She leaned against the doorframe. Her hair was curled and hung down in dark waves onto her shoulders, and she was wearing the blue dress she’d worn when I’d met her in the graveyard.
“What?” she said. My gloved hands fiddled by my sides. I didn’t have to hide them from her.
“Can you help me? Can you come and get the cat off of my bed?”
I knew I was fidgeting. Melody looked down at my feet, and I tried to make them stop moving. She tucked her hair behind an ear.
“Matthew? Are you scared of your cat?”
She held my gaze, and I felt the warmth spreading up my neck to my cheeks.
“No!” I said, a little too loudly. “I just, I can’t touch him. You’re good with animals, aren’t you? What with Frankie …” I looked behind her, making sure the little dachshund wasn’t going to suddenly appear and hurtle toward me. I couldn’t bear this. I wanted to go back to my room where I could talk to the Wallpaper Lion. He’d understand. He knew how dangerous it was to have a cat on your bed.
“I can’t, I’m going out with my mum now. You’ll have to ask your parents.”
I shook my head.
“No, they’re in the garden with Mr. Jenkins and Hannah. I can’t ask in front of them. Come on, Melody. Please?”
Tears stung my eyes. All I could think about were the germs on Nigel’s paws now swarming, infesting every inch of my room.
“Melody, we’re going now! Oh hello, Matthew.” Claudia was standing behind Melody in the hall. “I hear you’ve been doing some investigating, is that right?”
I looked at Melody, but she was staring at the ground.
“Erm. I’ve just been watching from the window a bit, that’s all,” I said.
“I see. Come on, Melody, get your shoes on,” she said and she disappeared into the kitchen. As soon as she’d gone Melody pulled the door closed a little and began to whisper.
“Matthew, Mum saw our emails! She wants me to go to the police station and tell them what I know about Old Nina: That you saw something in her house and saw her buying diapers.”
“What? She wasn’t buying them though.”
“I know! I tried to tell her, but she said we’ve got to be sure.”
Melody looked at her watch.
“Sorry, Matthew. I’ve got to go.”
My heart was going so fast the beats felt like a blur and the dizziness was coming back. The glass door closed and I was faced with a brown-haired boy wearing a long-sleeved blue shirt, jeans, and white latex gloves. He looked close to tears. I couldn’t bear to look at him, so I turned and walked toward the alleyway.
I passed the horse chestnut tree with the hexagonal bench and then the patch of overgrown weeds where the mermaid slept with her head resting on her arms. I carried on along the dusty path where Melody and I had walked together and found myself at the front of the graveyard near the church. I hadn’t intended to come here. On my right, standing barefoot on top of a small plinth, was a brilliant white angel. Callum’s angel. Its hands were pressed lightly together in a prayer, its mouth almost smiling. Beneath its creamy, carved feet I read the inscription:
Callum James Corbin
A beloved son and brother
A moment in our arms, forever in our hearts
23rd March 2010
I stood looking at the angel with its huge feathered wings and felt my face cooling in the light breeze as tears trickled onto my cheeks. The angel’s eyes were almost closed, its head tilted to one side, full of concern. I stared at the angel’s feet where I’d tucked the note a few months ago. There were dimples on the top of each foot showing that this angel was a child itself.
“I didn’t mean for Callum to die,” I whispered. “I wish he was here now. I really do. I would have been the best brother to him, Angel. Honestly.”
I wiped my face on my sleeve as I watched the statue praying, and then I turned and headed home.
As soon as I got home and stepped through our front door and into the hallway, I realized something was terribly wrong. A thick, damp smell hit my nostrils, and I could hear tinny pop music being played through Dad’s old radio somewhere in the distance. Mum appeared from the kitchen, Nigel brushing up against her legs.
“Matthew, where have you been? Dad wanted to talk to you about your room …”
I didn’t let her finish.
I ran up the stairs without taking my shoes off and came face-to-face with my mattress, which was propped up vertically against one wall. My bed linen was dumped in a pile, and beside that was my white bedside table, my clock and lamp still on top. Notebooks, a pot of pens, the box of gloves, and the few remaining cleaning things that had been hidden under my bed were all now on the floor next to the bathroom. The sound of the radio and Dad whistling along came from the other side of my closed bedroom door.
“Dad?” I said and I slowly opened the door. My room was unrecognizable. The frame of my bed had been moved to the middle of the room, and dust sheets covered the carpet, my desk, and the bookcase. The Harrington’s Household Solutions cardboard box that Gordon had delivered earlier was empty and sat next to the door. The stench of wet, sodden wallpaper made me want to vomit.
“What are you doing?”
Dad was standing halfway up a stepladder, holding a wallpaper steamer in his left hand. He hadn’t heard me come in, and I stood frozen in the doorway as I watched him press it against my wall. Curled vapors of smoke seeped from the edges.
“Ah, Matthew, there you are! I thought I’d freshen it up in here a bit for you as a surprise! These walls are good; I’ll get this off and then give it a couple of coats of paint tomorrow and it’ll be done.”
He lifted the steamer off and, with his other hand, scraped the paper away in one clean sweep. The yellowing strands fell to the floor in a wet shlump. He moved the steamer down the wall, and it bubbled away again like a boiling kettle.
“Stop it! Stop it, Dad,” I said, but I said it too quietly.
“Mum’s going to make up a bed in the office for you for a couple of nights,” he said loudly over the noises and the radio. “You won’t want to sleep in here with all this mess, eh?”
Behind him I could see the Wallpaper Lion was still there, cowering in his little corner. A line of sweat was seeping through Dad’s T-shirt, making a dark trail down his spine.
“B-but I didn’t want you to decorate. Why are you doing this? IT’S MY ROOM!”
I wondered if I could just push him off the stepladder and put a stop to the whole thing. He scraped off another section, and the paper peeled away like curls of soft butter.
“Don’t be silly, Matthew,” he said without looking at me. “It needs doing. And it’ll be nice and clean then, just how you like it!”
SCRAPE.
Another strand fell to the floor. Behind him the steamer was just inches away from the Wallpaper Lion’s mane. Condensation glistened across the paper and tears streamed out of his drooping eye and down his flat, wide nose. He’d always been there for me, day and night. What would I do without him? I ran to the ladder just as Dad placed the square, plastic steamer over the Wallpaper Lion’s face.
“No! Please! Take it off! TAKE IT OFF!”
He frowned down at me, his arm held still as he waited for the heat to slowly work through the layers of paint. When he turned back to the wall and released his hand, a cloud of steam escaped and, with one swift sweep of the scraper, the Wallpaper Lion was gone. A soggy curl fell down and landed on top of the mound of old paper beside me. I picked it up and desperately tried to unfurl it, but it was falling apart in my hands.
“Matthew, what are you doing? What is the matter with you?”
I began to cry.
“You don’t know what you’ve done! You’ll never, ever know! You’ve killed him, Dad. You’ve killed him!”
I ran from the room with the wet wallpaper in my hand and locked myself in the bathroom. Laying it carefully down on the floor, I pieced it together, sobbing as I tried not to damage it any further. I couldn’t make out any part of him: his mane, his flattened nose, his domed forehead. It all just looked like a slimy mess.
Dad was on the other side of the door, pounding away.
BANG, BANG, BANG!