Brightwood

by Tania Unsworth

  “I’m sorry,” Daisy whispered as she cut a few ragged leaves from his nose. “It has to be done . . . ”

  “Yes, to keep my shape.”

  “To keep you True.”

  “It doesn’t hurt very much,” he admitted. True was always honest. Daisy didn’t think he was capable of telling a lie.

  “You’re brave,” she told him. She stroked his ears. “Do you know where Mum is? Do you know why she left?”

  The horse was silent.

  “Do you think . . . she’s still angry with me? Do you think that’s why she’s not come home?”

  Daisy and her mother hardly ever disagreed, although they’d had an argument just the week before. Daisy had wanted to go to the bulk-­buy store.

  “Not this time,” her mum had said. She was out on the lawn with her easel, painting. She was wearing her flowery dress and her hair was tied back in a long ponytail. “One of these days, I’ll take you. When you’re a little older.”

  “I want to go today.” Daisy wasn’t sure why she felt so strongly about it. It was something to do with getting a telescope for her eleventh birthday instead of a television. The disappointment had stayed with her and turned into stubbornness.

  Daisy crossed her arms and stared hard at her mother. “I want to. Why can’t I?”

  Her mum kept dabbing at her painting, not looking at Daisy. “All right, then,” she said. “Fine. If you want to go outside so much, there’s nothing stopping you.” Her voice was tight.

  “What, now?”

  Her mum shrugged.

  “On my own?”

  “You said you wanted to go outside. So go.”

  Daisy hesitated. Her mum kept on painting, her head turned away. Daisy walked slowly down the driveway. When she got to the gates, she stopped.

  Where am I meant to go? Daisy thought. What direction should I take?

  She looked back. Her mum had stopped painting. Her shoulders were hunched. Daisy walked back up the driveway. Her mum didn’t say anything, although her expression was strange. She hugged Daisy tight.

  “We have everything we need right here, don’t we?” her mum said. She rubbed her pale forehead and tried to smile.

  “Yes,” Daisy mumbled. “Yes, Mum. Of course we do.”

  Her mum had seemed more sad than angry. But perhaps Daisy had been mistaken. Perhaps her mum had now left Daisy alone to punish her.

  “Do you think that’s the reason?” she asked True.

  “No,” he said immediately. “Your mum would never do that. Not in a million years.”

  Daisy nodded, reassured. True never lied.

  “Your mum loves you,” he said. “She would never leave you willingly.”

  Daisy stuck the knife back into her waistband. “What am I going to do?”

  “You should go and get help,” he said. “You should go outside.”

  “I can’t!” Daisy cried. “I don’t know where to go!”

  True said nothing and Daisy felt ashamed.

  “Maybe I should go,” she admitted. “But I’m frightened, True. I’m not brave like you. I’m a coward—”

  She turned. She had heard the distant sound of a car.

  “She’s back!” Daisy shouted, and dashed as fast as she could through the trees towards the driveway. But in the shadow of a bush, she stopped short.

  It wasn’t her mum’s blue car. It was much smaller and silver in color. There was a man in the driver’s seat.

  SEVEN

  Daisy watched as the strange car made its way up the drive, turned in a wide sweep at the top, and stopped by the entrance to the house. The car door opened and the man got out.

  She brought her binoculars up to her eyes for a better look. The man was dressed in dark blue trousers and a dark blue jacket. He stepped forward a few paces with his back to Daisy, and then paused, staring up at the house. He stood so still he might have been a man pretending to be a statue.

  Or a statue pretending to be a man.

  Daisy’s first instinct was to run. She ducked back into the trees and raced through the topiary and around the walled gardens, her legs lashed by tall thistles and meadowsweet. She ran through the kitchen door and bolted it. Then Daisy wriggled and climbed her way through the house and up the great staircase, heading for her grandfather’s old study, which had the best view of the front of the grounds.

  There was an earthenware vase on her grandfather’s desk, which Sir Clarence the explorer had brought back from his travels. Daisy liked it because the handles were in the shape of monkeys, their arms clutching the sides of the vase. But it was almost hidden behind piles of old papers, and the rest of the room was a forest of stacked chairs and benches.

  Daisy dropped to her knees and crawled a winding path through the chair legs until she reached the window. She lifted her head cautiously and peered down.

  The silver car was still parked below, but there was no sign of the man. She raised herself higher. He wasn’t on the driveway or the lawn.

  Daisy turned and crawled back the way she had come. She was still breathing fast, but it was a different sort of breathing than before, a soft whimpering in the back of her throat.

  She had just remembered that the front door was unlocked.

  Daisy crept to the top of the staircase and found a hidden space behind a tall stack of books. From here, she could see the front half of the Marble Hall and the two white pillars that separated it from the reception area. Beyond the pillars, there were boxes of unopened deliveries, and the weighty oak of the front door, with its stained-­glass panel at the top casting a thick, yellow light that made the bronze door handle gleam.

  The door handle was moving. Daisy hunched further into her hiding place. She saw a large black shoe pressed against the edge of the door as it opened. It was the man.

  He was inside the house.

  He was inside the house!

  Daisy wanted to crawl away to the darkest corner she could find, yet she couldn’t take her eyes off the stranger. She stared at him with terrified fascination.

  From this distance and angle, she could see only the top of his head and part of his face. She couldn’t tell if he was young or old, but he seemed big to her, almost huge, with long, dangling arms. He walked forward a few steps and then seemed to stagger back as he entered the hall. Daisy could see the pale oval of his face turned up as he looked about.

  He came forward until he was at the edge of the maze of shelving. He reached his arm into one of the passageways, turned his body sideways, and shuffled forward. It looked as if he was trying to get through. But he couldn’t.

  He’s too big! Daisy thought with a surge of relief.

  The man turned to another passageway. Again he tried to enter, and again failed. Daisy saw him shake his head.

  He took something white from his pocket. A handkerchief. He wiped his hands with it and looked up, his gaze sweeping the whole hall. Daisy shrank back.

  The man shook his head once more.

  “Crazy,” he said out loud. Daisy didn’t know to whom he was talking. He didn’t sound angry or sad. His voice didn’t have any feeling in it at all.

  “Crazy,” he said again.

  He backed away slowly and went out the front door.

  EIGHT

  Daisy had no idea what to do. Now that the first shock of seeing the man had passed, she felt far less frightened, and even a little ashamed. Perhaps her mum had told him to come. For some reason, perhaps a very simple one, although Daisy couldn’t think what it was, her mum had been unable to return. Instead she had sent this man to find her and make sure she was safe.

  The theory made sense. Daisy leaped to her feet and ran down the staircase and through the maze of shelving to the front door. She peered outside. The man was taking something out of his car. It was a long pole with a kind of wheel at the end of it. He reached into the car again and pulled out a clipboard.

  If he had been sent to find her, what did he need a clipboard for? And why didn’t he simply
call her name?

  The man started walking along the right side of the house, taking the path that led to the Winter Grove. As he went, he wheeled his strange contraption in front of him, pausing every now and then to write something down on his clipboard. Daisy hesitated and then began to follow.

  She tracked him through the Winter Grove, a copse of trees with bright white bark, and then up around the back of the garage to the lakeside and the path with the statue of the Hunter. The man walked slowly, and although Daisy kept to the shadows, she was worried she might be seen. But he was too intent on his task to look up.

  Daisy crouched down behind the Hunter.

  “What’s he doing?” she whispered. “Can you see?”

  But the Hunter was looking in the wrong direction.

  “Dark skies,” he said vaguely. “Stormy waters.”

  Daisy saw the man disappearing behind a cluster of abandoned storage sheds. She hurried after him, keeping low. He paused to make yet another note on his clipboard and then set out towards the glasshouse in the distance.

  The glasshouse was still a beautiful building even though most of the glass was broken and there were many places where there was no glass at all. Daisy thought the plants inside must have caused this damage. They had grown so big and spread so far that they had simply burst out of the place. Immediately behind the glasshouse lay the Wilderness, and Daisy thought the plants were probably responsible for that too. They had originally come from wild and jungly places, and when they escaped they encouraged all the normal, well-­behaved plants outside to go wild and jungly too. Now exotic palms crowded the nettles, and orchids surprised the humble buttercups.

  The Wilderness was getting bigger and bigger. It reached all the way along the north side of the property and curled around the lake on the west. There were very few paths in the Wilderness, and in many places it was difficult to get through. When the man arrived at the edge of it, he stopped short.

  From the shelter of a ragged hedge that flanked the glasshouse, Daisy watched him peer into the dark undergrowth. Then, just as he had done earlier in the Marble Hall, he stepped back and shook his head.

  He turned suddenly and Daisy ducked down, her heart pounding. She thought he would keep walking east, along the edge of the Wilderness, and circle around to the front through the topiary. Instead he decided to retrace his steps and headed down the path towards her. Daisy froze.

  The crunch of gravel came closer. She lifted her head. He was barely five feet away. Only a thin screen of hedge separated them. All he had to do was look to the right and he would see her. But he didn’t look. She watched him walk slowly by, pushing the pole with the wheel at the end of it. Up close, he was even bigger than she thought. Not fat, just tall and wide, with sloping shoulders. His hair was thin and it didn’t cover the whole of his head, so his face looked longer than it was. He moved in a loose, clumsy way that made Daisy shudder slightly. As if his arms and legs weren’t attached in the usual way.

  As if he had been put together slightly wrong.

  He veered right and entered the walled gardens. Inside, the paths were narrow, and the plants that had once grown in an orderly fashion had escaped their borders and now ran unchecked in all directions, the herbs spreading nets over the old stonework, the roses clambering in wild abandon. Daisy felt sure he would turn and see her if she followed him in there.

  It suddenly occurred to her that if her mum had sent this man, she would surely have given him a key to the padlock on the front gates. All Daisy had to do was go and look.

  Daisy covered the quarter mile of meadow in less than two minutes. When she got to the gates, she stopped, bent double, her chest heaving. Then she examined the huge black padlock that held the gates shut.

  “Beware!” Regal said on her right.

  “Be careful!” Royal whimpered to her left.

  The padlock hadn’t been opened with a key. It dangled from its chain, almost to the ground. The steel had been cut clean through.

  Daisy stared at it in shock. Then she ran to a nearby oak tree and quickly climbed up until she reached a fork between two branches, high above. From here, she had a good view in all directions.

  She wedged herself into the fork, her knees pulled tight to her chest, trying to think. She had no idea who the man was, or why he had come. The only thing she was certain of was that he had broken into Brightwood Hall. Perhaps he was a robber. What kind of robber walked around so slowly, without taking anything?

  Maybe True was right. She should go. Simply climb down from the tree and leave through the gates.

  But Daisy didn’t know what was out there.

  All she knew was what she could see, right now from this tree, with her binoculars. The distant hills, the church spire rising between the trees, and nearer the house, the stretch of road that ran for a few hundred feet before disappearing into a curve. Daisy had sat in the tree many times in the past, watching that road. Cars didn’t often pass by, although when they did, she followed them with her eyes for as long as she could, marking their type and color and the outline of their passengers.

  Who were those people? Where had they come from and where were they going?

  Once Daisy left the grounds of Brightwood Hall, she would be completely alone. What would happen if she got lost and her mother came back in the meantime and Daisy wasn’t there?

  She turned her attention to the house. The man had appeared on the front lawn, still wheeling his contraption. She watched him walking to and fro for nearly an hour. As she did so, she prayed for him to vanish. She willed him to go over to his car, open the door, and drive away. This didn’t happen.

  Instead the man looked as if he had no intention of leaving at all.

  At last he stopped walking. Daisy adjusted the focus on her binoculars. The man had put down his contraption and was standing perfectly still, staring out over the estate with his hands on his hips.

  As if he owned the place.

  But it was her place. She should get down from the tree and march right up to him and ask him what he thought he was doing. And then she should order him to leave at once.

  Except she didn’t. She stayed hidden in the tree, watching him.

  He was on the move again, heading towards his car. He didn’t go to the driver’s side. He went to the back of the car and opened the trunk, then took out a backpack and two plastic shopping bags.

  He carried them around the side of the house and disappeared from view.

  NINE

  It was evening, but Daisy could still see the lake from her bedroom. She stood with her arms wrapped around herself, overcome by fear and worry.

  The man had taken the rowboat that was tied up to a jetty not far from where the Hunter stood, and he had rowed out across the lake to the boathouse on the far side. The lake was long and narrow, and a path ran all the way around it. But the Wilderness had claimed a good deal of the path, and now the only way to get to the other side of the lake was by boat. Daisy could just see the boat from the window of her room, moored a few feet away from the boathouse door.

  As she watched, a light flickered on in the boathouse. He was getting ready for the night. Making himself at home.

  At least he wasn’t in the main house. He couldn’t enter most of the rooms, and she thought it would be almost impossible for him to get up to the second floor. But this wasn’t much comfort. Perhaps he was simply waiting until morning before making another, more serious attempt to get in.

  She was alone, her mum was gone, and there was nobody to help her. A wave of helplessness washed over her, as strong as any feeling she had ever known.

  Daisy went to her bed and curled up into a ball, her face pressed against the pillow. If only she were as brave as the rest of her family. Like her great-­great-­aunt Emily Fitzjohn, who had fought as fiercely as a Roman soldier—only better, because she had to wear a long skirt—for women to get the Vote. Daisy was unclear what “the Vote” actually was, although she knew it was something i
mportant and valuable. Or Sir Clarence the explorer, who had disappeared into the Amazon jungle on his quest for the Lost City of Valcadia.

  How did a person get to the Amazon? Daisy had no idea. She didn’t even know how people could tell where one country ended and another began. When she was little, she used to think that your skin changed color when you went to a different country, but her mum had laughed at that.

  What an imagination you have!

  You can bring things to life!

  If she really could bring things to life, she would make Sir Clarence appear. He would give himself a little shake and step right out of that old black-­and-­white picture, with his gun still on his shoulder.

  She visualized the photograph: the background pale with heat, low trees in the distance, Sir Clarence’s face in profile under his strange helmet, his boot resting on the body of the dead tiger. The tiger had been a man-­eater and Sir Clarence had been forced to shoot it in self-­defense. Daisy didn’t know whether her mum had told her that fact or whether she had made it up. Either way, it had become the truth.

  The tiger didn’t look much like a man-­eater. It looked more like a rug stretched on the dusty ground. Daisy pressed her hands hard against her eyes until stars bloomed behind her eyelids.

  It was no good.

  She couldn’t bring someone to life just by thinking about them. Even if she thought so hard that her head ached.

  Normally the house was full of noises, little creaks and rustles and pipes clanging and the whisper of dust settling in corners. Now it was completely silent. Daisy opened her eyes.

  There was a girl leaning against the door. At least Daisy thought it was a girl. She looked more like a boy, with short hair and a stained white shirt. A leather bag was strapped across her body, and she had on the sort of trousers that people wore when riding horses. Daisy searched for their name.