He’s so lost to it. His fingers move faster and faster, his whole body seems just an extension of the piano, and he’s not scrunching himself up, or trying to hide, he’s not moping or glowering or waiting for bad things to happen – he’s just there, playing like it’s the only thing in the world . . . and so it is, for a while.
The last note rings out for a long time after he finishes. I watch as all the things come back in to bother him, as his eyes flick to the sky outside, watching for danger, and then to the door, and finally to me.
‘The rift!’ he says. ‘We keep getting distracted.’
‘Yeah,’ I say, giving myself a little shake. ‘Let’s find the rift.’ I trace a pattern on the dusty wooden floor with my toe as he goes around blowing out candles, and a fine line appears beneath my feet, crossing the floorboards.
‘Hey, look!’ I whisper, bending and uncovering more of the line. ‘It’s a trapdoor!’
‘It’s not a trapdoor.’ He kneels next to me. ‘I never noticed a trapdoor in here!’
‘Maybe there was a rug over it before,’ I say.
‘It’s probably just a fault in the wood.’
‘How do we open it?’ I ask.
‘It can’t be a trapdoor,’ he protests, poking around anyway, looking for an opening.
I shove the table back to get more space, and as I shove it, the floor he’s inspecting begins to rise. He jumps back with a shout, and I can’t help but grin.
‘Behold the trapdoor,’ I say grandly, with a bit of a bow.
‘Well, but it’s not the rift,’ he says, bending and looking into the darkness. ‘It looks like the pantry to me!’
‘What?’ I dart forward, and peer into a small, dark room, a chink of light along one side revealing shelf after shelf of bottles and tins and jars, industrial-sized bags of tea and sugar, and great sacks of potatoes on a rough stone floor. ‘Why would anyone have a trapdoor to a food cupboard?’
I look up at him, outraged.
‘I guess it’s as good a place as any to hide, if there was an emergency,’ he says, his eyes sparkling. ‘Plenty of food and nobody’d know you were there.’
‘Who needs that many potatoes, anyway? There’s only three of you.’
We peer down for a while. My stomach rumbles treacherously; it’s been a long time since lunch.
‘Come on,’ he says, finally, sounding a bit reluctant. ‘We’d better just close it, before Aoife finds us.’
‘But I’m hungry – let’s do some foraging!’ I scramble over the edge, dropping down into the pantry. It’s a longer drop than I thought it’d be, to be honest, and the stone floor is a hard landing. ‘Oof!’
‘Angel!’ he hisses, reaching down. ‘Get out of there!’
‘It’s incredible!’ I whisper. Like being in a treasure cave, only instead of gold and jewels, it’s full, ram-packed with every kind of food. Shiny foil packages, paper bags with tiny labels, bottles that wink in the light. I realize I don’t actually recognize most of it. I’ve no clue what semolina is, and desiccated coconut sounds pretty awful. There are various sorts of mouldy-looking sausage stacked in one corner, and right in front of me the most enormous tin of black treacle, oozing darkness – I guess that’s a favourite in Aoife’s cooking.
Bavar is still hissing at me overhead. I tune him out and keep scanning; surely there’ll be biscuits here somewhere. But before I can find them, there’s a mumbling noise from the other side of the pantry door. The latch starts to lift. I grab it, stopping it getting any further and hushing up at Bavar, who looks like he’s about to explode.
‘Onions, onions,’ comes Aoife’s voice. ‘Oh, this blessed door!’ There’s a thump against the wood, as if she’s kicking at it. I realize I’m trapped; I can’t let go of the latch or she’ll catch me here.
I look up at Bavar with a grimace. He disappears.
Well.
That’s less than helpful.
What am I going to do now?
‘AOIFE!’ comes a great roar through the house.
The latch stops wiggling.
‘What’s he roaring about?’ comes her muffled voice, footsteps heading away from the pantry.
‘Come on,’ pants Bavar, appearing again at the trapdoor. ‘Quickly! She’s on her way now – nobody else is allowed in her pantry!’
‘Well, you roared at her,’ I say, grabbing at a bag of something as I climb up the shelves and let him pull me out. ‘So of course she’s coming.’
‘What did you want me to do?’
‘I don’t know. I think I’d have thought of something better than that.’
He pulls a face as I scramble up, and shoves the table back, watching closely as the trapdoor closes. ‘Well, I wanted to make sure. I don’t want her to know about this; it might be useful, for midnight snacking purposes . . .’ He looks down at the bag I grabbed on my way up. ‘I mean, who doesn’t need instant access to dried mushrooms?’
Now he’s laughing.
We’re back in the old, central part of the house, up towards the eaves, when Aoife finally catches up with us. We’ve been hurrying away from her footsteps for the last few minutes, and I don’t even really know why, but somehow the idea of her trying to find us is a lot more funny than it should be. Especially when Angel does an impression of her rushing around like a chicken.
‘Bavar! There you are!’ she clucks, when she finally runs into us, wiping her hands on a floral apron, looking for all the world like a flustered hen. ‘What was all that shouting about?’
‘Oh, we were just having a look around, and I wanted to show her how the sound travels . . .’ My voice trails off and I look at Angel desperately, trying to keep my face serious.
‘How sound travels?’ Aoife demands, looking between us with bright eyes. ‘I thought there was an emergency!’
‘It was my fault,’ says Angel, clearing her throat and refusing to look at me. ‘I challenged him. Didn’t think anyone would hear us from so far away! He was just giving me a tour, really – being polite . . . And anyway, he says this is the old bit, the original house, and everything else came after . . . It’s all so fascinating.’
Aoife narrows her eyes. ‘I’m making dinner,’ she says, looking us both up and down. ‘Ten minutes.’
‘OK,’ I say, shifting back up against the wall.
‘Way to look suspicious, Bavar!’ Angel whispers as Aoife makes her way down the stairs with a backward glance.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Did you never have to lie before?’
‘Uh . . . no.’
‘Well, it shows. You should practise.’
‘It was all your “fascinating” rubbish that got her suspicious!’ I protest.
‘Ah, whatever,’ she says. ‘Quick, let’s try in here first, before dinner.’ She gestures at the next door and marches to it, shooting me a look. ‘What’s dinner going to be exactly?’