‘Why?’
‘There’s something I need to show you.’
Flushed and breathless, I try to shake him loose. ‘No.’
Dad isn’t expecting resistance. I see the flash in his eyes. He refuses to let go, tightening his grip. ‘Now you listen to me—’
‘Ow, that bloody hurts.’
‘Robert!’ Mum exclaims.
He looks round at her, releasing my wrist. But his face is dark with anger. Anger or shame, I’m not sure which. Maybe a touch of guilt, too. And he should be bloody guilty, the way he just treated me.
‘Follow me,’ he says abruptly, and leaves the room.
When I stride angrily after him into the hall, Dad is already heading upstairs.
‘Up here, Catherine.’
I hesitate, then follow him.
There’s an old, dark-wood chest on the landing outside the guest room, ornately carved, gleaming with polish. My father is waiting beside it with folded arms.
I approach him warily, mistrusting the look in his eyes. I can smell beeswax from the polished chest, and a faint scent of flowers mixed with chemicals emanating from the pale-blue-and-white carpet.
Kasia has been hard at work up here too, I think.
I look down at the chest. I recognise it as having stood at the foot of my parents’ bed once. It held linen then, I recall. Neat stacks of freshly laundered sheets and duvet covers, all beautifully ironed and folded, a sachet of lavender slipped between the sheets at intervals to keep the linen scented. Mum sometimes sent me tiptoeing into their bedroom at night to fetch fresh sheets for my bed – there were embarrassingly frequent bed-wetting occasions in my childhood – and I remember lifting the lid quietly, so quietly, to avoid waking Dad, and then dragging out armfuls of clean, lavender-scented sheets.
Now the chest has been moved onto the landing for some reason. Somehow I doubt it still holds linen.
‘Open it,’ he tells me.
‘Why?’
‘Just open it.’
It’s obvious that he won’t be happy until I’ve performed this stupid little charade for him. So I kneel, feeling ridiculous, and open the heavy, creaking lid of the chest.
Inside the chest are things I recognise from childhood. Not my things though. It’s a jumble of old dolls and teddy bears, stuffed animals, toys, Christmas annuals and a few much-thumbed paperbacks. Some collections of poems, some paranormal romances and an illustrated paperback of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass. I hesitate over that, pick it up, then put it back.
‘These are Rachel’s,’ I say, and glance up at him, frowning. ‘So what?’
I try to close the lid, but his voice stops me.
‘Take another look.’ Dad’s watching me, his face unreadable in shadow, the landing light behind his head. ‘A proper look, please.’
Reluctantly, I pluck a teen novel out of the chest and flick through it. It’s one of the paranormal romances. Witches in a coven, fixing love potions or making up curses. There’s occasional red pen in the margins, too. Some kind of commentary on the text? I try to skim through quickly, not reading my sister’s angry scribble. But a few words leap out at me.
SLAG, one angry note reads, heavily circled and underlined, with five exclamation marks. Another states simply, LIAR. There are numerous scribbled doodles, too. Animals with sad expressions. Heart shapes with dark-red crosses scored through them. Then, on one page, a completed hangman picture, the dashes filled out beside it in childish capital letters.
C A T
Shuddering, I drop the book back into the chest as if it’s burning my fingers.
‘Okay, so you’ve cleared out her old bedroom at last. It was about time. What’s your point?’
Dad studies me for a moment, until I grow uneasy under his stare. ‘Catherine, please, don’t play games. It’s not funny. We both know it’s in there. You can’t pretend it’s not.’
I stare up at him, confused.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The snow globe.’ He sounds angry again. ‘You’re right, I finally got around to clearing out Rachel’s room a few weeks back. Kasia helped me sort this lot out. We threw some stuff away too. Took her old clothes to a charity shop.’ He pauses. ‘It’s something we should have done years ago. Ridiculous to hold on to it all. Like keeping a shrine.’
I look away, uncomfortable.
‘If it had been up to me alone,’ Dad continues, ‘I’d have thrown the whole lot out. I mean, what’s the point? But your mother got upset. She wanted to keep a few things at least. Personal items.’
‘So?’
‘So the snow globe is in there. I put it there myself. Bloody thing was leaking, but your mother wouldn’t hear of me throwing it out. So I wrapped it in a plastic bag.’
I glance into the chest again. It isn’t completely full. The soft toys and the stack of tatty annuals take up most of the room. But there are plenty of smaller items at the bottom. I bend over the chest and carefully move my sister’s possessions aside, one by one, searching right down to the wooden base.
There’s no plastic bag. No snow globe.
‘Well, it’s not there now.’
‘Impossible.’
I stand aside while my father bends too, searching the chest with mounting urgency. ‘Where the hell?’ He flings Rachel’s toys aside, practically emptying the contents onto the landing. ‘I don’t understand.’
I fold my arms across my chest. I want to stay calm. To be adult about this, as he had asked me to be. But my heart is beating fast, like I’ve been running, and there’s a familiar flush spreading over my cheeks.
He straightens at last, his face pale. ‘You’re right,’ he says heavily. ‘It’s not there anymore.’
‘So you were wrong,’ I say, unable to keep the hurt and anger out of my voice. ‘I wasn’t playing games.’
‘It would appear not.’
‘You could at least apologise for accusing me of lying.’
I wait for an apology.
My father says nothing, of course. He’s rigid, his brows drawn together.
‘For God’s sake,’ I mutter.
I slam the chest shut and glare round at him. I’m his only surviving child. Yet I might as well be a stranger, the amount of suspicion and uncertainty I can see in his face.
‘When are you going to start believing me for a change, Dad?’
Chapter Ten
There’s a fire engine skewed to a halt outside Gloucester Road tube station, and several police cars parked alongside it. There are no sirens, but flashing blue lights bounce eerily off glass all around the station. As I approach, I see that the entrance to the station has been cordoned off, the concourse empty except for one bearded police officer on the phone. A noticeboard has been dragged out into the street, where it’s flexing back and forth, in danger of being blown down by the wind. On it someone has written in black marker pen Station Closed Due To A Serious Incident, followed by two alternative stations within easy walking distance.
Wrapping my scarf tighter against the chill wind, I smile at the policeman, then start to trudge on towards the next station.
Inside, I’m still in turmoil. Dad denied having anything to do with that parcel. But should I believe him?
After all, by his own admission, he’s the one who cleared out Rachel’s room. He saw the snow globe, even noticed it was leaking. Perhaps he took the opportunity to play a nasty trick on me. But I know what Dominic would say if asked. What possible motivation could my father have for doing that?
Because he holds you responsible for Rachel’s death, an inner voice taunts me.
I cross the road, raising my chin.
No, I’m not going back there again. Back to my demons, to that dark place where taking my own life seemed like the only way out. That’s the person I was years ago. A ‘troubled teen’, the doctors called me, though in fact the black dog pursued me into my early twenties, too. But with therapy and medication, I managed to push beyond those horrors, and into the light again.