At the thought of that water, Lottie tried to swallow. If she hadn’t dumped it out, she’d have something to drink. Now there was no telling when she would be given some water, some apple juice, or even some soup to make the cat’s fur in her mouth go away.
It was Breta’s fault. Lottie’s mind struggled to hold on to the thought rather than sink into the blackness again. It was all Breta’s fault. Dumping out the water was just the sort of thing that Breta would do. It was something naughty; it was something unplanned.
She always thought she knew everything, Breta did. She always said, “You want me for your best friend, don’t you?” So when Breta said, “Do this, Lottie Bowen,” or “Do that right now,” Lottie obeyed. Because it was special to be someone’s best friend. Best friend meant an invitation to a birthday party, someone to play let’s pretend with, giggles in the night on a special sleep-over, postcards on holidays, and secrets shared. Lottie wanted a best friend more than anything in the world. So she always did what it might take to gain one.
But perhaps Breta wouldn’t have dumped out the bucket of water at all. Perhaps she would have peed in front of him, peed into the octopus mouth that he’d set on the floor, peed and laughed in his face while she did it. Or perhaps she’d have taken the time to search for something to use once he’d gone away. Or perhaps she wouldn’t have worried about using anything at all. Perhaps she’d just have squatted by those wooden boxes and made a mess. If Lottie had done any of that, she’d have water to drink now. It might be dirty water. It might be brackish. But at least it would make the cat’s fur in her mouth go away.
“Cold,” she murmured. “Thirsty.”
Breta would demand why she was staying on the floor if she was cold and thirsty. Breta would say, This isn’t exactly a camping trip, Lottie. So why’re you acting like it is? Why’re you being so goody good good?
Lottie knew what Breta would do. She would hop to her feet and explore the room. She would find the door that he had entered by and left from. She would shout. She would scream. She would bang on that door. She would force someone to notice her.
Lottie felt her eyes close. They were too weary to fight against the black all round her. There was nothing to see anyway. She’d heard the sounds that told her he’d locked her in. There was no way out.
Which was, of course, something that Breta would never believe. She’d say, No way out? What a twit! He came in. He went out. Find the door and break it down. Don’t just lie there whinging, Lottie.
Not whinging, Lottie thought.
To which Breta would say, You are. You are. What a baby you are.
Lottie pulled the blanket closer to her. The damp spots from the spilled water made clammy patches against her legs. She pulled her legs up, pulled herself into a ball. She tucked her hands into fists and buried the fists beneath her chin. She pressed the fists against her throat so she wouldn’t have to feel how thirsty she was.
Baby, she could hear Breta mock her.
“Not a baby.”
No? Then prove it. Prove it, Lottie Bowen.
Prove it. That was how Breta always got what she wanted. Prove you’re not a baby, prove you want to be my friend, prove you like me better than anyone else, prove you can keep a secret. Prove, prove, prove, prove. Pour all of the bubble bath into the tub and let it run over so it looks like snow. Nick your mother’s best lipstick and wear it at school. Flush your knickers down the loo and run about the rest of the day without them. Pinch that Twix for me…no, pinch two. Because best friends do stuff like that for each other. That’s what being a best friend is. Don’t you want to be someone’s very best friend?
Lottie did. How she did. And Breta had friends. Breta had dozens and dozens of friends. So if Lottie was going to collect friends as well, she was going to have to be more like Breta. Which is what Breta had been telling her from the very first.
Lottie pressed her hands against the bricks and raised herself. Dizziness came at her like a swell on the sea. She brought her knees up so that only her feet and her bottom were still touching the floor. When the dizziness passed, she got to her feet. She swayed, but she didn’t fall.
On her feet, she didn’t know what to do. She took a hesitant step forward in the black, her fingers flipping like a bug’s antennae. She shivered with the cold. She counted her steps. They inched her forward across the floor.
What was this place? she wondered. It wasn’t a cave. It was dark like a cave but a cave didn’t have a floor of bricks and it didn’t have a door. So what was it? Where was she?
Hands stretched before her, she came to a wall. The shapes upon it and the texture of those shapes were familiar to her, something she’d felt already. Bricks, she realised. She shuffled along the wall like a blind mole. Her hands moved against its surface, first up, then down. She was looking for a window—walls generally had windows in them, didn’t they?—a boarded window that offered a crack through which she would peer.
Isn’t going to be a window, Lottie, Breta would have said as Lottie patted and searched. You’d see cracks of light through the boards and there’re no cracks of light so there isn’t a window and you’re being a twit.
Breta was right. But Lottie found the door. The wood of it was scratchy and musty-smelling, and she felt up it and down it, seeking the knob. She twisted this to no avail. Then she pounded. And she shouted. “Let me out! Mummy! Mummy!”
There was no response. She pressed her ear against the wood but heard nothing at all. She pounded upon the door another time. She could tell by the dull thudding her fists made against the wood that the door was very thick, like a door of a church.
A church? Was she in the crypt of a church?
Where they stuff dead bodies? Breta would have laughed. And she would have made ghost noises and flittered round the room with a sheet on her head.
Lottie cringed at the thought of bodies and ghosts. She picked up the pace of her exploration. She thought, Out, out, out. Got to get out. And she crept along the wall till she bumped her sore knee.
She winced but didn’t moan or cry out. Instead, her fingers reached out to find what she had bumped. More wood, but not rough like the crates. Her fingers raced over it. It felt like a board. It was two hands wide. Above it was another board the exact same width. Below was a third. A fourth seemed to run diagonally up the wall, the width of it fixed against the bricks….
Stairs, she thought.
She pulled herself up them. They were awfully steep, more like a stepladder than stairs. She had to use her hands as well as her feet. As she climbed, she remembered a day trip to Greenwich and the Cutty Sark and climbing into the ship on stairs just like these. But this couldn’t be the inside of a ship that she was in, could it? A ship made of bricks? It would sink like a stone. It wouldn’t float for a second. Besides, if this was a ship that she was in, wouldn’t she feel the sea beneath her? Wouldn’t the floor rock? Wouldn’t she hear the creak of wooden masts and smell the salt air? Wouldn’t she—
Her head bumped the ceiling. She gave a yowl of surprise. She crouched. She thought about stairways that led up to ceilings—instead of to landings, where a door could be pounded on—and she knew that stairs didn’t go up to ceilings without a purpose. There had to be a door, didn’t there, a trapdoor perhaps, like in the barn at Granddad’s, where you climbed a ladder to get into the loft.
Her palm reached blindly for the ceiling above her. She finished her climb with greater care. She traced her fingers on the ceiling, moving outward from the wall. She found what felt like a trapdoor’s corner, cut into the wood. Then another corner. She moved her hands away from these, trying to centre them. Then she gave a push. Not a fierce one because her arms were feeling all tingly and peculiar. But it was a push all the same.
She felt the trapdoor give. She rested and then tried another push. The door was heavy, like a weight sat on top of it so she couldn’t get out, so she would stay in her place, so she wouldn’t be a bother to anyone. Like always. That made her lo
se her temper. “Mummy!” she called. “Mummy, are you there? Mummy! Mummy!”
No answer. She gave another push. Then she crawled up and used her back and her shoulders. She heaved once as hard as she could and then twice more, grunting the way she heard Mrs. Maguire grunt when she moved the fridge to clean behind it. With a creak, the trapdoor opened.
Dizziness and weakness fled in an instant. She’d done it, she’d done it, she’d done it herself. Even without Breta here to tell her how.
She climbed into the chamber above her. It was dark like the one below it, but unlike the other it was not pitch black. Some three feet away, what looked like a blurry ebony rectangle was edged with a shimmery kind of soot grey. She picked her way to this rectangle and found that it was a recessed window, thickly boarded over but not so completely that no light filtered in along the edges. That was the shimmery grey she saw: the nighttime darkness outside, broken up by the moon and the stars, in contrast to the solid wall of gloom inside.
In the shadows and aided by the shimmery grey light, Lottie could make out shapes, even without her specs. A pole stood in the centre of the room. It was like a maypole she’d seen once on the green in the village near her granddad’s farm, only ever so much fatter. Above it a thick beam stretched across the room and above that beam, barely visible in the murk, what appeared to be a huge wheel hung on its side, like a flying saucer. The maypole shot up to meet this wheel and extended beyond it, disappearing into the darkness above.
Lottie edged to the pole and touched it. It was cold. It felt like metal, not wood. And knobby metal, like it was old and rusty. It had sticky goopy stuff round its base. She squinted above, trying her best to make out the wheel. It seemed to have huge teeth cut into it, like a giant gear. A pole and a gear wheel, she thought. She curved her arm round the pole and considered what she’d found.
She’d seen the insides of a clock once, a clock from the mantelpiece in Granny’s sitting room, curved like the shape of a wave. Uncle Jonathon had given it to Granny for her birthday, but it hadn’t worked properly because it was an antique. So Granddad had taken it apart on the kitchen table. It was made of wheels that fit into other wheels which together with the first wheels made the ticking work. All those little wheels were shaped like this one, with teeth.
Clock, she decided. A gigantic clock. She listened for the ticking. She heard nothing at all. No ticking, no tocking, no movement of gears. Broken, she thought. Just like the mantelpiece clock at Granny’s. But unlike the mantelpiece clock at Granny’s, this was a huge clock. A church clock, perhaps. A tower clock standing proudly in the centre of a square. Or a clock in a castle.
The thought of castles took her in another direction. To dungeons with cells. To firelit rooms that were filled with sprockets and gears, toothed wheels and spikes. To prisoners shrieking and leather-masked gaolers demanding they confess.
Torture, Lottie thought. And the fat pole she clung to and the giant wheel above it took on a new meaning. She dropped her arm and backed away from the pole. Her legs felt rubbery. Perhaps it would have been better not to know.
Suddenly, cold gushed up from the floor and swirled round her knees. Then a loud whump seemed to bounce from the walls in the room below her. Silence rushed in to replace the cold, followed by a metallic scrape.
Lottie saw that the square in the floor through which she had climbed now shone with a bobbing light. Rustling sounded next, someone moving below her in heavy clothes. Then a man said, “Where the…” and the wooden crates on the floor below began to bump and creak together.
He thought she’d escaped, Lottie realised. Which meant that there was a way to escape. And if she could keep him from knowing she’d found the stairs and climbed them, if she could keep him from knowing she’d located the trapdoor, then once he went in search of her, she could find that escape route and escape for real.
She slipped across the room and lowered the door quietly. She sat on it and hoped her weight would hold it closed if he tried it.
Through the cracks in the floor, she could see the light get brighter. She could hear his heavy tread on the stairs. She held her breath. The trapdoor rose a quarter of an inch. It lowered, then lifted a quarter of an inch again. “Shit,” he said. “Shit.” The door lowered once more. Lottie heard him descend the stairs.
The light went out with a scrape. The outer door opened and then thunked closed. Then it was quiet.
Lottie wanted to clap her hands. She wanted to shout. She forgot all about the cat’s fur in her throat and instead she swung the trapdoor up. Breta could not have done any better. Breta could not have fooled him so well. In fact, Breta would probably have hit him in the face with that bucket and run for her life, but Breta would never have thought to outsmart him, to make him think she’d run for her life already.
It was dark below, but the dark didn’t frighten Lottie this time because she knew it was so close to being over. She felt her way down the stairs and scooted towards the wooden crates. That’s where her exit route was, of course. The crates hid an opening that was just Lottie’s size.
Lottie set her shoulder against the first of them. Wouldn’t Breta be surprised to hear of this adventure? Wouldn’t Cito be amazed that Lottie had prevailed? Wouldn’t Mummy be proud to know her very own daughter had—
A sudden clank of metal.
Light arced in her direction like a swinging fist.
Lottie spun around, hands balled at her mouth.
“Daddy’s the one who’s getting you out of here, Lottie,” he said. “You’re not doing it yourself.”
She squinted. He was all in black. She couldn’t see him, just the shape of him behind the light. She lowered her fists to her sides.
“I can get out,” she said. “You just see if I can’t. And when I do, my mummy’s going to get you good. She’s in the Government. She puts people in gaol. She locks them in the Scrubs and she throws away the key and that’s what’s going to happen to you. You just wait, you.”
“Is that what’s going to happen, Lottie? No, I don’t think so. Not if Dad tells the truth like he should. He’s a prize, is Dad. He’s a class-A bloke. But no one’s ever known that, and now he has the chance to show his stuff to the world. He can tell the real story and save his little sprog.”
“What story?” Lottie asked. “Cito doesn’t tell stories. Mrs. Maguire tells stories. She makes them up.”
“Well, you’re going to help Dad make one up. Come here, Lottie.”
“I won’t,” Lottie said. “I’m thirsty and I won’t. You give me a drink.”
He placed something on the floor with a snick. His toe moved it into the light as well. The tall red Thermos. Lottie took an eager step towards it. “That’s right,” he said. “But after. After you give Dad some help with his story.”
“I’ll never help you.”
“No?” He rattled a paper bag that was somewhere out of the light. “Shepherd’s pie,” he said. “Cold apple juice and hot shepherd’s pie.”
The cat’s fur was back, thick as ever on the roof of her mouth and clear down her throat. And her stomach was empty, which she hadn’t really noticed before now. But when he’d mentioned shepherd’s pie, her insides went all hollow like a bell.
Lottie knew she should turn her back on him and tell him to go, and if she hadn’t been so thirsty, if her throat had been able to manage a swallow, if her stomach hadn’t started to rumble, if she hadn’t smelled the pie, she surely would have done so. She would have laughed in his face. She would have stomped her feet. She would have screamed and yowled. But the apple juice. Cool and sweet and after that the food…
She marched into the light, in his direction. All right. She would show him. She wasn’t afraid. “What am I s’posed to do?” she asked.
He chuckled. “How very nice,” he said.
8
IT WAS AFTER TEN in the morning when Alexander Stone rolled to the edge of the king-size bed and peered at his digital alarm clock. He gazed at the red numb
ers in disbelief and said, “Hell,” when their significance finally soaked into his brain. He hadn’t awakened when Eve’s own alarm sounded on her bedside table at the usual hour of five. Nearly two-thirds of a bottle of vodka—downed between nine and half past eleven last night—had seen to that.
He’d sat in the kitchen to do his drinking, at the small square table in the inglenook overlooking the garden. He’d mixed the first tumblerful of vodka with orange juice, but after that he’d taken it straight. He’d been twenty-four hours into what he’d started calling the Truth at Last, and among knowing the truth, wondering if the truth had anything to do with Charlie’s whereabouts as Eve so fervently believed, and trying to avoid a consideration of what his wife’s actions and reactions implied about that truth, he felt pretty much paralysed. He wanted action but he had no idea what kind of action was called for. There were too many questions pounding inside his skull. There was no one in the house to answer them. Eve would be at the Commons embroiled in debate until after midnight. He’d decided to drink. To drink to get drunk. It seemed at the time the single best means of obliterating the knowledge he could have gone the rest of his life without possessing.
Luxford, he thought. Dennis Fucking Luxford. He hadn’t even known who the bastard was before Wednesday night, but since that time Luxford and Luxford’s intrusion into their lives had been dominating his thoughts.
He sat up warily. His guts churned in uneasy response to a change in position. The furniture in the bedroom seemed to undulate queasily, partly as a result of the vodka still unabsorbed in his body, partly as a result of having yet to put his lenses into his eyes.
He reached for his dressing gown and eased himself to his feet. He swallowed a throatful of sickness down and made his way to the bathroom, where he turned on the taps. He looked at his image in the bathroom mirror. The image was blurry without his lenses in, but its most outstanding details were clear enough: the bloodshot eyes, the haggard face, the skin that seemed to be surrendering to a gravitational pull that had been encouraged by ten hours of drink-induced unconsciousness. I look like dried shit, he thought.