“I told you rats have ten lives,” Tar said, squirming in her hands.
“You must have used nine of them when that chain came down.”
“I used four,” Tar corrected her, a little crossly. “It’s important to keep count.”
“I’m going,” Daisy said. “But I can’t leave you behind. Who would feed you?”
He squirmed even harder, his eyes bulging.
“You’re frightened,” she said. “I know you are. There’s nothing to worry about, Tar. We’ll go out of the house and walk down the driveway, and when we get to the gates, we’ll just keep on walking.”
Daisy drew a deep breath.
“You’ll see. It’s going to be all right.”
“What are you talking about?” Tar said peevishly. “I’m always all right. I’ve been to the outside world zillions of times. It’s just the same as here, only there’s more of it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
Daisy put him in her pocket and stood up. “Okay,” she said. “I’m ready.”
Outside on the lawn, Frank was waiting for her. She was fainter than before, no more than a gray shadow above the grass.
“I told you the temple trap would work,” she said.
“It didn’t work the way you thought,” Daisy said, although she didn’t feel like arguing.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
Daisy nodded.
“Well, then.”
Frank flickered and seemed to lose substance, her figure nothing but a wisp in the dusk. A white moth flew up from the grass and fluttered clean through her. Daisy felt a great sadness, too mysterious for tears.
“Please don’t vanish,” she whispered. “Come with me.”
“I’m not on that expedition,” Frank said. “You won’t need me.”
“Don’t you want to come?” Daisy said. “Think of all the new places you’ll see.”
Frank didn’t answer. But her face came into sharp focus for a moment, and the look of longing in her eyes was enough to break Daisy’s heart.
“It’s not an option,” Frank said. “There’s no use blubbing about it.”
“Why isn’t it an option?”
“You know why.”
Daisy hesitated. Then she nodded. Frank could explore the jungles and deserts and endless snowcapped mountains of the made-up world. But not the real one.
The real world was a place she could never travel to.
“But you can,” Frank said. She was so faint now that Daisy had to stare hard to make out her shape. Her voice was barely louder than the breeze in the grass.
“Go for me . . . ”
“I will,” Daisy said. “You’ll see—I will. I promise.”
She closed her eyes and turned away. If she stayed any longer, she would start to cry and that would be letting Frank down.
She walked slowly along the driveway, keeping her eyes fixed on the main gates. She didn’t want to look back and see nothing except grass and trees and the terrible empty space where Frank had been.
THIRTY-FOUR
Daisy stood at the main gates with the two stone lions, Royal and Regal, on either side. As she passed between them, she expected them to try to stop her with their usual tears and warnings. But they were completely silent.
A few more steps, and then Daisy was outside.
She stopped, listening for voices calling for her return, or the creak of the house itself reaching to pull her back. No sound came. Brightwood Hall was the only place where Daisy had ever existed. Perhaps it was the only place where she could exist, and she would simply vanish now that the gates were behind her.
But she was still there, still visible. And the sky was the same, and the air. She wrapped her arms around her body. She could feel her heart and the unfamiliar texture of the road beneath her feet. In the daze of leaving, she had forgotten to put on her shoes.
Daisy thought that if she went back to fetch them, she wouldn’t find the courage to leave for a second time. She looked left and right, and set off slowly in the direction where she knew the village lay, walking on the grass by the side of the road.
The sun had dipped into the long dusk of summer, and the road was clear ahead. Daisy kept her head down, willing herself to keep walking without looking back.
But how could she not look back? She could still sense the house behind her, with all its beloved corners, its stately trees and secret pathways, its mornings and its nights. Down dusty corridors, ten thousand memories lay stored. All dreams were there, all stories too.
Daisy turned her head for one last look.
She had never seen Brightwood Hall from outside the grounds. It looked different, oddly distant. The house a little smaller, the wall a fraction lower. This was the view that people passing on the road must have, she thought. This was the Brightwood they saw. And now, Daisy saw it too. The realization brought a rush of grief, as if she had lost a part of herself and would never get it back, no matter how long she lived.
She stroked the outside of her pocket, feeling Tar’s warm shape.
“Don’t be sad, Tar,” she whispered. “It’s all right . . . ”
She carried on down the road, reassured a little by the sight of familiar trees and bushes. Brightwood Hall was full of the same sort of plants. Then the trees thinned out, and there were fields on either side, fenced by wire and slender wooden posts.
The fields stretched towards a far horizon. Daisy couldn’t see where they ended. She had always known what lay around every corner, her world mapped to the last box of groceries, the smallest clearing in the grass. Now there was no telling what lay beyond the fields, or behind the curving road. Her breath quickened with fear.
“It’s just fields,” she told Tar. “It’s just a bend in the road.”
He wriggled, and she pinched her pocket tight between her fingers.
“It’s like you said it was,” Daisy said. “The outside world is just the same, except there’s more of it.”
After it curved, the road ran up a hill and then dipped down in a long straight line, with little except low hedges and the occasional tree on either side. Daisy trudged on. She had been walking for twenty minutes without a single car passing. Then three came, one after the other.
The first one was blue, and it drove by so fast that she almost fell backwards with the surprise of it. The second car was also blue, and it slowed down a little as it went by, as if it were thinking of stopping but decided against it at the last moment.
The third car was white, and it stopped on the road right next to her.
Daisy stopped too, although she didn’t look at the car. She kept her gaze fixed on the grassy edge of the road. She heard the car window being rolled down.
“Do you need a ride?” It was a woman’s voice.
Daisy was too frightened to answer.
“Where are you going?”
Daisy risked a quick look at the driver of the car. She saw a dark-haired woman staring back at her, a worried expression in her eyes. The woman’s gaze moved down to Daisy’s bare feet and then back up to her face.
“Where’s your mother, sweetheart?”
The question was so astonishing that Daisy’s heart seemed to stop beating for a second or two. How did the woman know Daisy’s mum was missing? How could she tell she was looking for her?
“I don’t know,” Daisy said, her voice breaking a little.
“You’re as white as a sheet,” the woman said, “Are you all right?”
She sounded so kind that tears rose in Daisy’s eyes.
“There’s a m-man in my house!” Daisy burst out before she could stop herself. “He’s dead. He’s an uncle or a cousin. I didn’t, I didn’t . . . ”
The woman got out of the car and closed the door behind her. She leaned down, searching Daisy’s face with her eyes.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Daisy. Daisy Fitzjohn.”
The woman paused, and for a terrible moment, Daisy thought she was about to say that there was no such person, just as Gritting had done. But the woman only smiled.
“How old are you, Daisy?”
“Eleven.”
“It’s going to be okay,” the woman said, straightening up. “Although you can’t be out all by yourself. It’s at least ten miles to the village. Hop in the car, and we’ll get this all sorted out in no time.”
Daisy hesitated. She felt the woman’s hand, gentle on her back.
“It’s going to be okay,” the woman repeated. “I promise.”
The car door opened, and then Daisy was inside. She sat in the front seat, next to the woman, every muscle in her body clenched. The fields ran by in a green blur.
“The man in your house,” the woman ventured, her eyes fixed on the road ahead. “The one you said was . . . dead. Where do you live, sweetheart?”
“In Brightwood Hall,” Daisy said. She tried to talk slowly, to explain, but the words came out in a gulping rush. “It’s just me and my mum, only she didn’t come home and he came instead and I asked him to go, but . . . but he wouldn’t and he killed the rabbits and the chandelier fell down on him.”
Daisy knew she hadn’t made any sense, but the woman only nodded.
“I think the best thing to do,” she said, “is call ahead and let the police know we’re coming.”
THIRTY-FIVE
It took nearly half an hour to drive to the village, and Daisy had time to relax a fraction and even to look out of the window. But the car was driving so fast and the things she saw were so odd that she didn’t have much time to make sense of them. There were poles, all the same height, with wire strung between them like washing lines, even though the wire was far too high to hang clothes from it. Cows stood in a field, mysteriously still.
In the middle of nowhere, a sign said stop. Yet there was no sign telling you when you could start again.
After a while, the fields disappeared and Daisy saw tiny houses, with even tinier gardens in the front, and a building with a tower that rose to a sharp spike. It was a church. The same church whose spire she had seen a thousand times from her perch in the Lookout Tree at Brightwood Hall.
The car slowed and turned into a wide space with a lot of other cars.
“This is the police station,” the woman told Daisy. “They’ll look after you here.”
Daisy got a confused impression of a wide entrance with lights overhead. Then the woman who had been driving the car vanished, and another woman wearing a uniform appeared and took Daisy by the hand.
Daisy didn’t want to hold hands, but she was too scared to pull away. The policewoman’s shoes made a loud clacking noise on the shiny floor. They entered a room with a sofa and chairs and a low table in the center. It was the emptiest room Daisy had ever seen.
“Let me take your bag,” the policewoman said, reaching for it. Daisy jerked away.
“That’s all right, you can keep it. You’re Daisy, aren’t you? My name is Mrs. Gardner.”
She guided Daisy to the sofa and fetched a blanket and wrapped it around Daisy’s shoulders. Daisy hadn’t felt cold, but under the blanket, she began to shake. She sat as still as possible, hugging her bag tight to her chest.
“Would you like something to drink?”
Daisy shook her head.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” Mrs. Gardner’s voice was calm, although Daisy didn’t dare to raise her head. Instead she kept her gaze fixed on the buttons on Mrs. Gardner’s shirt.
“That’s okay,” Mrs. Gardner said. “You can take your time.”
There were six buttons. They were white and the top one was undone. Under the blanket, Daisy’s shaking grew worse.
“Take your time,” Mrs. Gardner repeated. “Are you hungry? Would you like something to eat? A sandwich maybe?”
Daisy shook her head again.
At the mention of sandwiches, Tar woke up and squirmed against her leg. She pinched her pocket closed but she could feel him wriggling frantically, searching for a way out.
“Are you all right?” Mrs. Gardner asked. “You look uncomfortable.”
Daisy pinched her pocket tighter. It was no use. Even though he was small, Tar was strong and he was used to getting out of tight corners. She felt his head pushing against her fingers, and a second later he had escaped into her lap. Daisy’s eyes shot to Mrs. Gardner’s face. She had expected her to cry out in surprise.
But Mrs. Gardner didn’t seem at all worried by Tar’s appearance. She leaned forward for a better look.
“Is that your pet?” she asked. “What a lovely color he is!”
Daisy stroked Tar’s back with trembling fingers.
“What’s his name?”
“Tar.”
“I can tell you’re a clever girl, Daisy,” Mrs. Gardner said. “That’s rat spelled backwards, isn’t it?”
Daisy nodded. Perhaps Mrs. Gardner was a friend after all.
“My mum went out in the car nearly a week ago,” she said, lifting her head. “I waited and waited, only she didn’t come back.”
Slowly at first, and then with growing confidence, Daisy described the events of the past six days. It took a long time and all the way through, Mrs. Gardner kept her eyes on Daisy’s face. Every so often she nodded and once or twice she pressed her lips together as though she was holding back words, but she didn’t interrupt.
Daisy was just coming to the end, when there was a knock at the door. A man in a dark blue uniform came in. When he saw Tar, his eyes widened and he made a coughing noise. Mrs. Gardner frowned at him.
“Could I have a word?” he said.
They were out of the room for nearly five minutes. Daisy waited, rather regretting now that she had refused the sandwich. Tar regretted it too. He stared at her with an outraged look on his face.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’ll get you something as soon as I can.”
But when Mrs. Gardner came back into the room, Daisy could see by her face that she was thinking about something quite different from sandwiches.
She sat down on the sofa next to Daisy. “I have news,” she said. “It’s about your mother.”
Daisy couldn’t speak. Mrs. Gardner took her hand, and this time Daisy didn’t want to pull away.
“She’s called Caroline, isn’t she? Caroline Fitzjohn.”
Daisy nodded.
Mrs. Gardner hesitated. Her hand tightened. Or perhaps it was Daisy herself who was squeezing it, terrified of what she might hear next.
“She was in a car accident,” Mrs. Gardner said. “She came off the road. It was a hit-and-run. Do you know what that is?”
Daisy shook her head.
“It’s when the person responsible leaves the scene of an accident without identifying himself or herself. We found paint marks on your mother’s car, suggesting that whoever hit her was driving a silver-colored vehicle.”
Gritting, Daisy thought. She had seen the long scrape down the right-hand side of his car. He had forced her mum off the road and made it look like an accident.
“Is she dead?” Daisy said, surprised at how steady her voice sounded. Mrs. Gardner shook her head. “No, Daisy, she’s not dead. But she’s in the hospital. She’s been badly hurt. She’s still unconscious.”
“I want to see her,” Daisy said.
“It’s very late. We’ll get you there first thing in the morning.”
“No,” Daisy said. She stood up, shaking off the blanket. “I want to see her now.”
Mrs. Gardner didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I understand.”
Daisy was hardly aware of anything at all on the ride to the hospital. The journey might have taken five minutes, or an hour. There might have been two people in the car with her, or maybe three. It was dark outside, and she could see nothing except the glare and dazzle of passing vehicles.
The car went by a long row of overhead lights that turned
Daisy’s hands a sickly yellow color. She wanted to close her eyes, but she couldn’t. Then the dark swallowed up the car again, and they carried on for what might have been a hundred miles, or only ten.
Daisy held her bag tight on her lap. She had left Tar behind at the police station. Mrs. Gardner had said she would look after him until Daisy returned. She wished he were with her now, despite all his wriggling and his nagging for food.
They pulled up under a big awning, lit by more of the sickly yellow light. Then they were out of the car, walking through a huge glass door into a building that looked like the Marble Hall, only far bigger and with nowhere to hide. Daisy shrank back at the sight of so many people.
Hands guided her forward. She went up a staircase and down a long, shining corridor with double doors that opened silently without needing to be touched. Daisy felt exhaustion rising. Faces blurred around her. Now she was in a room and people were talking, although she didn’t understand what they were saying.
“We operated to relieve the pressure,” a man said. His face was so close that Daisy could see her reflection in his glasses. “We’re keeping her stable.”
Daisy felt herself sway, and the room tilted a fraction.
That makes no sense, she thought. You can’t keep her there. My mum’s not a horse!
“. . . not responding, I’m afraid,” the man was saying. “Everything possible is being done . . . ”
Two young women wearing strange green overalls led Daisy to a door with the shade pulled down.
“Let me take your bag,” one of them said.
“No,” Daisy whispered. “No.”
“Just a few minutes. You understand?” the woman said.
“Oh, let her stay,” the other one murmured in a soft voice. “What harm can it possibly do now?”
They opened the door. Daisy saw a dimly lit room. Her mum lay on a bed, almost completely surrounded by machines and devices. There were tubes coming out of her arms. Her eyes were closed. Her hair had been cut close to her scalp, and one side of her head was covered with a white bandage.
“Oh, Mum,” Daisy said. “You have short hair now, just like me.”
She climbed onto the bed and lay down. Her mum didn’t speak or even stir as Daisy nestled against her. Daisy reached for her mum’s hand and placed it against her own cheek.
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