All Sorts of Possible (19 page)

‘Cicadas,’ whispered Daniel.

‘
Seeec-ahhhh-daaas
,’ repeated Mason in some mock foreign accent and then he beamed. ‘You could come and visit once I’m settled.’ He shifted his feet on the
dirty stone floor, the dust and the grit crackling beneath his leather soles. ‘You see what I’m saying here? Find this flask and I’ll be gone, out of your lives forever.
It’ll be like I was never here.’

He turned and started walking up the steps, whistling as he went until his voice came ringing back down, telling them to hurry up or else there wouldn’t be a lift back to town.

Ashwell Lodge was set back from the road down a narrow lane with silver birch trees jammed branch to branch on either side, their trunks like dim lanterns in the shade beneath
the canopy.

Daniel and Rosie steered their bicycles over the pocked asphalt, slaloming round the potholes. As they emerged out of the copse, they caught sight of the big house in the distance. It looked
decrepit and grey like an old shoebox left out in the rain.

They pedalled over a cattle grid, buzzing their bones, and went on down the driveway. Two rabbits pricked their ears, crouching low on the warm tarmac, watching them coming closer until some
alarm sounded and they scattered into the knee-high grass, sending the feathery tops winking in the sun.

They left their bicycles lying on the driveway and walked up a set of stone steps worn thin in the middle from years of comings and goings. The front door was set back from the
circular driveway in a porch framed by two white Doric columns pocked and chipped and tinged with green.

But, when they discovered it was wedged shut with something heavy jammed behind it, they waded through weeds to the nearest bay window and jumped up on to the broad stone ledge, then clambered
through the rectangle of clean air above it, their hands hidden inside the sleeves of their sweaters.

Inside the house, the air was still and musty, and the floor crackled as they walked over more pieces of glass.

Rosie went into the hallway and struggled to pull away two pieces of timber wedged against the door until Daniel helped her, sending each piece spinning to the floor. They lifted the latch and
dragged the door open, letting in the sunlight. It looked like the floor was steaming with all the dust that rose from it.

When Rosie wiped her hands on the wall to try and clean them, plaster spilled from tiny cracks. ‘So?’ she asked, standing in the doorway with the sun warming the back of her neck.
‘Anything?’

Daniel took out the notebook that Bennett had bought from the kiosk in the park a few days before and scanned what his friend had written down.

‘One of Lawson’s memories was about being in a stately home with a big, winding staircase when I tried with Bennett.’

‘Was that about this place?’ asked Rosie, pointing at the large staircase.

‘Maybe. I don’t know. It was just a jumble of stuff that came out.’ He held open the notebook for Rosie to see what Bennett had written down. She scanned Bennett’s
scribbled notes and descriptions. When she saw the symbol he had tried to draw and then Daniel’s attempts to redraw it more accurately, she put her finger against the page and traced the
shape because it looked so odd, like a small child’s crude sketch of a bomb or maybe a goldfish with a triangle for a tail.

‘Do you want to try again now?’ she asked. ‘See if you remember anything else?’

‘OK.’ Daniel closed the notebook and took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He thought, first, about the house, picturing how it had looked when they had ridden up the driveway. He
listened to the creak of the door on its hinges, the sunlight ticking in the walls around them. He inhaled the dusty air and smelt the damp and the mildew. He stood silently for some time to see if
anything came to him. But nothing did. Eventually, he opened his eyes. Shook his head.

‘It’s like Lawson’s memories have already burned themselves out,’ he said.

He stood beside Rosie in the sunshine, looking out at the driveway, scanning it for any clue that might help him remember something. But nothing came to him. ‘Let’s have a scout
around,’ he said eventually. ‘It might help me. We might find something useful.’

Rosie kicked out at a ball of hair and dust being sucked out of the front door and on to the steps in a draught. ‘Daniel, I’m worried about what the chemo’s done to me. That
the gift I had . . . that now it’s broken somehow.’

‘Is that how it feels?’

Rosie nodded. ‘And what if it’s not temporary? What if I don’t know how to fix it?’

‘All your other side effects are supposed to be, aren’t they? The nausea? The tiredness?’

‘Yes.’

‘So we have to assume this one is too.’ Rosie looked so drawn and tired he kept staring at her, wishing for her to feel better. Her pale cheeks glowed green and yellow in the bright
sunshine.

‘Tell me I don’t look
that
bad?’ she asked.

‘OK. “I don’t look
that
bad.’”

Rosie smiled and punched him gently in the chest. ‘You’re a funny guy. I’ve taken my anti-emetics. I’ll be fine. The bike ride took a bit out of me, that’s
all.’

‘So do you feel like walking around, to see if we can find anything?’

‘Sure.’

Rosie grabbed his arm to stop him marching off. ‘Daniel? About what happened with your dad before my chemo.’

He looked at the floor. Drew a wobbly line in the dust with his trainer, even though he was trying to draw it true and straight.

‘What about it?’

‘Do you think we can really help him?’

‘Yes. I don’t want to think anything else.’

Rosie nodded. ‘Good. Because I didn’t want to think I’d let you both down.’

‘You didn’t, Rosie. Not one bit. As soon as the effects of your chemo wear off, we’ll try again.’

They wandered around the ground floor, moving from room to room as silent as thieves, planting footprints in the dust, which rose in little twisters, worrying their ankles.

There was a grand fireplace in the living room, with the carcass of a dead pigeon arranged in a nest of its own feathers in the hearth. Daniel studied a line of graffiti spray-painted in red on
the wall above the mantelpiece. But they were random letters that he could not make any sense of at all. A white enamel pot full of grey water sat in one corner. The wallpaper above it had peeled
away from the damp plaster into tiny curls as tight as wood shavings. When he kicked the pot, it made a dull chime.

‘Daniel!’ shouted Rosie from another room, and he turned and ran without even thinking.

‘Someone’s been living here,’ she said, placing a foot on the mattress and testing the springs.

Daniel kicked out at some empty biscuit wrappers and trod down on a spent carton of orange juice, sending the blue plastic top skittering across the floor like a tiny puck.

‘I’m not sure there’s anyone here now,’ he said. He went to the white sink where a large rust stain had spread from the plughole. He tried the taps and the pipes groaned.
The odd red drop of water fell and that was all. ‘Can you imagine living here?’

‘Yeah, it could be a brilliant house.’

‘I mean with it like this.’

‘Things would have to be pretty bad, I guess.’ She kicked the mattress and sent up a cloud of dust. ‘I wonder how
that
feels.’ And only when she grinned at
Daniel did he smile back.

When Rosie started to cough, she put her hand against the wall to steady herself and waved him back. ‘Dust. It’s just the dust.’ But she went on coughing for some time, her
face turning whiter and her green eyes shining even more electric. ‘I guess the bike ride took a bit more out of me than I thought,’ she said.

While Rosie rested in the sun, Daniel drifted from room to room, waiting to see if any glimmer of one of Lawson’s memories came to him. He lingered on the large
staircase, keen to see if he remembered anything about it, but nothing came back to him.

When he found a small room on the first floor with a desk and a swivel chair on casters, the seat made from cracked red leather, he sat down and looked out of the window in front of him, which
overlooked a large, overgrown garden. He placed his hand in the dust on the desktop as though trying to locate some connection with the place. When he lifted up his arm, his palm was blue and furry
and the print in front of him was perfect. It started him thinking how big a handprint his father’s hand would have made, but he stood up before he fell too far into himself and slapped his
hands together to clean them.

Daniel examined the kitchen like a potential house buyer, scrutinizing the state of things. In the musty light, he saw cupboard doors sagging on their hinges, a stack of
newspapers swollen by the damp, tarnished knives and forks scattered over the floor. A headless wine glass stood on the worktop, the bowl beside the broken stem, lying on its side like some
diaphanous bloom shed an age ago.

He twisted a brass doorknob and discovered a pantry, lined with empty shelves furred with cobwebs. Nothing else.

But as he turned to leave he noticed a black mark low down on the wall just above the skirting. He thought it was mildew at first. But it was a symbol no larger than a thumbprint drawn on the
grubby wall in black marker pen:

He drew out the notebook and opened it. The symbols he and Bennett had drawn were similar enough to the one on the wall to make him too interested to leave. Daniel kept quite
still, imagining how Lawson might have crouched down in exactly the same spot and drawn it. He kept looking at the strange black mark on the wall, trying to find anything inside him that might make
sense of it. But not a second of any of Lawson’s memories came back to him to explain if the man had drawn it or why.

Daniel started tracing the symbol on the wall with a finger, copying it over and over until he had the hang of it and could draw it with his eyes shut.

Eventually, he stood back from the wall and stared at it for a moment longer, and then he turned round to fetch Rosie.

‘It can’t be coincidence,’ said Daniel, holding up the open notebook against the symbol on the wall. Rosie looked from the pages to the wall and back again
and nodded.

‘We need to find out for sure though. And what it means.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Let’s try again. Make the fit. See what happens.’

Daniel shook his head. ‘It didn’t feel right yesterday,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what might happen if we push too hard.’

‘You mean I’ll end up like Lawson?’

‘Or something just as bad maybe.’ Daniel shifted his feet in the dust on the floor. ‘You’ll get it all back, I’m sure you will. We’ll help my dad. And
we’ll help you too.’

Rosie looked at him. But she didn’t say a word.

They inspected the walls in the pantry for more clues, but there were no other symbols or marks anywhere.

‘So? How else are we going to find out what it means?’ asked Rosie eventually, tapping the symbol on the wall with a finger.

Daniel looked at Rosie for some time, thinking everything through.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘But we stop if we feel it’s not right. Before anything can go wrong.’

But, as soon as they tried to make the fit, Rosie coughed and spluttered and Daniel felt needle pricks in his chest almost immediately. They became so painful he thought they might be drawing
blood.

‘Stop, Rosie! It’s not right. It’s not working.’

‘No,’ she hissed through gritted teeth, her face tensing until it seemed to be twisting out of shape as if her skin was made of rubber. But when Daniel felt the pain in his chest
become harsher he yelled at Rosie, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her until her green eyes popped open.

‘It’s too dangerous,’ he said, panting. ‘I can sense it. We can’t use the fit, not like this.’

She nodded and leant against the wall, gulping in great shuddering breaths as she tried to speak. A single drop of blood appeared at one nostril and splashed on to her chest before she had time
to wipe it away.

‘I can’t . . . it’s me . . . something inside me’s definitely not working like it should.’ She drew another shaking breath. ‘But I saw something.’

‘What, Rosie? What did you see?’

‘Lawson was here. He definitely drew this symbol. There are more in the house. They’re important. Hiding things . . .’ she hesitated, ‘. . . no, protecting them . .
.’ But then she shook her head. ‘No, that’s not right either.’ She brushed her fingers over the wall as if trying to feel for a clue. ‘It’s like . . .’ She
paused, struggling to find the right words. ‘It’s like each one is an X that marks the spot or something like that.’

‘Are they anything to do with the flask?’

‘I don’t know.’ Rosie wiped her face. Another drop of blood appeared out of her nose and she caught it on a finger and sucked it away. Daniel watched her, saying nothing. She
was calmer now, her breathing more even. She slid down the wall and crouched down and waved Daniel away. ‘I just need a minute to get my strength back.’

Daniel stared at the symbol on the wall. Touched it again with a finger. He went so close to it he could see the dirt caught in the dimples in the plaster.