They pedalled over a cattle grid, buzzing their bones, and went on down the driveway. Two rabbits pricked their ears, crouching low on the warm tarmac, watching them coming closer until some alarm sounded and they scattered into the knee-high grass, sending the feathery tops winking in the sun.
They left their bicycles lying on the driveway and walked up a set of stone steps worn thin in the middle from years of comings and goings. The front door was set back from the circular driveway in a porch framed by two white Doric columns pocked and chipped and tinged with green.
But, when they discovered it was wedged shut with something heavy jammed behind it, they waded through weeds to the nearest bay window and jumped up on to the broad stone ledge, then clambered through the rectangle of clean air above it, their hands hidden inside the sleeves of their sweaters.
Inside the house, the air was still and musty, and the floor crackled as they walked over more pieces of glass.
Rosie went into the hallway and struggled to pull away two pieces of timber wedged against the door until Daniel helped her, sending each piece spinning to the floor. They lifted the latch and dragged the door open, letting in the sunlight. It looked like the floor was steaming with all the dust that rose from it.
When Rosie wiped her hands on the wall to try and clean them, plaster spilled from tiny cracks. ‘So?’ she asked, standing in the doorway with the sun warming the back of her neck. ‘Anything?’
Daniel took out the notebook that Bennett had bought from the kiosk in the park a few days before and scanned what his friend had written down.
‘One of Lawson’s memories was about being in a stately home with a big, winding staircase when I tried with Bennett.’
‘Was that about this place?’ asked Rosie, pointing at the large staircase.
‘Maybe. I don’t know. It was just a jumble of stuff that came out.’ He held open the notebook for Rosie to see what Bennett had written down. She scanned Bennett’s scribbled notes and descriptions. When she saw the symbol he had tried to draw and then Daniel’s attempts to redraw it more accurately, she put her finger against the page and traced the shape because it looked so odd, like a small child’s crude sketch of a bomb or maybe a goldfish with a triangle for a tail.
‘Do you want to try again now?’ she asked. ‘See if you remember anything else?’
‘OK.’ Daniel closed the notebook and took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He thought, first, about the house, picturing how it had looked when they had ridden up the driveway. He listened to the creak of the door on its hinges, the sunlight ticking in the walls around them. He inhaled the dusty air and smelt the damp and the mildew. He stood silently for some time to see if anything came to him. But nothing did. Eventually, he opened his eyes. Shook his head.
‘It’s like Lawson’s memories have already burned themselves out,’ he said.
He stood beside Rosie in the sunshine, looking out at the driveway, scanning it for any clue that might help him remember something. But nothing came to him. ‘Let’s have a scout around,’ he said eventually. ‘It might help me. We might find something useful.’
Rosie kicked out at a ball of hair and dust being sucked out of the front door and on to the steps in a draught. ‘Daniel, I’m worried about what the chemo’s done to me. That the gift I had . . . that now it’s broken somehow.’
‘Is that how it feels?’
Rosie nodded. ‘And what if it’s not temporary? What if I don’t know how to fix it?’
‘All your other side effects are supposed to be, aren’t they? The nausea? The tiredness?’
‘Yes.’
‘So we have to assume this one is too.’ Rosie looked so drawn and tired he kept staring at her, wishing for her to feel better. Her pale cheeks glowed green and yellow in the bright sunshine.
‘Tell me I don’t look that bad?’ she asked.
‘OK. “I don’t look that bad.’”
Rosie smiled and punched him gently in the chest. ‘You’re a funny guy. I’ve taken my anti-emetics. I’ll be fine. The bike ride took a bit out of me, that’s all.’
‘So do you feel like walking around, to see if we can find anything?’
‘Sure.’
Rosie grabbed his arm to stop him marching off. ‘Daniel? About what happened with your dad before my chemo.’
He looked at the floor. Drew a wobbly line in the dust with his trainer, even though he was trying to draw it true and straight.
‘What about it?’
‘Do you think we can really help him?’
‘Yes. I don’t want to think anything else.’
Rosie nodded. ‘Good. Because I didn’t want to think I’d let you both down.’
‘You didn’t, Rosie. Not one bit. As soon as the effects of your chemo wear off, we’ll try again.’
They wandered around the ground floor, moving from room to room as silent as thieves, planting footprints in the dust, which rose in little twisters, worrying their ankles.
There was a grand fireplace in the living room, with the carcass of a dead pigeon arranged in a nest of its own feathers in the hearth. Daniel studied a line of graffiti spray-painted in red on the wall above the mantelpiece. But they were random letters that he could not make any sense of at all. A white enamel pot full of grey water sat in one corner. The wallpaper above it had peeled away from the damp plaster into tiny curls as tight as wood shavings. When he kicked the pot, it made a dull chime.
‘Daniel!’ shouted Rosie from another room, and he turned and ran without even thinking.
‘Someone’s been living here,’ she said, placing a foot on the mattress and testing the springs.
Daniel kicked out at some empty biscuit wrappers and trod down on a spent carton of orange juice, sending the blue plastic top skittering across the floor like a tiny puck.
‘I’m not sure there’s anyone here now,’ he said. He went to the white sink where a large rust stain had spread from the plughole. He tried the taps and the pipes groaned. The odd red drop of water fell and that was all. ‘Can you imagine living here?’
‘Yeah, it could be a brilliant house.’
‘I mean with it like this.’
‘Things would have to be pretty bad, I guess.’ She kicked the mattress and sent up a cloud of dust. ‘I wonder how that feels.’ And only when she grinned at Daniel did he smile back.
When Rosie started to cough, she put her hand against the wall to steady herself and waved him back. ‘Dust. It’s just the dust.’ But she went on coughing for some time, her face turning whiter and her green eyes shining even more electric. ‘I guess the bike ride took a bit more out of me than I thought,’ she said.
While Rosie rested in the sun, Daniel drifted from room to room, waiting to see if any glimmer of one of Lawson’s memories came to him. He lingered on the large staircase, keen to see if he remembered anything about it, but nothing came back to him.
When he found a small room on the first floor with a desk and a swivel chair on casters, the seat made from cracked red leather, he sat down and looked out of the window in front of him, which overlooked a large, overgrown garden. He placed his hand in the dust on the desktop as though trying to locate some connection with the place. When he lifted up his arm, his palm was blue and furry and the print in front of him was perfect. It started him thinking how big a handprint his father’s hand would have made, but he stood up before he fell too far into himself and slapped his hands together to clean them.
Daniel examined the kitchen like a potential house buyer, scrutinizing the state of things. In the musty light, he saw cupboard doors sagging on their hinges, a stack of newspapers swollen by the damp, tarnished knives and forks scattered over the floor. A headless wine glass stood on the worktop, the bowl beside the broken stem, lying on its side like some diaphanous bloom shed an age ago.
He twisted a brass doorknob and discovered a pantry, lined with empty shelves furred with cobwebs. Nothing else.
But as he turned to leave he not
iced a black mark low down on the wall just above the skirting. He thought it was mildew at first. But it was a symbol no larger than a thumbprint drawn on the grubby wall in black marker pen:
He drew out the notebook and opened it. The symbols he and Bennett had drawn were similar enough to the one on the wall to make him too interested to leave. Daniel kept quite still, imagining how Lawson might have crouched down in exactly the same spot and drawn it. He kept looking at the strange black mark on the wall, trying to find anything inside him that might make sense of it. But not a second of any of Lawson’s memories came back to him to explain if the man had drawn it or why.
Daniel started tracing the symbol on the wall with a finger, copying it over and over until he had the hang of it and could draw it with his eyes shut.
Eventually, he stood back from the wall and stared at it for a moment longer, and then he turned round to fetch Rosie.
54
‘It can’t be coincidence,’ said Daniel, holding up the open notebook against the symbol on the wall. Rosie looked from the pages to the wall and back again and nodded.
‘We need to find out for sure though. And what it means.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Let’s try again. Make the fit. See what happens.’
Daniel shook his head. ‘It didn’t feel right yesterday,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what might happen if we push too hard.’
‘You mean I’ll end up like Lawson?’
‘Or something just as bad maybe.’ Daniel shifted his feet in the dust on the floor. ‘You’ll get it all back, I’m sure you will. We’ll help my dad. And we’ll help you too.’
Rosie looked at him. But she didn’t say a word.
They inspected the walls in the pantry for more clues, but there were no other symbols or marks anywhere.
‘So? How else are we going to find out what it means?’ asked Rosie eventually, tapping the symbol on the wall with a finger.
Daniel looked at Rosie for some time, thinking everything through.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘But we stop if we feel it’s not right. Before anything can go wrong.’
But, as soon as they tried to make the fit, Rosie coughed and spluttered and Daniel felt needle pricks in his chest almost immediately. They became so painful he thought they might be drawing blood.
‘Stop, Rosie! It’s not right. It’s not working.’
‘No,’ she hissed through gritted teeth, her face tensing until it seemed to be twisting out of shape as if her skin was made of rubber. But when Daniel felt the pain in his chest become harsher he yelled at Rosie, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her until her green eyes popped open.
‘It’s too dangerous,’ he said, panting. ‘I can sense it. We can’t use the fit, not like this.’
She nodded and leant against the wall, gulping in great shuddering breaths as she tried to speak. A single drop of blood appeared at one nostril and splashed on to her chest before she had time to wipe it away.
‘I can’t . . . it’s me . . . something inside me’s definitely not working like it should.’ She drew another shaking breath. ‘But I saw something.’
‘What, Rosie? What did you see?’
‘Lawson was here. He definitely drew this symbol. There are more in the house. They’re important. Hiding things . . .’ she hesitated, ‘. . . no, protecting them . . .’ But then she shook her head. ‘No, that’s not right either.’ She brushed her fingers over the wall as if trying to feel for a clue. ‘It’s like . . .’ She paused, struggling to find the right words. ‘It’s like each one is an X that marks the spot or something like that.’
‘Are they anything to do with the flask?’
‘I don’t know.’ Rosie wiped her face. Another drop of blood appeared out of her nose and she caught it on a finger and sucked it away. Daniel watched her, saying nothing. She was calmer now, her breathing more even. She slid down the wall and crouched down and waved Daniel away. ‘I just need a minute to get my strength back.’
Daniel stared at the symbol on the wall. Touched it again with a finger. He went so close to it he could see the dirt caught in the dimples in the plaster.
‘If it means something’s here, maybe we can find out what it is.’
He put his hands on the wall and pushed as if expecting it to roll back. He knocked on it, listening for any off-key sounds that might alert him to something out of the ordinary. He knelt down and felt along the skirting board, trying to discover if it lifted away. Defeated, he sat back on his haunches for a moment and then he knelt forward to inspect the black rubber doorstopper in front of him. It had been screwed down through its rubber centre into an old floorboard secured by nails that had clearly been hammered into each corner decades ago. He gripped the stopper and tried to twist it round. But it didn’t turn.
He sat back and looked at the symbol again and then stood up and disappeared into the kitchen. Rosie watched him pick up an old silver knife from the floor and return to the pantry and kneel back down. The tip of the knife fitted the head of the screw and Daniel pushed down hard as he tried to turn it between his hands as if preparing to make a fire with a spindle. With a yelp, the screw turned and he spun it looser until the doorstop came free from the floor.
But there was nothing beneath it except for the screw disappearing into the floorboard. He was about to twist the rubber doorstop back when Rosie stopped him.
‘There’s something odd about it.’ She ran her finger over the wood the doorstop had been covering. ‘The doorstopper must be new, otherwise the wood beneath it would be a lot brighter and cleaner, wouldn’t it? And look at the screw: it’s shiny. Not like those,’ she said, pointing at the old brown nail heads, one in each corner of the floorboard. ‘Perhaps Lawson put it on?’
‘Why?’ But Rosie shook her head. Daniel bit the inside of his check as he tried to figure it out and then he screwed the doorstop back in and stood up and brushed himself down. ‘Let’s see if we can find another of those,’ he said, pointing at the symbol. ‘You said there were more. It might help.’
They went from room to room, inspecting the walls, window frames, the ceiling. They kicked away the dust from the floorboards where it had drifted into piles.
Rosie found it eventually, the same symbol as the one in the pantry, drawn in black marker pen on the skirting board in a room that might once have been a library or a study, with bare shelves lining the walls. Daniel knelt beside it, knocking on the skirting and making a hollow sound. There were old nails hammered into the wood, but he worked his fingers all the way down the top edge, trying to see if it would come away. When he felt a small section move, he pulled harder, his fingernails trying to find some purchase. He pulled again, his nails turning white, until suddenly a small section of skirting came free with a clunk, disengaging from two round magnets stuck to the wall behind it. He ran his fingers over the two other magnets fixed to the piece of skirting in his hand, observing how the old nails hammered into the front of it had been sheared off flush to the wood on the other side.
He rubbed their clean silver ends. ‘It’s supposed to look like you can’t take it off.’
‘Look! Daniel, there’s something behind it.’ Rosie reached into a nook lined with cotton wool that had been gouged into the plaster behind the piece of skirting and drew out a gold wedding band. A piece of black twine was knotted round it with a loop tied at the free end, just like a Christmas tree decoration ready to hang. Inside the ring was an inscription that read:
David and Helen Forever
‘We should go back to the pantry,’ said Daniel.
When he knelt down again, Daniel gripped the black rubber doorstop and pulled as hard as he could. The piece of floorboard came away cleanly, popping free from four magnets attached to the joists below. On its underside were four more magnets with the old brown nails sheared flush to the wood, just as they had been on the piece of skirting board that had been hiding the wedding ring.
Lying in the cavity below, between the joists on a bed of cotton wool,
was a silver–plated, rectangular box.
‘It looks like something my mum would keep her jewellery in,’ said Rosie as Daniel lifted it out. When he opened the lid, Rosie gasped and put her hand to her mouth, muffling a string of swear words. There were four wooden compartments, each of equal size, and lying in the furthest one to the left was a man’s severed finger. The nail was long and yellow and pointing at them. A tangle of black hairs covered the knuckles. Black twine was wound round the finger and a loop had been tied at its other end and hooked through a small metal clasp fixed to the underside of the lid.
Daniel placed the ring in the compartment next to the finger and hooked the piece of black twine around it through the clasp after pinching it open. Nothing happened after he shut the clasp. But Daniel wasn’t sure if anything should and he shrugged at Rosie.
‘Perhaps there are two other things to go in the box,’ she said.
‘So two more symbols, you think?’
Rosie nodded.
‘And then what? What do you think it does?’
‘I don’t know.’
55
They searched the house for more symbols, rubbing walls free of grime, pulling apart cobwebs, looking in nooks and alcoves and under the mildewed corpses of cushions and behind curtains.
Eventually, they found another one, drawn on a yellowed window cornice in a large bedroom. Daniel stood on the wooden sill of the big bay window, pressing and pulling with his fingers until he worked a piece of dirty plaster free from the magnets fixed behind it. Hidden in a hollow was a lock of blonde hair with a slim red ribbon tied round the middle in a bow, the top half of the hair above it braided carefully like a corn dolly and its bottom half left flared.
‘Lawson made all these hiding places very carefully,’ whispered Rosie as she opened the box and Daniel placed the hair inside, hooking the piece of black twine that was attached to it through the clasp on the underside of the lid.
All Sorts of Possible Page 15