding out the letters. The first word was ‘malt’, like Maltesers, I thought, licking my lips. The second word was longer and alien to me. I wished that Dad has spent more time on my spellings: I couldn’t get past the first three letters, v i n. I held the heavy bottle in my hands, trying to decide. Malt was nourishing, Dad said, like the Ovaltine he made me before bed.
I unscrewed the cap. Immediately its acrid smell hit the back of my nose, making my eyes fill with water. I held the bottle away from me, listening to the world outside the pantry, hoping to be rescued before I needed to drink. I thought I could make out the sound of footsteps far off, then mumbled shouts and a door slamming. Then silence. My mouth was dry. I screwed up my nose and took a deep gulp from the bottle.
An acidic fire hit my stomach, and I choked, the spray of liquid exploding out of my mouth as I simultaneously tried to breathe in. There was a whole family of spiny hedgehogs in my nose, scrambling to get out, and a cactus pulsing in my brain. I shook my head, trying to swallow through the pain, and then footsteps were coming closer, and the pantry latch was lifting, and the door was opening and Dad’s huge silhouette was standing in the light, scooping me up and hugging me close.
‘Romilly,’ he roared, ‘oh, my darling child.’ And I could hardly breathe I was so relieved.
My parents were arguing again. I was in bed, pretending to be asleep. I had fresh pyjamas on and Monty was lying in my arms.
Mum and Dad’s voices were far away, as if they had shut themselves in a room so I wouldn’t hear. I wondered if they were in the pantry. Then a door downstairs opened and Mum’s voice was clear as a bell.
‘… nothing wrong with you. It’s all a lie.’
I could hear her coming up the stairs now, Dad’s heavy footsteps following behind. I pulled the duvet over my head, hoping they weren’t coming up to my room.
‘Why would I lie?’ Dad’s voice now, booming deeply through the duvet. ‘I didn’t want you to come, you know. I only wrote to let you know. You’re just here because the books are doing well. Where were you when she was younger, eh?’
‘How dare you. You know exactly where I was, not that you ever visited. Not that you ever brought her.’
‘What good would it have done her to see you in there?’
‘What about me, Tobias? What about the good it would have done me?’ Her voice was so high-pitched now it was almost a scream. Suddenly it dropped. ‘I can’t do it, Tobias, I can’t look after her. I’ve tried, I really have, but she’s such a strong-willed child.’
‘Like her mother, then.’
‘And when I look at her, I see…’
‘You’re just seeing what you want to see,’ Dad interrupted, his voice was quieter now. ‘And you can’t blame her, Meg. She was four years old.’
‘I can’t stay here. It’s so claustrophobic, so isolated. And I can’t be around her, not after…’ I strained to listen, but Mum’s voice was becoming quieter too, almost as if she were whispering.
Dad’s voice boomed in response. ‘No! That won’t happen. She stays here with me. You can stay, or you can go, but Romilly goes nowhere.’
‘You want me to leave her to run wild with you? After all you’ve told me? She could get abducted by a paedophile, or hit by a car.’ Mum’s voice was high-pitched again, like a shriek.
‘She’s not destined to die, you know, Meg. Let her dream her dreams and live her life if it makes her happy. She never wet herself before you came, and she damned well won’t do it once you’re gone. Go back to your facility and your five o’clock therapy meetings, we’ll be fine without you.’
Their footsteps drummed back downstairs and I curled up in a ball, relieved they were going further away.
When I woke, Mum’s voice had disappeared, and Dad was quietly climbing through into my bedroom. Monty stretched and chirruped in welcome. Dad pulled me into a gentle hug.
‘I’m sorry I wet myself,’ I mumbled.
‘Don’t be sorry.’
‘Where’s Mum?’
‘She’s gone.’
‘Gone where?’
‘Just gone.’
I plucked at a loose thread on my cotton duvet, it came smoothly out, leaving a long line of nothing behind. ‘What’s a facility?’ I asked.
Dad sighed and rubbed at his beard. ‘It’s a… a place you go to live when you’re not well.’
‘Is it haunted? Do ghosts live there?’
‘I don’t think so. Actually, probably.’ He snorted quietly under his breath.
‘Will she come back?’
Dad paused, drawing circles on the duvet. Finally, he said, ‘No.’
‘Never?’
‘I don’t think so.’
I dropped my head and looked hard at the duvet, my eyes swimming.
‘I can’t let her come in and out of your life as she pleases, Romilly, it’s not fair on you. You need routine, and she can’t give you that right now.’
‘Can I visit her? At her facility?’
‘I don’t know. When you’re older, how about that?’
I nodded. It was strange. I had thought that if Mum left, then Dad would become the huge, roaring Dad I knew so well, but instead here he was cowed and shrunken like a little mouse on the end of my bed. I hoped that time would restore him, or el
se I might find myself shrinking with him, until we slipped between the floorboards of my bedroom, never to be seen again.
Twelve
As autumn turned to winter, we settled back into our old, familiar routines. Dad was often in London doing interviews in preparation for his third book, which would be out the following summer. On the days when he wasn’t at home, I spent the time pulling out the few belongings Mum had left behind: an old red lipstick; a gossamer-thin scarf that I found hidden down the back of the sofa; a book about raising children. I gathered these things together and investigated them thoroughly, trying to find a clue to where Mum had gone. Before Dad got home each time, I hid them all away in my room, sensing that it was easier to pretend she had never been here at all than to explain what I was doing.
In early December, Dad came home from London with a shiny new toy.
‘It’s a metal detector,’ he said, brandishing the long instrument in front of him like an elephant’s trunk. It had a round disc at one end and a handle at the other. ‘They’re all the rage in the city – people are using them on the banks of the Thames to find bits of history. It’s called mudlarking. I thought we could try it here.’
‘Do you mean in the moat?’ I had visions of standing up to my neck in pongy moatwater, tripping over the sunken fountain as I tried to wade through the mud, while Dad directed me, dry and comfortable from the bank.
‘No! On the parsnip field behind Braër. Don’t worry, you’ll stay perfectly dry. Come on!’
The metal detector swung from right to left across the churned-up earth. We had heard it beep only once, when Dad dropped his keys underneath it to check it was working. In Dad’s hands it looked graceful, its swan neck curved toward the ground, listening intently for something we humans couldn’t hear. I had tried to hold it earlier, but it was surprisingly heavy, and it crunched along the ground, scraping at flints and old leftover parsnips.
‘What kind of treasure are we looking for?’ I asked, picturing an Aladdin’s cave just beneath the field’s surface. I half wondered if this was Dad’s way of showing me where the treasure from his books was buried. I resolved to come back alone another day and dig.
‘A gold torc would be nice,’ Dad said, ‘but even a ring-pull would be quite fabulous at the moment.’ He wiped a hand over his damp brow. ‘You’ve got to remember, Roe, that these things take time: it only takes three digs to bury the treasure, but it can take a thousand to find it.’
I remembered the coin I had unearthed in our meadow, before the mobiles were there, trying to think if it was still in my floorboard caddy.
After a while, I grew cold and bored, standing with nothing to do while Dad patiently swung the machine over the ground. I wished Stacey was here. Things were always more fun with her around. I looked out over the field. It was chocolate-dark against the white, wintry sky. It looked as if it were about to snow.
The metal detector beeped, making me jump.
‘Ready with the spade, Roe?’ I nodded, lifting it high so it glinted in the winter sun. Dad moved the detector carefully over the soil, back and forth, locating the treasure.
‘It’s small. It might be a jewelled amulet, or a filigree brooch. Or a Celtic ring belonging to Boudicca herself. Dig, Romilly, dig!’ I did as I was told, and plunged my spade into the soil. It was surprisingly hard work. I dug for what felt like hours, my hands growing red raw from the cold, pausing now and then for Dad to run the detector over the hole.
Something silver winked in the sunshine. Dad grabbed the spade from me and sliced into the loam, barely missing my fingers. Dropping the spade, he leant forward, easing the treasure out from its burial site.
‘What is it?’ I asked, trying to work out what the little crumple sitting in his palm could be.
‘It’s a chewing-gum wrapper,’ he said, frowning at the damp silver thing in his hand. I lifted it carefully and smoothed it out, pressing it into my pocket. Treasure was treasure, after all.
On the way back through the field, our noses red and dripping, Dad said, ‘It’s not really finding the treasure, Romilly, it’s digging with all your might in the hope that you might glimpse something sparkling deep in the soil. That’s the reason for all this folly.’ He waved his arms around, indicating the field and the metal detector.
I nodded, not really knowing what he meant, but liking it anyway. ‘What’s the treasure in your books, Dad?’
He was silent for a moment, looking down at the clods of earth on his boots as we strode across the field. ‘It’s complicated, my love,’ he said eventually.
‘Complicated how?’
Dad sighed. ‘There’s… something hidden, but—’
‘… But, it’s not gold or jewels.’ I tried to keep the disappointment out of my voice, but I could hear the tears catching at the back of my throat. ‘It’s not proper treasure at all.’
Dad stayed silent, stepping carefully over the ploughed furrows.
‘Why won’t you tell me?’ I said. ‘I promise I’ll keep it a secret so everyone can still keep searching.’
He stopped, so suddenly I nearly bumped into him.
‘If I told you,’ he said, ‘it wouldn’t be a treasure hunt for you, would it? What would be the point of going to all this trouble, just to spoil it for my own daughter?’
Once home, we sat thawing in the kitchen, drinking hot chocolate and eating boiled eggs and soldiers. I pulled Dad’s two books towards me, flicking through the pages as I ate. Dad cleared his throat and lifted his spoon in a toast, the golden yolk dripping down the handle toward his thumb.
‘This moment right here, watching you read those books,’ he said, ‘is the very pinnacle of my career, and it is thanks to you, daughter-mine,’ here he winked at me and belched quietly under his breath, ‘for making this dream become a reality. May the Kemps go marching on.’
And he opened wide and swallowed the last morsel of egg, surveying the crumby mess of our shared tea as if he were a king presiding over his land.
I chewed my last mouthful of soldier thoughtfully. I was quite used to his speeches by now, and I knew from experience that it was better to ignore them, otherwise he wouldn’t stop.
‘Is it really me in this book, Dad?’ I said, changing the subject.
Dad’s spoon fell onto his plate with a clatter. ‘Butter fingers,’ he said crossly, ‘what do you mean?’
‘It’s just, you started them when I was nine, and the girl in this second one looks exactly like the girl in the first one: she hasn’t grown up like I have. I’m eleven now, and,’ I wrinkled my nose up and studied me-in-the-book closely, ‘in this book I don’t look any different.’
Dad pulled his glasses onto his nose. They were a new addition to his face and I was having trouble getting used to them. ‘I suppose you’re timeless,’ he said at last, smoothing the pages.
‘Does that mean I’m really old?’
‘No, it means… it means I’ve captured a glimpse of you and held it in these pages, like a flower pressing, and now you’ll stay that way forever in time.’
‘But I’m going to be twelve soon, and then I’ll be a teenager after that. I don’t always want to look like her.’ I jabbed my finger at the little girl in the book.
A flash of irritation crossed Dad’s face, but then it was gone, like a pebble dropped deep into the murky moat.
‘Oh, don’t worry, I can’t stop you growing older, however much I’d like to. Look, here’s you looking contemplative on the bridge.’
‘What does contemplative mean?’
‘It means deep in thought, I suppose. But you’re not, darling, not usually. It’s known as “artistic licence”. And look, have you found the little mouse on every page yet? Monty’s trying to catch them all.’
‘Monty only ever manages to catch spiders. He’s more of a purrer than a hunter.’ The real Monty was sitting on the table between us, looking down at the book. I wondered if he knew it was a drawing of him.
‘Thank God he’s not a hunter, o
therwise I’d be painting blood and viscera into every scene.’ Dad chuckled to himself.
‘Monty looks even more furry than in real life.’ I stroked my cat’s doppelgänger, surprised at how smooth he felt on the page.
‘He’s a very soft cat, your Monty,’ Dad said, stroking Monty’s fur covetously, ‘you know, you could have him made into an elegant stole once he’s dead, you could wrap him around your shoulders when you’re an adult, then he could go with you wherever you went.’
I looked at Dad’s face, trying to work out whether he was joking or not, and then I remembered Dougal, his Jack Russell who stood eternally and stiffly in a glass cage in Dad’s study, and I felt a bit sick.
‘Do you like them, Roe, the books, I mean?’
‘They’re wonderful.’
‘Because you’re the reason I made them, you know. It’s your story, and it’s—’
‘Dad, my mole’s on the wrong cheek.’ I had paused on my favourite picture. It was a close-up of my face, framed by my blazing red hair. I had never noticed before. I put my finger to my actual cheek and felt the bump on my skin.
‘What?’ Dad said, leaning forward again, spilling his hot chocolate. ‘No, it isn’t.’
‘It is, look, it’s on my right cheek, not my left.’ I lifted my face to him and he ran his thumb across my cheekbone, as if seeing was not quite enough.
‘Oh, that’s the printing process, Romilly, it flips things over so you see the mirror image.’
‘But wouldn’t words be flipped too? And they’re all the right way round.’ I began flicking through the book, trying to find images of me close up enough to see my mole.
‘It’s back-to-front in the original paintings.’ Dad had got up and was looking over my shoulder. ‘All artists have to learn how to write back-to-front; they teach it at art school. That and the art of procrastination.’
‘But then my mole would have been flipped too.’ My mind was working so hard flipping and swapping back and forth that I couldn’t remember which cheek my mole was actually on, let alone the me on the page. I touched my face again, running my finger over the reassuring mark.