Daisy's Christmas Gift Shop

by Hannah Pearl

  He handed me some change and began to serve the lady next to me. ‘Should have at least worn nice pants,’ I muttered as I sipped my drink.

  ‘Did you ask for something?’ he asked, turning back to me. I shook my head and left my bottle on a table on my way out.

  My bladder and depleting purse told me to stop ordering drinks just to try and get people to talk to me, not that it made much difference. There was no sign of Ben at the next couple of pubs either. I began to walk home, cursing at the hordes that meant I had to walk down the roads as if they were a slalom race, weaving from side to side to avoid bumping into people. I loved living in London, but occasionally it grew frustrating that walking took so much concentration.

  I tried a couple of Eli’s favourite post-drinking takeaways, but as Ben had eaten just before he’d left, and he evidently hadn’t been drinking since, I knew even as I went in that they’d be a bust. I stopped into Lily’s shop to see if she had any ideas.

  As usual, she pulled no punches. ‘Those are places you or Eli would have gone. You need to try and think like your brother, you silly moo.’

  ‘So I should go home and see if he’s back there again on his laptop?’ I asked.

  ‘And maybe think about returning Taylor’s call?’ she said. ‘I mean, I know Eli has that whole dark and brooding thing going on, but Taylor is smoking. Have you seen the size of his thighs?’

  On that note I gave her a quick hug and walked the rest of the way home. There was no sign of Ben in his room and no note from Eli telling me where he had gone or what he was doing. I thought about calling the police, but wasn’t sure that they’d take me seriously, especially as he had only been gone a couple of hours and was a grown man, physically at least. Also, I didn’t want to do anything that brought Ben to the attention of the authorities just in case it ended up messing up his security clearance for work. I hoped that my brother would come home soon and tried to make myself relax. I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep, but sometime around midnight I must have nodded off.

  Eli woke me at eight, knocking on the door of my flat until I got up and let him in. ‘I’ve looked everywhere,’ he said. ‘I really hoped he was back but he just wouldn’t open the door.’ Eli walked past me to my little kitchen where he put the kettle on and began rooting through my cupboard to find the coffee. ‘Have you been up to check?’

  I shook my head, feeling guilty that I’d been asleep and hadn’t thought of it myself. ‘Have you been to bed yet?’ I asked, realising that the black jeans and grey wool sweater that he was wearing were the same ones he’d had on the day before. There was a fine layer of jet-black stubble on his chin, and his shoes were scuffed. On the bright side, my period had finished, and I felt a little less grumpy than I had the day before.

  ‘I’ve been ringing him but no answer. I tried every club I’ve ever taken him too.’

  ‘You’ve been looking in all the places you’d have gone. You have to try thinking like Ben,’ I said, pretending that I hadn’t done exactly the same myself until Lily had pointed it out.

  ‘Looks like you thought he’d show up in your flat,’ Eli retorted. He reached for the kettle and missed.

  ‘You’re not going to be any use to him even if he does show up,’ I told Eli. ‘You go and lie down. I’ll wake you up in a couple of hours if he’s not home and we can start looking again.’ The truth was I wasn’t sure exactly how worried I ought to be. Ben was a grown man, but I’d always seen myself as his protector, as had Eli, and it was hard to let go of that. Especially when he had stormed out so upset at us both. After Mum had died Dad had started making us promise to look after each other and I felt like I was letting them all down by not doing more to find Ben and make sure he was okay.

  I left Eli kicking his shoes off as I went upstairs to check Ben’s room. There was still no sign of him. I tried his laptop but couldn’t crack the password. I went to the living room and found the old one where I’d left it next to the sofa. I wanted to check Ben’s social media pages, not that I was expecting a tweet saying where he was given that he hadn’t texted us, but just to feel like I was doing something. Ben, however, deemed any social networking site that was popular as being for civilians and refused to use them, which ruled out ninety per cent of the methods that my peers used to communicate, so I didn’t know where to start. After Googling his name and getting nowhere, I remembered how little luck I’d had finding information about Cody that way and closed the lid.

  By lunchtime I’d done another walk around the local area with no luck. I made some sandwiches then woke Eli with more coffee. He looked better than I would have on four hours sleep which was annoying, but not by much. ‘Could he have gone to work?’ I asked. ‘I’ve tried everywhere else I can think of.’ Eli sipped his drink and yawned. I waited until he set the cup down and tossed him a clean towel. ‘Why don’t you take a shower. It’ll help you wake up.’

  Eli’s stress levels were evidently high as he didn’t make any comments about me wanting to get him naked and didn’t even bother to ask me to join him. My nerves I could have put down to being an over-protective sister, but the fact that Eli was worried too had me even more anxious.

  Eli showered and then we ate quickly and were soon on the hunt for Ben once more. A quick tube ride had us stood outside of the towering grey concrete block where Ben and Eli worked. ‘There shouldn’t be anyone in here on a Sunday,’ Eli said.

  ‘I thought spy business would be a round the clock activity,’ I commented, but Eli shot me a look so I stopped talking. ‘Shouldn’t it be harder than this to break in, if you’re all top secret super spies?’

  ‘Technically I’m just a civil servant, albeit one with a job description you’ll never find in writing.’

  ‘Because you have a licence to kill?’

  ‘Because if they wrote down everything I do for this country they’d have to pay me an awful lot more.’

  ‘So why isn’t your building hidden away in a secret cave or something?’

  ‘It would be a bugger to recruit if we were out past zone six. You’re not supposed to come inside and during the week there would be no way I would even try. In fact, once we find Ben I’ll get him to delete any sign of our visit from the logs. And the CCTV.’

  ‘Now I really want to go in,’ I told him, trying to figure out myself whether or not I was being sarcastic. Eli swiped his ID card and opened the front door. Inside, there was another door that was accessed with a nine-digit security code. I glanced around me, taking in the white marble chips that had been used to make a tile floor. The walls were painted an institutional shade of green. Then I noticed all the cameras and turned my face away just in case anyone was watching.

  ‘If you’re looking for posters warning that loose lips sink ships, they took those down sixty years ago,’ Eli whispered into my ear. His breath was warm and sent a shiver down my spine.

  We rode up in the lift, and I tried to commit every detail to memory, knowing that these were the walls that Ben saw every day and that I’d likely never be inside again.

  Reminding myself why I was there, I poked Eli to move him forward. ‘Don’t worry, we’re just one government department hidden inside a whole building of them. Most of the others are fairly harmless.’ That suggested that his wasn’t. ‘This makes us much harder to spot, if anyone were to try.’

  ‘That’s why there are no retina scans or complicated password systems, much to Ben’s annoyance I’m sure?’

  ‘That, and the final door to our department has a fingerprint scanner built into the handle. I suggest you don’t touch it unless you want a cage to rise from the floor and keep you trapped until Monday.’

  I wasn’t sure if he was trying to spook me or if that was a real security measure but I didn’t want to risk finding out. Eli reached for the door handle and I pressed myself against his side and squeezed through after him without touching it. ‘Let’s check Ben’s desk and get out of here,’ I whispered.

  Eli laughed, and the soun
d echoed in the empty corridor. ‘There won’t be anyone here. Except your brother hopefully.’

  I followed Eli into the room and looked around it. There was a black metal desk, set with its back to the wall. The surface was clear but for a keyboard and an infra-red mouse. There wasn’t a post-it or a pen to be seen. There were no photos on the shelves, only a few books about cracking the Enigma code and one about some computer techniques so advanced I didn’t even understand the title. There was a coaster on the windowsill, but no dirty mug left waiting to be washed. The only sign that a person had ever used this room for work was a screwed up chocolate bar wrapper in the bin.

  ‘This is Ben’s office, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s his kingdom,’ Eli confirmed. He reached forward and began opening desk drawers.

  ‘Should we be snooping in his space?’ I asked, feeling guilty for invading Ben’s privacy, although he had none of the same concerns with regards to other people.

  ‘What else did you have in mind? Did you think you were here to sit in his chair and do some sightseeing from his window?’

  I didn’t like Eli’s tone of voice, but he made a good point. I put the snark down to him being as worried about Ben as I was. I opened the top drawer where most people would keep their assortment of half-chewed biros, paper clips and expired photocopy cards. Ben’s drawer held a stub from when we’d been to see Star Wars and that was all. Eli came over to see what I’d found. ‘I was sure Ben had left his phone charger the other day. He must have stopped in already to collect it. He bugged me so often to borrow mine on holiday that I had to buy him another. I don’t know what he was doing on his phone all week to empty the battery so much. It’s not like he’s answering now to let us know that he’s okay.’

  The second drawer down held a supply of cereal bars. ‘He must be trying to look after himself a bit better,’ I said, feeling reassured that Ben was learning to eat when he got engrossed in his work.

  ‘I put them there six months ago,’ said Eli.

  The bottom drawer was empty. ‘I’ve never been able to do that,’ I said, staring at the scratched wood lining. ‘If I ever see an empty space I can immediately think of a thousand things that could fill it. How can Ben have a useful opportunity for storage and nothing to put in here?’

  ‘Everything that was important to Ben was stored on here.’ Eli tapped the computer. ‘And we’ll never be able to get into it.’ He swore and kicked the bin. It clanged so loudly that I jumped. After that, I held my breath waiting for the security guards to come and find us and arrest me, but thankfully they must have been having a lazy Sunday, if they existed at all, as no one showed.

  ‘Feel better?’ I asked. Eli swore again.

  ‘Let me ring Erin,’ he said, reaching for the phone on Ben’s desk. ‘They work together pretty closely. She might have an idea where we can look.’

  ‘But what happens if she tells your boss and Ben gets into trouble for disappearing?’

  ‘It’s the weekend, he’s allowed out. I’ll pretend he left his phone at home and I forgot where he said to meet.’

  He dialled a number from memory. It seemed that he must know Erin pretty well too, and I hoped that she would be able to help us, but as I pressed my ear next to Eli’s so that I could hear the call, the only sounds was a ringing tone which went unanswered.

  ‘I’m just going to get a jacket from my room,’ he muttered, leaving Ben’s office with his head down.

  ‘Is that our cover if we get found out in the office?’ I asked.

  ‘If you get caught you won’t need cover as much as you will a lawyer,’ he responded, his voice drifting down the hall towards me. I jumped off Ben’s chair and hurried to catch up with him. His long legs had carried him almost to the end of the corridor and it was lucky that I had peeked or I’d have missed seeing him turn into another office.

  Eli’s set-up couldn’t have been more different. The basic furniture was the same, presumably all supplied by the government. Eli’s desk though was buried under a mountain of paper, he had maps fastened to one wall and a pot plant on his windowsill. The soil was dry and the long leaves which tapered to a point were brown around the edges. A small silver photo frame sat at the back of his desk. Inside was a picture of Eli and his mum. He was in his late teens, his image captured half-way between the cheekiness of his youth and the serious and contoured planes of the present day.

  ‘I miss your mum,’ I told him, remembering her warmth. I didn’t remember cuddling my own mum, but I could close my eyes now and feel Amelia’s soft arms and enormous pillowy bosom encompassing me. ‘She gave the best hugs.’ And she gave them so freely, every time you said hello, goodbye, that anything had upset you, and sometimes just for the sheer joy because you were close and because she could reach. I blinked back a tear and wondered how Eli managed. I thanked my lucky stars that I still had my dad, and promised myself that when Ben came home I’d be more patient with him. ‘Let’s go home,’ I suggested. ‘For all we know, he’s cooled down now and he’s back there wondering where we are.’

  But he wasn’t. The dishes from our dinner the night before were still in the sink. After wrapping Ben’s broken plate in newspaper and throwing it away, I ran in some hot water to wash the rest, as Eli made us a cup of tea. ‘So what do we do next?’ I asked.

  Eli set our drinks on the table. I set the final pan to soak, the potatoes having stuck hard overnight. Perhaps there were benefits to Ben’s fastidious approach to tidying up. It was rare to find the kitchen so messy. I just wished that he would be so careful about letting us know where he was.

  We wrote lists of all the places that we’d already tried, and anywhere else that we thought Ben might go. Eli researched online to make a list of all the shops nearby which specialised in top range electronics, and we added those to our places to search.

  ‘There’s only one drawback,’ Eli pointed out. He tapped his watch. ‘This time on a Sunday, they’ll all be shut.’ He yawned and rubbed his hand over his chin. His five o’clock stubble was now more of a nine o’clock length.

  ‘Why don’t we take a break?’ I suggested. ‘I don’t like Ben being out there by himself, but he’s old enough to look after himself, at least for a few more hours. You can sleep in his room and I’ll get a few hours downstairs. We can split the list over breakfast and work out where we’re going to look next.’

  Eli must have been exhausted because he accepted my idea without complaint. It was hard not to worry about Ben, but it had been his decision to walk out. I would never forgive myself if anything happened to him after he had left feeling so upset and alone but if he’d managed to look after himself all night and not come running home, he must have had a plan. I tried to reassure myself that he would be okay until we caught up with him and brought him back. I rinsed my mug, set it on the draining board and headed down to my flat. I heard the pipes clanking and guessed that Eli was taking a shower. I couldn’t blame him, I felt grubby myself after all of the running around. The gurgle of the drain signalled him finishing in the bathroom. I picked up my towel and headed for my own wash.

  I took a few extra minutes to wash my hair and shave my legs, lying to myself that it was because I hadn’t done them since I’d been on my period all last week and couldn’t be bothered, and not because Eli was currently naked or close to it upstairs. And I definitely didn’t use the expensive rose shower gel that left my skin feeling all soft and fragrant because of him either, it was just because I loved the scent. I almost pulled on a little black nightie that I’d been saving, but when I found myself daydreaming about Eli seeing me in it, I put it back in my drawer and took out my oldest and tattiest pair of pink fleece pyjamas instead. They were covered in teddy bears, had holes in the knees and were definitely not designed to get a man in the mood.

  I was buttoning the top when there was a knock at the door by the stairs. I took a second to decide whether I should have gone with the black nightie after all but then there was a second knock so I opened it
. Eli looked at my pyjamas and nodded. ‘Nice.’

  I wondered whether he was being sarcastic, but when I looked down I realised that several of the button holes were ripped and Eli could see my tummy button. Amongst other things. I turned and found a dressing-gown. It was red silk and clashed awfully but I slipped it on and belted it tight. ‘You need something?’ I asked.

  ‘I went to borrow a clean T-shirt from Ben’s drawer …’ he began.

  ‘When you realised that you were twice as broad and they wouldn’t fit?’

  ‘Over my muscles? Yes. So I took one of your dad’s. If he minds please tell him I’ll buy him a new one.’

  ‘He won’t mind,’ I assured him. It was true. Dad was convinced that Eli looked after me and Ben and consequently he was liable to forgive Eli anything. We’d never tested it by telling him that we’d slept together when we were sixteen. There were some things a dad never needed to know.

  ‘Anyway, I was going to say, I think Ben has been home. I wanted some shorts to sleep in so I raided Ben’s drawer in case he still had those Bermuda shorts he bought for Spain last year that were too big for him.’

  ‘When you remembered that we were relieved that they didn’t fit because Ben had been planning to wear them everywhere and they were hideous?’

  ‘Can I finish? They’re still there, but his holdall is gone. I’m sure it was there this morning.’

  I pushed past Eli and bolted up the stairs. He was right though, the signs of a visitor to Ben’s bedroom were subtle, and if we hadn’t known him so well we’d have missed them entirely. Pulling out a drawer, I noticed a gap where there should have been pants and socks. ‘Are you sure this isn’t just the stuff that’s in the wash from your holiday?’ I asked.