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I open the front door and step outside and the cool wind brushes my face, almost caressingly. As I stand looking out into the darkness, it’s like I can hear the pulse of everything out there. I remember the Prayer Tree and all those names and scratchings, every one of them with their own story, and I wonder where they all are now. Is Bro
I’m about to go inside when I notice that at the bottom of the steps of the House is my bike, which had disappeared from behind Ha
When I walk back inside, I pass the common-room and I find myself looking for a bible. Matthew, chapter ten, verse twenty-six. Whatever is now covered up will be uncovered and every secret will be made known. I wonder where such a message belongs amongst the Bro
I go to sleep thinking of Ha
“Was I shouting?” I ask, my voice croaky.
“You were crying.”
“The whole time?”
Jessa shakes her head. “Your mouth was moving but nothing was coming out,” she says.
“What was I saying?”
Raffaela shrugs. “I’ll get you some water.”
She leaves the room and Jessa sits on my bed. After a moment or two I know that she’s worked out what I was mouthing.
“Taylor,” she says quietly, confused. “You said that your mother wants to come home.”
Chapter 10
I’m dreaming. I know I’m dreaming because I’m in a tu
Thoughts of my mother begin to consume my every moment and they sweep me into an overwhelming feeling of bleakness and a desperate need for Ha
“They’ll take you away from me,” she’d say. “They’ve done it before.”
But I didn’t want my name changed. It was all I had.
The cat is no more settled than when I brought him home but I refuse to let him go. Sometimes I head to Ha
“I’ve been in that void,” she told me once. “Don’t you ever give in to it.”
But I want to give in to it sometimes, only because I’m tired and the feeling that I’ve had for a while—that something is hunting me down—becomes all-consuming and I’m frightened that one morning there will not be enough to keep me going. Except maybe the pages I’m holding in my hands. They comfort me, these characters, like they’re my best friends, too. Like Jude felt when he returned that second year and they were waiting for him. Give me a sign, I keep on saying to whoever can hear me in my head. Give me a sign.
But most of the time I wonder how much Ha
I find some chapters to read that seem intact. I’m ru
Just when I’m about to work out a sequence of pages, I hear a window smash and I jump. I had locked the front door on purpose. Because Ha
Quietly I crawl to the hole in the floor and peer all the way to the bottom. I see nothing but shadows and hear nothing but the sounds of breathing. I want to call out but something frightens me into silence and I sit and wait. Listening. I hear the heavy sound of footsteps on the wooden stairs as they make their way to the second floor. My heart is rattling uncontrollably. I reassure myself that nothing out here can be too frightening but I’m anxious all the same.
There seems to be nowhere to hide except under the stretcher bed in the middle of the room. The space beneath it is tiny, but I squeeze myself under and take a deep breath and then there’s total silence. From where I’m lying, I can see half the manuscript sitting on the floor. The other half’s with me. I reach out my hand until it aches, trying to touch it to drag it over, but as I do, my shoulder lifts the stretcher bed above me. I drop my arm and the stretcher bed hits the floorboards. Suddenly the footsteps begin again, slowly ascending.
Whoever it is has reached the second landing. I can imagine them standing there, looking up at the hole in the ceiling, taking hold of the ladder—one step, two steps, three steps, four. And there it is. The back of a head appears through the trapdoor but I can’t quite make out who it is. He lifts himself up and then crouches to pick up the pages on the floor and I know what his next step will be. To turn around and look in the only place there is in the room to hide.
I know it’s the Brigadier. I know because of that thumping sound inside of me and the only option I have, apart from being caught, is to lift the stretcher bed across my head and just throw it. Quietly I roll up the papers in my hand and stick them down my jeans and I get ready. The footsteps come closer and the boot stops right in front of my nose. I can hardly breathe but I need to move. Just do it, I tell myself. Just do it and bolt!
“Are you okay under there?” I hear him ask. He uses a soft tone, like he’s trying to entice me out with the good-guy approach. But good guys don’t smash windows to get into someone’s house and good guys don’t freak me out as much as this man does.