by Polly Crosby
‘You made these, Dad. Look.’ I leant forward and pointed to the red-haired girl on the page, ‘Romilly.’ A drop of saliva landed on the glossy denim of the girl’s dress. I wiped it away.
‘Fee… na…’ he said. It sounded like longing. I looked at the little picture, wondering which of us it was meant to be.
Suddenly, Dad’s hand was at my neck, and I jerked back, realising at the last moment that he was reaching for my necklace. With expert precision he deftly flicked the locket open. He stared at the flower, rolling it between his fingers, his eyes travelling over the tiny petals. Trying not to move, I reached for my rucksack and pulled out the feather, placing it in his lap.
Dad made a sound, somewhere between a sigh of longing and a groan of sadness. He dropped the locket and picked up the feather.
‘It belonged to Lidiya,’ I said, watching his face for any sign of recognition. ‘She helped me solve your clues.’
I pulled the carved box from my rucksack, placing it on top of the books in Dad’s lap. The feather fell to the floor. Dad was staring down at the box, his mouth moving, a soft clicking coming from his jaw. He picked it up in his huge hands, and it fitted perfectly between them in a way it never had in mine, melding with the shape of his palms as if he had grown it from his own skin. His fingers sat obediently in small dents in the wood that I had never noticed before. Dad closed his eyes and pushed gently, and the box began to change. It evolved before my eyes, slots of wood moving like pieces of a puzzle. From inside came a mechanical whirring, as if time itself were speeding up. He was concentrating on the box, grunting slightly under his breath, and then he flicked his wrists as if he were unscrewing a jam jar, and the box came apart cleanly in his hands.
Inside was a maze of little compartments, each with its own door to the outside world, each one empty. Near the centre, a ring of tiny cogs was clicking away, like the movements of a clock, and right in the middle of this was an oval cavity, shaped like the shell of an egg, but this segment had no exit, no way of escape. Deep in here, something glimmered.
Dad was staring at the opened box. I leant closer to see what was nestled inside, but his hand got there first. A glint of gold, and then it was gone.
For a moment I worried it would go the same way as Monty’s bell, but the trembling hand that had snatched it was drawing closer to me. He pulled my small hand into both of his own, looking into my eyes and nodding. When he drew away, I felt something solid beneath my curled fingers. I looked down. A coin lay there, thick and gold as custard, shining brightly in the beam of sunlight. I traced the relief of the man’s head, my thumb running over the laurel wreath in his curly hair.
‘This is old, Dad. It’s…’ Something about it was familiar. I tried to remember if I’d seen it before, like so many of Dad’s gifts.
Dad was humming, the little prongs in his nose vibrating with the sound. He was looking fixedly at the wall to his right, the books and box on his lap forgotten. I quietly packed away my possessions, tucking the coin into my pocket for safekeeping. I leant forward and kissed him softly on his forehead, the edge of my mouth brushing the scar that he had got saving me that hot summer’s day. Beneath the antiseptic tinge of medical soap, I caught the real smell of my dad, warm and cinnamon, and I breathed it in.
As I crossed the hallway, I looked back at Dad through the open door. Two figures were crouched by his seat. I blinked. Dad was no longer looking at the wall. He was smiling at the girls, for that is what they were: two girls, one about my age, and one much younger with long, red hair, and all three of them were shimmering in the afternoon sun, so that none of them looked real.
The older girl turned to me for a moment and smiled.
It was Stacey.
I raised my hand in a gesture of farewell and she did the same, her other hand gently clasping my father’s.
The little girl by her side looked up for a moment, her smile coy and shy, yet filled with a knowing wisdom, and I knew who she was immediately. She was like me, but she was not me. She was her own, whole person, stopped in time.
She was Feena.
I returned her smile, standing in the hallway, a sense of peace drifting over me, watching them together.
They did not need me anymore.
I pulled myself away and started down the stairs.
Forty-One
At home, I sat on my bedroom floor, my back to the bed, the coin spinning next to me. I had examined it on the bus ride home. It was Roman, made of real gold. I wondered where Dad had found it.
The floorboard seemed to be goading me. Lift me up, it whispered. I studied the plank, trying to remember all the things I had placed under it over the years. Did it still contain echoes of the Romilly I had once been?
I took hold of the board and pulled, peeking into the black hole. It trembled with dust. I lay down on the floor, dipping my arm in up to my shoulder, scrabbling around with my fingers. For a long moment I felt nothing but cool, gritty air, and then the tips of my fingers snatched at something.
The remains of a snail shell came up in my hand, half a bright pink star painted onto it. A thin strip of hay came next, bringing with it the touch of velvet tickling my fingers.
I pulled sheaves of brittle paper up to the light; signatures with hearts littered about them. An awkward looking sketch I had done of Stacey stopped me for a moment. I laid them all on the floor, and reached in again, my fingers trailing over the rough wooden joists.
I was looking for something specific. It was futile, really, just a tiny memory from so long ago, but the brightness of Dad’s coin had ignited something that stung at the back of my mind. The meadow. A glimmer of gold.
As I pulled each object out and the collection mounted on the floor next to me, I felt a pang of disappointment. I put my hand in again, stretching my fingers until my joints cracked painfully, stroking the bottom.
A cold nugget teased the end of my index finger, and my heart jumped. This was it. I used the tip of my finger to slide it against the wood and up towards the light.
My heart sank. It was just an old, broken brooch, blue-green with mud. Was this what I had been thinking of? I rubbed disappointedly at its surface until the dried mud crumbled from the little lattice holes all over it. Something about it made me think of water and mire, and then of Stacey. I closed my eyes and held the brooch tight, my breath floating down into the empty cache.
I thought back to the child that had hidden these special things over the years, the stories she had made up, the adventures she’d had. She was so much more complex than the paper-thin girl in Dad’s books.
The girl in Dad’s books wasn’t really me, or my sister, I realised. She never had been. And I certainly wasn’t her.
If I were to tell the story of my life, I thought, where would I start? With treasure, a small voice whispered. Not Stacey’s voice this time, but my own, heard for the first time, hidden deep within me.
Treasure.
One last time, I pulled the floorboard back. I dropped my arm in, and reached as far as it was possible to reach. Something in a far corner met my fingers, quickly this time, as if it had grown impatient with this game and wanted, finally, to come out. It was surprisingly warm to the touch. I could feel the smooth frill of its edge, the bumps and curves of a face. I pulled it out.
It was identical to the coin Dad had given me, and just as beautiful. The gold was duller – there was earth caught in the crevices of the man’s face and between the laurel leaves on his head. I had thought it was toy money when I dug it up in the meadow all those years ago.
I walked to the low window and knelt down on the window seat, examining the two coins in the sunlight. Was it just a coincidence that Dad and I had both found a gold coin? Might there be more out there, hidden in the meadow? Perhaps a whole hoard of treasure trove, patiently waiting for me under the earth.
I looked out over the garden. The snow had melted away as quickly as it had come. The moat lay thick as tar below me, a rainbow sheen on it
s surface. Occasional bubbles rose slowly, popping with a wet smack that sent droplets of slime onto the grass. In the furthest point of the garden, almost hidden now by a mass of hemlock, Dad’s sunken wooden shed stood, its door half open, caressed by the leaves of the weeping willow. In the distance, the rusting shells of Dad’s mobiles stood motionless against the skyline.
The phone was on the window sill next to me. Tucked underneath it, a half-forgotten piece of paper poked out from one corner. I pulled it out and looked at the number written on it, complex and meaningful like a mysterious code.
The two coins burned like eyes in my palm. On impulse, I spun them both, one after the other.
Heads I call the number, I thought, tails I throw it away.
The first coin landed quickly, the face of the man staring regally up at me.
I tried not to look as the second coin spun on, but my eyes kept glancing back, drawn to its glinting dance.
The coin staggered and fell. The long, aquiline nose and the pointed chin of the second man’s face winked up at me.
I lifted the receiver and began to enter the number; the slow drag and pull of the telephone’s dial foreign to my finger.
On the third ring, there was a click, and a familiar woman’s voice said, ‘Children’s services, Barbara Clarke speaking.’
‘Barbara?’ I said in a small voice. I could picture the regimented ID card around her neck, the lipstick on her teeth as she spoke her name.
‘This is she.’
‘It’s Romilly Kemp.’ I left my name hanging in the air, listening to the silence on the other end of the phone.
Eventually, ‘Romilly? Are you all right? You sound like you’re crying.’ Her voice, both reassuring and authoritative, flowed over me like a balm.
I clung to the receiver, pushing it close to my mouth.
‘Help me,’ I whispered. ‘Help me, please.’
After I replaced the receiver, I dried my eyes and picked up the coins again. Holding them tightly, I ducked through my little door and went downstairs, almost tripping over Monty, curled up on the bottom step. He yawned, showing off clean, white teeth, and attempted a scratchy meow. I lifted him up and draped him over my shoulders, where he clung on, purring happily into the back of my head, his paw clenching near my ear.
Stopping only to grab a trowel, I threw open the back door and went through the garden, down to the meadow.
Up close, the eroding skeletons of Dad’s mobiles were scarred and pitted with rust. I wound my way through them, noting how they felt so much smaller now.
I came to the middle of the meadow, and turned full circle, making sure I was in the right place.
Braër House looked so small from here, like a witch’s cottage in a fairy tale. I thought for one moment I saw someone standing at my bedroom window, watching me, but then I blinked, and she was gone, and I knelt down in the cool, damp grass, with my cat by my side, and I began to dig.
The End
Acknowledgements
Whilst daydreaming, I have written acknowledgements in my head for years, the list getting longer and longer the more people who have helped me on the way. It feels very strange to be writing one for real.
First of all, thank you to you, the person reading this book. It has been an extraordinary journey bringing it into your hands, and I hope with all my heart that it takes you on an extraordinary journey reading it, too.
To my parents, who listened patiently to my first attempt at a novel twenty years ago, and who have listened ever since. Also, my sisters Lucy and Jo – three is a magic number, and we three have a very special bond.
I want to thank Bear for being such a big part of my free-range childhood. Those searches for sweets hidden in the maize field started a lifetime love of treasure hunts for me. I wonder if there’s still a fruit salad chew buried somewhere in a Suffolk field?
Teachers played an important role in my becoming a writer, among them, the inimitable Miss Pirrie - the kind of English teacher who sets your brain on fire. At the time of writing, I don’t know if she is still alive – when I was ten, she seemed very old and grey-haired, as most teachers over forty did!
To Lee Cozens, Vicky McKenzie and Rachel Cogman, thank you for all your support. Also, to everyone at my Book Club: you always bring the best cheese and wine - what else is there in life? Cathryn Baker, Jenny and Mark Sheldrake and Nic Bouskill, thank you so much for all your help. And finally, Lucy Geering, who appeared in my life just before all of the wonderful things started happening, and whose wise words set me on a strange and magical path. I have a feeling you might be my fairy godmother.
On to those I have met on this writing journey: Lisa O’Donnell, whose clever, often dark ideas helped Romilly appear; Felicia Yap and everyone at Curtis Brown Creative; all at The Bridport Prize.
An awe inspired thank you goes to my agent Juliet Mushens, who I idolised for an age before daring to approach, and thank goodness I did! Huge love to my editor Clio Cornish, whose creative mind and kind, insightful words helped keep me grounded when I began to feel as if I were caught in the hurricane of ’87. Massive thanks to Kate Mills for your enthusiasm and brilliant ideas. Thank you also to the HQ Design Team for the incredible cover, and to Joe Thomas, Joanna Rose, Claire Brett and everyone at HQ for all your hard work behind the scenes.
The seed of this novel germinated when I heard about Kit Williams’ book, Masquerade, an ‘armchair treasure hunt’. If you haven’t read it; do. It’s rather marvellous.
When heady dreams come true, it is sometimes hard to keep your feet on the ground. Thank goodness for my two boys: my husband, Matt, and our son, Seb. There is so much laughter with you two, and I love you both dearly. This book is dedicated to you.
And finally, to Dali, my ancient Oriental cat, and my muse. He sat patiently on my lap whilst I wrote, purring and blinking those huge blue eyes as if to say, keep going, Polly, we’re nearly there.
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