Bennett’s little sister had rubbed her eyes red. Her pale face was still puffy. Every now and then, a breath crackled in her chest as she sighed and her lips wobbled.
‘At least she’s stopped crying,’ said Bennett, popping the top off a cold beer and handing it to Daniel. ‘It was a drama.’
‘What was?’
‘The death.’ Bennett looked at Daniel and before he could say anything else a little voice piped up.
‘Chester isn’t dead,’ squeaked the little girl as she studied the shoebox which she was busily painting gold. ‘He’s just in a different place. Like your dad, Daniel.’
‘Who’s Chester?’ asked Daniel.
‘Where’s Chester seems to be the more relevant question.’
‘Chester was our friend. He’s in heaven. He was a good guinea pig.’
‘You remember him, Daniel. About so high. Nice coat of hair. Partial to dandelions.’
Daniel nodded. Sipped his beer.
‘I’m sorry to hear that, Lola.’
‘That’s OK. I just wasn’t expecting it. It was such a shock.’ She sighed and picked up the shoebox and dabbed the paintbrush at a couple of spots. ‘I must feel exactly like you do.’
Bennett chinked his beer bottle against the one Daniel was holding.
‘To your dad. And to Chester.’
Bennett took a swig from his beer and the bottle fizzed. Daniel nodded and took a sip of his own too.
‘How’s Amanda?’ he asked.
‘Healing. Like the others. I think you need to keep clear of my brother for a while though.’ And they were silent for several moments. ‘I’m sorry about what he said,’ said Bennett eventually.
The late afternoon sun was still very hot. The beer bottle was strung with cold beads. Daniel rolled it across his brow to keep cool and then he took a large mouthful. And then another.
He took out the golden flask and sat it on the garden table between them and then told his friend everything that had happened, as always.
By the time he had finished, all that was left of his beer was a warm golden disc in the bottom of the bottle.
Bennett picked up the flask and studied it, turning it round. He jiggled it up and down. ‘So there’s nothing left?’
Daniel shook his head. Bennett unscrewed the top and looked inside with one eye, like peering into a microscope. Eventually, he screwed the cap back on and put the flask down on the table.
‘It’s yours,’ said Daniel. ‘To replace your hip flask.’
Bennett nodded a thank you. ‘So tell me again what happened after the sinkhole, before you found your way out.’
‘I thought I was going to die.’
Bennett necked the last of his beer and didn’t take his eyes off Daniel. ‘Go on.’
Daniel shifted in his seat. The sun was like a lamp in his face. ‘I asked for help.’
‘Who did you ask?’
‘Anyone who was listening.’
‘And do you think someone was?’
Daniel watched as Lola knelt beside the flower bed further down the garden, digging a hole with the trowel, the faint chiming of stone on metal as she scooped and her shoebox a golden brick on the grass beside her. And then Daniel shook his head.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if that’s what matters.’
Bennett nodded. ‘We need more beer,’ he announced. He scraped his chair back and headed towards the kitchen door.
‘When’s your mum back?’ shouted Daniel.
‘Not for ages yet,’ hollered Bennett as he disappeared inside.
Daniel sat there, trying to convince himself he didn’t need to pee. But his bladder throbbed all the harder. He sighed because he was perfectly warm. Through the buzz of the beer, he could hear a breeze lifting the leaves in the trees.
He stood up and walked over the grass to the nearest bush, passing like a ghost through a cloud of midges. He stood watching the patch of hard earth turn a darker brown. A waxy foam bristling and popping in the sun.
He looked up when he heard Lola laughing and applauding. And, when her feet thundered over the hard lawn towards him, Daniel zipped up quickly and stepped out, almost colliding with her.
‘Oh, thank you, Daniel,’ she cried out loud, hugging him. ‘Thank you.’ Before he could ask, she was pulling him across the lawn to the grave she had dug. The garden moved a little quicker than him and he stumbled and he knew he was drunk. Lola’s hand was sweaty and covered in grains of dirt. Suddenly, he remembered the time he had spent hidden away from the rest of the world. A dark shadow passed across him and he shivered.
‘There! Look!’ shouted Lola, clapping her hands and beaming, then pointing and dancing a jig. Daniel looked down and saw the creature stumbling over the grass, like a wind-up toy. It was breathing fast in the heat.
‘He wasn’t dead,’ explained Lola. ‘Chester wasn’t dead!’ she shouted as Bennett walked smartly over the grass with two bottles, each capped with a nipple of white foam. He started laughing when he saw Chester picking up speed. He handed a beer to Daniel and clinked it and drank.
‘What happened, Lola? Did you do magic?’ asked her brother.
‘No,’ she said as if her brother was stupid. She took out the golden flask from her skirt pocket and handed it back to Daniel. ‘I just filled it up with water, Daniel, from the garden tap. I did think it might be magic because it looked so pretty.’
When Daniel looked up, Bennett was staring straight at him. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Chester panting in the heat.
Lola slipped her hand into his and pulled him down to her eye level and kissed him on the cheek.
‘But Mummy’s gonna be mad if she knows you’ve been drinking.’
She put her finger to her lips as the gravel crackled and a car stopped out of sight in the driveway. Bennett tossed the bottles end over end into the hedge, tracing arcs like Catherine wheels spun off their posts. They told Lola that Chester had fallen into a coma, just like Daniel’s dad, but had woken up. And she nodded back, saying it all made sense, and told them that magic was made up anyway.