‘I read people’s stories, not every single thought. Although sometimes your thoughts are easily readable,’ she said, stepping closer to me in the darkness. We kissed again because, well, any opportunity.
A small door at the end of the hall, which resembled something you might find at the front of a gnome’s house, required both of us to contort ourselves in equally undignified fashion in order to gain entry. Your average attic, where Christmas lay in hiding for eleven months of the year, was illuminated by the milky glow of the moon through half-size windows. Dustsheets covered unknowable shapes, and a cheval mirror at the end of the room reflected another young couple entering the room from a similarly tiny door. I recalled a book I had found at the bottom of a bargain bin in a charity shop near Camden. Something about the memories of buildings and how the walls are infused with them. They never forget, what we, as mere mortals, misplace. I hadn’t thought of it since, until now.
‘There’s a note,’ Martha said, picking up an envelope with her name on it.
Martha, I have played many different characters in other people’s stories. Your story was my favourite and this chapter shall be your finest yet. In order for something to exist, you must first believe in it. Invite your heart to see what your eyes cannot. Follow your path and bring the scholar, I like having him around.
B.
‘Is that her handwriting?’ I asked.
‘Her?’
‘Yes. Madame Bowden.’
‘I don’t think Madame Bowden is the person we thought she was.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
She put the letter down and breathed in deeply, before smiling to herself. ‘You never left at all, did you?’
I waited for a moment and looked around the small attic space. Who was she speaking to?
Truth be told, I felt a mixture of things. Glad to be there with Martha/stupid for hoping that something otherworldly would happen/useless because I clearly had no idea what we were doing. I had done all of the research, but Martha seemed to be able to just feel her way, instinctively. It was like that song ‘The Whole of the Moon’.
‘I spoke about wings. You just flew.’
‘Is that a poem?’
‘No, it’s a song,’ I said, taking her hand. I could not be in the same room and not be close to her. ‘It’s about the moon and this guy who’s an idiot and a girl who just … knows everything.’
‘Sounds just like us!’
‘Exactly. I knew you’d like it.’
She put her arms around my neck and we stood there, shuffling a dance with no music.
‘This isn’t all too weird for you, is it?’ Her words came out muffled as she spoke into the shoulder of my woollen jumper.
‘If it was, I would have said so when the tree started growing out of your flat.’
She snorted, which made us both laugh.
‘I feel like I’m in a dream,’ she said and I concurred. But dreams had a habit of ending. I decided, quietly, that our dream would be different.
‘There’s another door!’ She broke free of my arms and rushed to the far end of the room.
On closer inspection, there was indeed another door. It was exactly where I thought the cheval mirror had stood, with our reflections inside. I blinked slowly. Nope, it was a door. No mistaking it.
‘How are we supposed to see where we’re going?’ I asked, after about thirty seconds of following her blindly in the dark. We were inside what felt like the eaves of the house.
‘You’re not. You just have to trust me.’
‘But you don’t know where you’re going either?’ I panted, now half crouched as I’d just whacked my head on a roof beam.
‘You once asked me to trust you and you don’t see me moaning about it,’ she needled.
I kept quiet for another minute or so, until it felt as though we were going upstairs.
‘Just checking that you’re aware of ascending, despite being in the attic.’
‘I’m aware.’
She reached back and patted the side of my head. It did not help matters.
‘You remember the book, how it talks about an upside-down stairway?’
I did remember it, but I thought it was some kind of sweet fairy tale for kids, not a map for … what exactly?
‘Yes, but, you don’t really believe we’re going to find the bookshop?’
Her voice seemed to be getting farther away. ‘You can’t find something that was never lost!’
Great. Even Martha was speaking in riddles now. That was Madame Bowden’s influence. And where the hell was she? There was no time to think logically, as the passage grew narrower and I could feel the skin on my hands being scratched.
‘Is now a good time to mention that I’m claustrophobic?’ I announced, as casually as I could, bravely omitting to comment on the fact that the stairs seemed to be taking us downward now, in a tight spiral.
‘I think these are the roots of the tree. Don’t you?’
Of course they are, I muttered to myself. I mean, it made perfect sense if you had just taken some sort of Class A drug. Or if your last name was Pevensie and you had just stumbled into a wardrobe full of fur coats. I suddenly became very aware of my own thoughts – this constant stream of ridicule. As Martha pointed out, wasn’t I the one who had walked straight into the bookshop on my first night here? Yet I had immediately dismissed it as some kind of drunken mirage.
My mind wouldn’t let me believe. Martha suffered no such resistance and I decided that if I could not necessarily believe, I could at least believe in her.
‘The soul of the night turned upside down.’
‘Sorry?’
‘That line from the book. It said that you have to trust you will end up exactly where you’re meant to be.’
‘I feel like I already have,’ I said, but I wasn’t sure if she heard me. No sooner had I spoken the words than I saw a literal light at the end of the tunnel. My heart began to race.
Chapter Fifty-Five
OPALINE
Dublin, 1952
‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul – And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all –
I let Emily Dickinson’s poetry book fall on to my lap and spied the stained-glass windows of the shop, the colours of which now painted the image of a bird and an open cage. I made a kind of pact with the universe that if I kept the door to my heart open, one day my little girl would walk through it. In the meantime, I found an occupation that created the illusion of doing something to bring that day ever closer. I began writing a book. A children’s book. A Place Called Lost. I knew there was a strange kind of magic in these walls. Maybe not the kind you’d find in travelling shows or under the big top, but something far subtler than that.
I began to switch off the lights, lingering over the task. I had an undefinable sense that something, or someone, was close. Someone I knew. Someone I loved. But I couldn’t trust it. Wouldn’t. Even when I heard the knock on the glass door, I didn’t turn to look. Couldn’t face the disappointment of being wrong. I placed my hands on the desk and let my weight lean against it, squeezing my eyes shut. My heart was disobeying my mind and without consciously making the decision, I turned around.
He was there.