It was only by the end of the second day of kitten ownership that I managed to shake Dad off, creeping back to hide in my bedroom, the little cat on my shoulder. I shut the door quietly so as not to let Dad know where we had gone. I needed to show Montgomery something secret. In the middle of my bedroom, concealed beneath my bed, was a special floorboard. Below it, in the small dark vacuum, were my favorite things: a musty snail’s shell, a rusty bolt with a star-shaped end that I’d brought from our old house and my most treasured possession—a shiny yellow coin that I had found three days ago in the middle of the meadow, which might or might not be real gold. It had a funny-shaped man’s head on one side, and he was wearing a crown a bit like Jesus. I put the coin between my teeth and bit down on it like I’d seen pirates do, but my tooth, which was a bit wobbly, shot with pain. I spat the coin back into the hole and sat, tonguing the tooth so that it spun-danced in my mouth. Montgomery, growing disinterested, squatted nearby, releasing a flurry of wee that trickled into the cracks between the floorboards.
Later, in the slumbering twilight hours of my bedtime, when my tired mouth could no longer accommodate the syllables of my new kitten’s name, Montgomery was shortened down to Monty, and then just Mont. I held him close and inhaled his buttery smell.
I lay back, eyes half-closed, listening hard for the battalion of soldiers that left the meadow at night to keep their march on the stairs. Their marching tonight was soft, as if their feet were clad in slippers. They condensed into one soldier, a bearded, paint-covered soldier that melted into the form of my dad as he sat on the edge of my bed.
“Sorry for hiding,” I mumbled, turning my cheek so it nestled into the soft corduroy of his leg. I felt his hand on my head. It was big and heavy. I liked it.
“Your hair is awfully tangled. It feels like a bird’s nest.”
“I’d quite like a bird to nest in my hair.”
“Then we shall leave it be. What story shall I tell you tonight, daughter-mine?”
“The one about the Rabian Nights.”
Dad’s stories were full of color even though he never had any pictures to go with them. You could smell the hot spicy night air and the sweating horses as they galloped across the sand. Mont jumped from my neck and landed with a soft thud on the bed. As he began the story, Dad ran a hairy finger along the length of Monty’s tiny spine, exploring the kitten’s bones as he spoke of strange fruits and spiky plants, turbaned men and glittering jewels. I closed my eyes and I was there, a bearded man with tattooed skin and dark eyes swooping in at me amid a cloud of fragrant air.
Dad leaned forward and kissed me, first on my forehead, and then on the little mole on my cheek. He left me dozing quietly, my mind on flying carpets and dancing snakes. When he had gone, I opened my eyes and scooped Monty up, wrapping him round my head like a turban, his tail covering my face. My finger inched its way under the floppy skin of his belly to stroke the soft bump of the mole on my cheek, and the light beyond Monty’s fur flickered out as my eyelids closed.
Chapter Two
“It’s done in oil paint. I thought I might sell it,” Dad said, his hand gently stroking the thick swirls of the painting he had unearthed from one of the bedrooms, as if he could manipulate the long-hardened brush strokes. “This is where we are now,” he said, pointing to a tiny line of black far up at the top left of the painting.
“What’s that?”
“It’s the roof of Braër House.”
“And are we in that house too?”
“A version of us is,” he answered, putting me down on the floor.
“Is it the version where Mum still lives with us?”
Dad stared at the little roof in the painting.
“Is there a painting like this one in that Braër?” I continued, unperturbed.
“Yes,” he said finally.
“And which version of me is looking at it?”
“The version that doesn’t ask so many questions.”
I wondered if there was a version of me that didn’t ask questions at all. It must be a very boring one.
“How old is Braër?” I asked.
“Oh, hundreds of years old. Many, many families have lived here before us. Probably families with children at some point too.”
I nodded, thinking of a doll I had found in a tattered cardboard box on our first day here. It was missing its hair, and its head and all of its limbs were lying in a mangled heap. I wondered who had taken it apart. They might be grown-up now: a famous surgeon, or someone who solved murders by studying dismembered bodies.
Dad’s stomach gave a sonorous rumble. “It must be lunchtime,” he said, patting his belly affectionately and looking around for a clock.
“I’m not hungry,” I said, catching sight of Monty as he trotted past the door. I left Dad studying the painting and wandered into the dining room to look for the kitten. The day before, I had found a really useful hiding place behind the dining table. The wall down near the carpet was crumbly and appeared to be made of hair. Thinking of dead bodies and mummified cats, I had pulled at the hair, hoping for at least a fossilized baby. Instead, a great lump of wall came partly away. I had put my hand in the hole and felt around. The ground inside the wall felt all rough and cold. When I pulled my arm out, my hand and sleeve were black. I had since discovered an old bottle of nail polish in the upstairs bathroom. It smelled of pear drops and made my eyes water. I was on the hunt for a good hiding place for it. Forgetting Monty, I got down on my knees and inspected the hole again. It was blacker than I remembered. If I screwed my eyes up, I could almost see spiders in it, tumbling about, spinning their sticky webs.
Disappointed, I carried my little bottle outside instead. It had rained in the night, and everything sang with the drip of water. I looked out over the straggly remains of the ornamental yews bordering the herb garden, and felt especially small and alone in such a grand space. It was a huge house for just Dad and me, and I glanced back inside, wondering whether to call out to him, to ask if he’d like to come and play. But Dad, I knew, was busy, and so I stepped gingerly forward, into the unknown.
The unknown, it turned out, was wild and wet, and my trainers soon became woven in soaking grass stems. I swept through the garden, admiring my new green shoes, and stopped briefly to gaze into the moat.
I could sense the gargoyle watching me from the top of the fountain even before I looked at him. He was small and crouched like a monkey, perched in the middle of the moat on the fountain’s broken remains. I studied the mischievous leer on his face, trying to decide if he was friend or foe.
When we had arrived, a month before, we had unloaded our suitcases into the garden and sat on the bank, dipping our weary feet in the cool of the moat.
“Don’t ever go in the moat without me, Romilly. Do you understand?” Dad had said, his toes sifting the pondweed that coated the surface. “Water can be very dangerous.”