Brightwood

by Tania Unsworth

In the dim glow of these lights, the Marble Hall did look a little like a temple. The shelves cast long shadows like columns, and the area beneath the chandelier was just where an altar might go.

  “Rival explorers always enter the temple sooner or later,” Frank told her from a spot above her head.

  Daisy glanced up. She was sitting cross-­legged on top of one of the shelving units. “They’re so greedy for artifacts and relics and treasure and stuff, they don’t bother to take care.”

  Frank ran a finger across her grimy neck. “Next thing you know, it’s all over,” she said with relish. She looked around hopefully. “Any trapdoors in here? Arrows triggered by a hidden lever?”

  Daisy shook her head. But she was busy thinking. In this shadowy light, the thousands of Day Boxes looked a lot like stone blocks.

  She would need a ladder. There was one in the utilities room. But Daisy knew it would be impossible to move it through all the clutter in the corridors. Luckily there was a stepladder in the reception area. It was tall enough.

  The stepladder made a terrible clattering noise as she half dragged, half carried it over to the first row of shelving. Every few moments, she stopped, her heart pounding, as she wondered whether Gritting could hear the commotion from the garage.

  The shelves had been positioned close together to allow the maximum amount of storage space. And what made the pathways between them even narrower was the fact that the Day Boxes were longer than the width of the shelving, so they stuck out on either side. If the boxes weren’t there, even a large person might make their way through.

  Even a person as large as James Gritting.

  Daisy pulled out a Day Box and rested it on the stepladder. Then she hesitated. She was allowed to look through her mum’s things, although not to move the boxes. The boxes were arranged by date. If she started shifting them around, they would get out of order. And what she was planning to do was far, far worse than simply getting a few boxes out of order.

  But the boxes took up so much space. All the days gone by piled one upon the other. Soon they would fill the house until there wasn’t space left for any new days at all. There would be room only for the past.

  Without giving herself a chance to change her mind, Daisy quickly pulled out another box. She carried both boxes up the stepladder and set them down on top of the shelving unit. Then she went down for another pair.

  It was hot, sweaty work. Daisy could carry only two boxes at a time, and even then, she had to stop every few minutes to catch her breath. The ladder creaked and lurched as she went up and down, and several times, her hands slipped and boxes fell to the ground. They broke open and objects scattered across the floor. Daisy hurried to pick them up.

  “You haven’t got time for that,” Frank reminded her. “How many blocks have you got so far?”

  Daisy made a quick count. “Nearly thirty.”

  “Not enough.” Frank frowned. “You need a lot more than that for a decent trap.”

  After a couple of hours of effort, Daisy had removed most of the boxes from a single avenue of shelving. Now that there was more room, the boxes that were left could be repositioned so they didn’t stick out on either end. She shoved them into place with aching arms. Her throat felt tight. Moving the boxes had dislodged years of dust. She saw it rising like smoke in the weak light.

  “Incense,” Frank said, nodding to herself. “Temples always have plenty of incense.” She got up from her perch and walked slowly along the top of the shelving units, staring at Daisy’s handiwork with a critical eye.

  “He’ll be able to get into this part of the temple now,” Frank said. “But it isn’t enough. You want him turning the corner. He’s got to be able to get to the middle.”

  “I’m tired,” Daisy said. “I need to eat.”

  She went to the kitchen and opened a package of cookies, suddenly starving. She ate them two at a time, standing at the sink to catch the crumbs. Tar was at her side at the first rustle of the packaging.

  “I should give you something better to eat,” she said, tossing him a corner of a cookie. “But I don’t have time to cook anything. I’ve got to get Gritting into the temple and then trap him.”

  Tar appeared to shiver slightly at the word “trap.” “What are you going to do with him after that?”

  Daisy thought of the knife in her belt. She had gotten much better at throwing it. Now she could almost always hit a target without taking more than a second or two to aim.

  “What would you do, Tar?”

  The rat made a dart for a cookie crumb and stuffed it into his mouth. “Something, something, something,” he mumbled.

  Daisy returned to the Marble Hall. She needed to clear additional passageways to lead Gritting deeper into the maze of shelving units, so deep he couldn’t easily escape from her trap.

  She took a deep breath and went back to work.

  It was three in the morning before Daisy had cleared another passageway and nearly dawn by the time there was a way through the maze to the central area below the chandelier. The tops of the shelving units were piled high with the Day Boxes she’d removed, and movement up there had become difficult.

  “You’ll have to arrange them better than that,” Frank told her.

  Daisy gritted her teeth. “I know! I’m the one doing all the work, remember?” She stared at the boxes. They needed to be set up in such a way that she could send them tumbling with only a shove or two. After a bit of thought, she chose a place close to the central clearing where the tops of three shelves joined together to form a T. This would give her enough room to get behind the pile of boxes when the time came to push them down.

  Daisy stacked them carefully, one on top of the other, with their ends sticking out over the side of the shelf so that they would fall forward into the passageway below. Even though she had cleared the passageway, it was still narrow, and she thought fifty or sixty boxes would block it completely. The first light of morning was creeping through the Marble Hall by the time Daisy was done. She sat at the top of the great staircase, gazing down at her work.

  Gritting would enter the twisting path below. He would follow it all the way to the clearing beneath the chandelier. Then Daisy would push the Day Boxes down behind him, blocking his exit.

  It was quiet in the Marble Hall. The only movement came from Tar taking his usual shortcut along the chain that looped from the back wall all the way up to the ceiling pulley wheel that held the chandelier in place. For once, Daisy was too tired to scold him as he disappeared from view.

  Daisy closed her eyes. Her hair was full of dust and her hands were black with dirt. She didn’t care. She had made what was probably one of the best temple traps in the history of the world.

  The only question was: how was she going to get James Gritting inside?

  DAY SIX

  TWENTY-­SIX

  Daisy rested her head against the bannister and waited for the sun to rise a little higher. Soon, Gritting would be up. She would wash her face and hands and brush her hair, and then she would go and find him. Getting him into the maze wouldn’t be hard at all, she decided. She wouldn’t need any kind of trick.

  She would merely invite him in.

  Gritting might suspect Daisy was responsible for sinking the rowboat, although he couldn’t be sure. Which meant she wouldn’t have to explain anything or even mention the incident. She would only have to pretend she had changed her mind about showing him around the place.

  I’m so sorry I was rude to you, she would tell him. I didn’t mean it, I was scared. Would you like to have another cup of tea?

  It all seemed simple in the quiet of the Marble Hall, with the long shafts of morning light full of the slow swirl of dust. But just as Daisy was starting to believe that she had nothing to feel frightened about, she heard the sound of footsteps on the gravel driveway outside, and her calm was instantly replaced by terror.

  He was outside.

  Daisy shot to her feet. Her first instinct was to run away and h
ide, but instead she took a deep breath, crept down the staircase to the front door, and peered cautiously outside.

  Gritting was standing on the driveway. His trousers appeared still damp from his dunking in the lake, and his thin hair was awry. He looked as if his night had been uncomfortable.

  Daisy remembered the sound of the key turning in the lock on the wine cellar door and the way Tar had nearly died after licking the strawberries. Anger made her brave. She took a step forward, out of the shadows.

  “Hey!”

  Gritting jerked with shock. It might have been the surprise of how different she looked: her hair cut short, her expression fierce. But Daisy felt certain it was because he thought she was still where he had left her, locked up in the wine cellar.

  He stared at her speechlessly for a second or two, and then his shoulders seemed to relax.

  “There you are,” Gritting said. He shrugged and half turned away. “I wondered whether I’d see you before I left.”

  “What do you mean?” Daisy said.

  Gritting shrugged again and began to walk slowly towards his car on the far side of the driveway. “You told me you wanted me to leave. So I’m leaving.”

  Daisy felt confused. This wasn’t how she had planned things. She was supposed to be inviting Gritting inside so she could trap him in the maze. But now it seemed that none of that would be needed after all.

  He reached the door of his car, opened it, and then paused, shaking his head in a sorrowful fashion. “I was only trying to be helpful,” he said in a sad voice.

  “You weren’t!” Daisy burst out. “You were trying to—”

  Gritting leaned on the door, looking at her. “You must have a very low opinion of me,” he said in the same sad voice. “But I’ve only had your best interests at heart.”

  “You tried to poison me with those strawberries!” Daisy cried. “Tar nearly died.”

  “I did what?”

  “And then you left me to starve in the wine cellar!”

  Gritting stared at her with wide-­open, disbelieving eyes. “I thought you’d like the strawberries,” he said. “They were perfectly fine. Don’t you think it’s more likely that your pet ate something else that made him sick?”

  Daisy didn’t answer.

  “As for the wine cellar,” Gritting continued, “I do remember locking the door. It’s extremely dangerous to have all that alcohol lying around where children can get to it. But I certainly didn’t know you were down there!”

  He had an explanation for everything. Was it possible he was telling the truth?

  “What about my rabbits?” she said. “You can’t say you didn’t kill the rabbits.”

  Gritting sighed. “It’s true. I did kill them, although they didn’t feel a thing.” He paused. “I don’t know how I can make you understand, but this place used to be so different. Your mother has let it go to a terrible degree. The animals may look harmless, but they’re destroying the grounds. I was simply trying to clear the place. For old times’ sake, you know.”

  He sounded sincere, almost sorry. Yet no matter what he said, Daisy knew she would never like him.

  “I was only trying to be helpful,” Gritting repeated. “But I can see I’m not wanted.”

  He hesitated, as if waiting for an apology. Daisy kept her mouth tight shut. Gritting shook his head and got into his car. He turned on the engine.

  Daisy watched him go, the car bumping down the driveway. At the end, the car stopped and she saw him get out and open the gates before driving through and out of sight. She waited for several minutes to make sure he was truly gone before she allowed herself to finally relax.

  Gritting had left. The house was hers again. But behind the relief, a small detail nagged at her. A feeling of wrongness, of something being missing. Daisy had no idea what it was. Only that it seemed important.

  Daisy turned and went back into the house, still thinking about it.

  TWENTY-­SEVEN

  Daisy stared at herself in her bedroom mirror. She ought to have felt happy—even triumphant—about Gritting leaving Brightwood Hall. But she didn’t look happy. She looked worried.

  Gritting had left, but Daisy still didn’t know what had happened to her mum, or whether she was ever coming back. And she hadn’t done anything to try to find out. Instead she had spent the days talking to a girl who wasn’t there and imagining that someone was plotting to hurt her.

  Daisy fingered the nape of her neck, tugging at her short hair. She didn’t look fierce at all. She looked like a little girl playing dress-­up.

  Lying on the bed with her body curled tight, Daisy wondered what she should do. She could always stay where she was, waiting and hoping for her mother to return.

  What if her mum never came back? Daisy thought of time passing, the seasons turning, and herself changing and getting older, without a living person to talk to or anyone to know or care whether she existed or not. The idea was so lonely and terrifying that Daisy had to bury her face in the pillow to stop herself from bursting into tears.

  Daisy couldn’t stay. She should have left days ago, when True first told her to go. Daisy thought of him lying on his side, his green leaves already withering, his body growing brittle in the sun. If he could still talk, he would tell her again to leave. At once, this minute.

  But she was so tired. She closed her eyes, comforted by the familiar sounds of the old house. She would rest today and leave in the morning, when she was fresh.

  Daisy wondered what it would be like to be somewhere else. To be in a place where you didn’t instantly recognize every creak and rustle and clank of the building . . .

  She sat up straight, all thoughts of leaving abruptly forgotten.

  She knew what had been nagging at her ever since Gritting had left. The sound of his car had been wrong.

  Daisy knew every noise in Brightwood Hall. Every faulty piece of plumbing, every snatch of birdsong. She knew the noise her mum’s car made too. It sounded loud on the driveway. By the time it reached the main gates, it was just a low hum. Yet on a calm day like this one, you could still hear it for a while on the road beyond, a distant insect buzz growing fainter and fainter until it was gone.

  The noise of Gritting’s car hadn’t grown fainter and fainter. It had just stopped.

  There was only one place in Brightwood Hall where you could see more than a short stretch of the road outside. Daisy ran to her bedroom window, scrambled out, and hurried around the corner to the front area of roof. The sun was already high, and beneath her bare feet, the stone was hot, almost burning. She stood at the edge of the roof and looked down over the lawn and meadow to the gates beyond. From here, she could see where the road outside curved and ran a little way until it reached an intersection with another road.

  Almost at the intersection, half hidden behind a clump of bushes, something flashed. It was sunlight reflecting off the roof of Gritting’s silver car.

  He must have driven through the gates and down the road a little way, and then, when he thought he couldn’t be seen from the house any longer, he had stopped and parked the car. He had never had any intention of leaving. It had been a trick. And he was probably right that minute returning to Brightwood Hall on foot.

  Daisy turned and rushed back the way she had come, banging her knee on the window frame in her haste to get through. Gritting had lied to her from the start. He had tried to hurt her. Daisy knew now she hadn’t been imagining it, no matter what he’d told her in that fake sad voice of his.

  Now he was coming back to finish what he’d started.

  She turned this way and that, unable to decide what to do. She had to hide. Was it better to hide here in the bedroom, where she could escape out the window if necessary, or go upstairs where the rooms and corridors were even more crowded than those below, and where it would be harder for Gritting to reach her?

  Daisy heard a dry cough from the other side of the room.

  “Wondered when you’d notice I was here,” Frank said.
“You’ve been running around like a headless emu.”

  “I need a place to hide!” Daisy panted.

  “Headless emus run around for a lot longer than headless chickens,” Frank remarked. “Not many people know that.”

  “I don’t need any of your pointless facts! I need a place to hide!”

  “Can I be perfectly honest?”

  Daisy drew a deep breath. It sounded shuddery. She put her hand on her chest to calm herself.

  “That’s better,” Frank said. She reached into her survival bag and pulled out a paper bag. “You might want to try breathing into this. Sir Clarence finds it useful when he gets the jitters. All sorts of things set him off. Bats, moths, funny-­looking trees, running out of toilet paper. I remember one time he—”

  “Forget Sir Clarence!” Daisy shouted. “I need to know what to do!”

  Frank folded the paper bag and replaced it carefully in the bag. “Seems to me you haven’t figured out why this man wants to get rid of you so bad. If you knew that, it might help you decide what to do next. I suggest you have another look at those relics.”

  “There’s no point. I didn’t find enough of them to figure out anything.”

  Frank shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  “I don’t have time,” Daisy wailed. “He could come back at any minute!”

  But Daisy went to the dresser where she’d put the relics. There were four of them: the smashed watch, the letter to her mum, the newspaper clipping, and the card with the kangaroo. She spread them out on the bed.

  “I told you. They don’t make sense.”

  “That’s because you’ve got them in the wrong order,” Frank informed her, pointing a grubby finger at the bed. “You’ve got them in the order you found them. You want to order them by age.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Daisy said.

  “Arrange them oldest to most recent,” Frank explained.

  Daisy tried to push aside her panic and think clearly. “I suppose the letter is the oldest,” she said. “Gritting sent that to mum when she was only ten. Then there’s a big gap, but the kangaroo card comes next. After that, it’s the newspaper clipping. The smashed watch is last. It came just a few months ago.”