Rebecca nods, apparently satisfied. ‘Jasmine, I think? Sometimes I can smell it, when the wind blows the right way. Didn’t I say so, Rupert?’ She raises her voice. ‘JASMINE.’
‘Oh, I like jasmine,’ says my great-uncle, from the next portrait, looking up. ‘Always liked jasmine. Good to have, when you’re keeping watch at night. Soothing, I always thought . . .’
I nod at him and bare my teeth at both of them in a sort-of smile before hurrying Angel away.
‘Why did you do that?’ she demands, looking back at them. ‘They were still talking!’
‘If we stop to hear all their stories, we’ll never get anywhere,’ I tell her. I don’t tell her that they remind me of other times, when my parents were here, and of how things have changed, how lonely it all seems in this place now. ‘We should keep going; it won’t be long before Aoife starts looking for us.’
‘OK,’ she says, breaking away from me and running to the ornate fireplace at the end of the room and inspecting it closely, pressing at the flowers carved into the pale marble.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Maybe this is the door . . . maybe if we find the right button . . .’
‘They’re not buttons; they’re flowers!’
She ignores me and runs her fingers over the mantelpiece, standing on tiptoes to reach it.
‘Angel . . .’
‘Ah!’ she exclaims, turning to me with a smile, pulling on something just beneath the ledge. ‘Found something!’ The fireplace shudders, and there’s a violent grinding sound as it begins to swing around. ‘I knew it!’ she grins, as a dark void opens up where the fireplace stood, dust and old plaster raining down around us. ‘I knew it would be a fireplace!’
I pull her back, my chest thudding, and I realize I still haven’t thought this through properly. I didn’t think we’d really find it. What if there’s suddenly a great void to a monstrous alternate universe? What if we get sucked in?
‘Oh,’ Angel says, peeking around me. ‘That doesn’t look right . . .’
‘It’s Uncle Sal’s office!’ Bavar turns to me, panicking. ‘Quick, get back – how do we close this?’ He looks around desperately.
I’m a bit gutted to be honest. I was imagining some fiery hellhole, not more paisley carpet and an old wood desk.
‘Angel, where’s the lever?’ He starts flapping about between the rooms, looking for the marble ledge that swung back into the darkness, his hair sparking with static.
‘Calm down!’ I say, peering through the gap to the study. ‘He’s not even in there.’
‘He might come back any minute!’
‘So what?’ I demand.
‘He’ll be furious; there’ll be all sorts of shouting. I don’t know what he does in here, but whatever it is he won’t want us poking around!’
‘But we found a secret doorway, Bavar! We found a revolving fireplace! I mean, you didn’t know this was here, did you?’
‘No . . .’
‘So stop worrying and let’s do this! Who knows where it might lead us.’ I squeeze past him, ducking down until I’m into the study. Rows of shelves stretch to the ceiling, full of books, and between them sit smoky old snow globes and strange copper gadgets that wink in the light of an angular lamp. The desk is overflowing with old ledgers and papers full of spidery handwriting. ‘I mean, I don’t know, you could spy on him!’
‘I think that would probably just be really boring,’ Bavar says, scrunching down low before emerging next to me. ‘He’s writes academic papers about stuff, I don’t know, I never really listened . . . We really should get out of here before he comes back . . .’
‘But some of the stuff in here is really interesting. Look, here’s some kind of compass thing.’ I peer down at the round copper paperweight balanced on a stack of tightly written sheets. There’s a round green gem glittering in the middle. ‘Ooh, look!’
‘Don’t press it!’ Bavar slaps at my hand, but it’s too late – the copper thing pops open with a noise like a banshee scream. I clap my hands to my ears, and Bavar picks it up, poking and prodding at it.
‘Make it stop!’ I shout.
He gives me a murderous look and claps the thing between his hands. The awful noise stops. After a moment he opens his hands warily, and a bunch of tiny golden springs fly out, ricocheting around the room.
‘Oh my goodness,’ he says. ‘We broke it.’
‘You broke it!’ I giggle.
‘I don’t know why you have to press every button you see,’ he says, but his mouth twitches, and I’m pretty sure he’s trying not to laugh.
‘That’s the whole point of exploring,’ I say. ‘Finding stuff, pressing it, finding more stuff, dodging flying springs . . . What is that thing, anyway?’
‘Some kind of personal alarm—’ He breaks off, tilting his head. ‘Quick!’ he hisses, balancing the copper thing back on the pile of papers. ‘I can hear footsteps!’
‘I can’t!’ I protest, as he drags me back through the gap between rooms. ‘Bavar, wait – what about all the little springs?’
‘Too late for that! Where’s the catch?’ He starts fumbling around. ‘Angel – where is it? How do we close this thing?’
‘It’s just there.’ I step forward, gesturing to the mantelpiece, now hidden by the shadows.
He reaches out, but it was a bit fiddly even for me, and I realize his hands are far too big – he’ll never manage it. I step in, pulling at the little lever, and we jump out of the way as the fireplace begins to swing around again. The noise is fairly impressive, but finally the whole thing settles and the ballroom looks pretty much like it did before.
‘Well, that was exciting!’ I say.
Bavar stares at me.
‘He’s going to know we were there. We broke the alarm. He’ll find all those springs on the carpet.’
‘I’m not sure about that; it’s pretty chaotic in there,’ I say. ‘And I’m not sure the alarm was working properly anyway – was it meant to scream like that?’
‘Probably not,’ he concedes.
‘Can’t do much about it now, anyway. Unless you want to go back and tell him what happened?’ I gesture at the fireplace. ‘I mean, it might be worth it for the look on his face when we burst through the chimney!’
His mouth twitches again.
‘He’d be cross.’
‘I don’t know why you’re scared of him – he’s about the size of your knee!’
The words come out a bit high because I’m trying not to laugh, and then they echo around the room unnaturally and I realize the people in the portraits are repeating me, their shoulders shuddering with laughter. Bavar stares around at them, and then looks down at me.
‘What have you done to this place?’ he asks. His eyes are brighter than I’ve ever seen them, and I realize that maybe, just maybe, he’s even beginning to enjoy this, just a little bit, in spite of all his panicking.
‘Livened it up a bit.’ I grin. ‘That’s all. You shouldn’t worry so much. Didn’t you ever do anything naughty before?’
‘Not really,’ he says.
‘Why?’
He shrugs. I stare at him.
‘Just didn’t,’ he says. ‘There wasn’t anyone here to be naughty with. And my parents were pretty fierce.’
‘Oh.’ I swallow. I wonder what it was like, and imagine two grown-up Bavars, both as brooding as he is. It must’ve been pretty intense.