They searched the house for more symbols, rubbing walls free of grime, pulling apart cobwebs, looking in nooks and alcoves and under the mildewed corpses of cushions and behind curtains.
Eventually, they found another one, drawn on a yellowed window cornice in a large bedroom. Daniel stood on the wooden sill of the big bay window, pressing and pulling with his fingers until he worked a piece of dirty plaster free from the magnets fixed behind it. Hidden in a hollow was a lock of blonde hair with a slim red ribbon tied round the middle in a bow, the top half of the hair above it braided carefully like a corn dolly and its bottom half left flared.
‘Lawson made all these hiding places very carefully,’ whispered Rosie as she opened the box and Daniel placed the hair inside, hooking the piece of black twine that was attached to it through the clasp on the underside of the lid.
‘There must be one more to find,’ he said. But, when Rosie started coughing, Daniel took hold of her greasy white fingers and held them until she had stopped. ‘Let’s take a break,’ he said and led her downstairs.
He dragged the mattress they had found into a room that was full of the most sunshine.
They sat for some time – in what might have once been a dining room – watching the golden spokes of sunlight drop lower through the windows as the day drew on. The house seemed to grow colder little by little, like some newly dead creature with the heat fading from it. Daniel dozed and when he woke up a shaft of sunlight had lanced the wall beside him, like a spear just dodged.
Rosie slept too, on the mattress, stretching her legs out in front of her when she woke up. It seemed to Daniel that she was disintegrating when she moved, sending up little streamers of dust all around her.
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘Nothing,’ he replied, trying to flush the thought about her from his mind.
‘Liar. You’re going red.’
‘I was thinking about my dad. That I haven’t been to see him today.’
Rosie picked out a tiny green burr from her hair and studied it, rolling it between her finger and thumb, wishing she had found the seed for her tumour. ‘Would talking about him help?’
Daniel sighed. ‘I’m not sure it would.’
Rosie flicked the green burr away and nodded. ‘You’re right.’ She drew up her legs and hugged her knees, resting her chin in the groove between them. ‘Tell me something funny instead.’
Daniel looked at her to see if she was serious. And she was. Nodding at him to go ahead.
‘You know what people say behind my back at school? That I’m the person in the year least likely to succeed, that I won’t be anybody at all. Ever.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Ask Bennett. It’s written on the wall of the ground-floor bogs if you don’t believe me. Last cubicle down. On the left-hand wall. Someone took a crap and thought of me.’
‘Daniel,’ deadpanned Rosie. ‘That’s hila-rious.’
‘It’s the best I could do.’
‘OK then, get this. My dad is officially an asshole. We’re in debt up to here.’ And she put her hand above her head, ‘mortgaged to the hilt because of some cowboy investment that went wrong. So now, even though he’s a doctor, my mum works three jobs to pay the bills and put enough food on the table. It means I feel guilty every time I need something new to wear, which is every few months because it seems like somebody’s still putting Miracle-Gro in my socks or shoes or my bra. All our family manages to do is get by. We survive.’
‘So do lots of people, Rosie.’
‘Yeah, but the point is we never used to have to.’
Daniel nodded. ‘Well that, Rosie . . . is . . . hyst-eri-cal.’
Rosie stared at him. Her eyes blazed as she tried to keep a straight face, but she couldn’t and ended up punching the mattress to let it all out. ‘Do you think it’s supposed to be this hard?’ she asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you think we’ve been doing something wrong?’
Daniel shrugged. ‘I don’t think it’s us.’
‘Then why’s it so damn tough?’
Daniel picked at a blackened knot in the floorboard beside him. ‘Maybe that’s not the right question.’ He looked up at Rosie and shrugged. ‘One of the doctors told me I should only be thinking about the “what” not the “why” when we were talking about dad. He said I should focus on figuring out who I want to be, whatever happens, because it’s impossible to know why things turn out the way they do.’
And Rosie thought about that.
‘So who do you want to be, Daniel?’ she asked eventually.
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I think I’m still figuring it out. I guess I’m waiting to see what happens next.’ He rubbed his face because he didn’t want to cry. But he missed wiping away a tear and it splashed down on to the front of his hoodie, darkening over his heart. ‘But I do know I don’t want to be left on my own. That I don’t want Dad to leave me here all by myself.’
‘You won’t be alone,’ said Rosie. ‘There’s Bennett. There’s your aunt. And I’ll be here too. I promise.’ He watched her stand up and then slump down beside him, laying her head on his shoulder.
When she looked up at him, he felt goosebumps flicker on his arms and legs. Her eyes were shining like wet pebbles. She smelt of apples and sunshine and talc and dust. In the gloaming, her face seemed to be moving and breaking apart and he gripped her harder, fearful she might fade away. ‘You can’t make a promise like that, can you? That you’ll be here.’
She kissed him on his cheek and snuggled in close. ‘No, you’re right, I can’t. But I promise I’ll stay with you for as long as the world lets me.’
‘It’s more than that, Rosie. You need to make sure you stay here to do all the things you want to in your life.’
They held on tight to each other in silence for some time, as the grainy evening fell around them like a curtain being lowered.