At breakfast the next morning, Daniel had no trouble accepting the fact that his parents had decided on the spur of the moment to take a holiday in France. He read the letter from his mother, put it to one side, poured himself a bowl of cereal and asked if he would be allowed to go skull-hunting after school. He seemed all set to carry on as if everything was still normal.
But it wasn’t.
For a start, when they got back from school, there was still no tea on the table. Although Uncle Larry had found some butter, he had failed to find any bread or even to get water out of the tap to fill a saucepan and boil the eggs. Daniel solved the water problem by explaining how the taps worked – Uncle Larry had been pushing them like a button, instead of turning the handle – but neither of them could find any bread. They must have finished the last of it at breakfast and William remembered that Friday was the day his mother usually went shopping.
‘Shopping?’ Uncle Larry tugged thoughtfully at his beard. ‘What would that involve exactly?’
‘You go to Tesco,’ said Daniel, ‘and buy all the food we’ll need for the next week.’
‘I might need a bit of help with that one,’ said Uncle Larry. ‘Do either of you know where this “Tesco” is?’
They took Dad’s car to the supermarket, and the drive was a nightmare. Uncle Larry gave a fair impression of someone who had never been in a car before in his life. You could almost see him working out where to put the key, and which pedal made it go forwards. For the first two miles, they went so slowly that they were overtaken not only by a tractor, but by a child on a bicycle and two women out jogging. It was embarrassing but, as Uncle Larry’s confidence increased and he began to speed up, it got worse.
‘Getting the hang of it now,’ he murmured, and a few minutes later was driving at seventy miles an hour, mostly on the wrong side of the road, still in third gear. Daniel sat in the back, shrieking with laughter, while William closed his eyes and prayed they would get there without killing too many pedestrians.
At Tesco’s car park, Uncle Larry parked neatly in a bay for the disabled and peered over the steering wheel at the swarms of people moving in and out of the main entrance. ‘I think you might manage this sort of thing best on your own,’ he said, reaching into his jacket for a wallet. ‘How much money will you need?’
William had no idea, so Uncle Larry gave him three hundred pounds from an astonishingly thick wad of notes, and told him to come back if he needed any more.
Daniel had never been happier. On the odd occasions he had been shopping with his mother, Mrs Seward had refused to buy anything that wasn’t already on her list. Now, however, he could put whatever caught his fancy into the trolley. In no time, it was packed with frozen pizzas, pots of chocolate trifles, cans of cola and dozens of bags of crisps. William was the one who tried to remember they might need things like bread and pots of marmalade as well.
Uncle Larry, when they got back to the car, made no protest about any of the purchases, or the price. His only concern, as they loaded the bags into the back of the Toyota, was whether they had enough to keep them from starving over the next few days.
Fortunately, while they were shopping, he had found a copy of the Highway Code in the glove compartment and reminded himself of some of the rules of the road, so the journey home was a little more sedate but, once they got there, the boys were left to themselves again.
‘Sorry about this,’ he said as he marched off down the hall to answer Dad’s work-phone. ‘Looks like more work. You can sort out a meal for yourselves, can you?’
‘This is great, isn’t it!’ said Daniel delightedly. ‘We can eat whatever we want. He doesn’t care!’
It was true that Uncle Larry didn’t worry about what the boys ate or, it later transpired, what they watched on television or when they went to bed. But it wasn’t that he didn’t care. He came out of Dad’s office several times in the course of the evening to check that they were all right and to ask if there was anything they needed. It was obvious that, if there had been a problem, Uncle Larry would have done his best to solve it, but he never told them what they should be doing. It was, William thought, as if he didn’t know.
For Daniel, it was heaven, but William was less sure. He had a feeling they should not have been left to buy their own food, to leave it unpacked in bags around the kitchen or to choose what they would eat for supper. Someone should have been there to tell them that a box of chocolates was not a proper meal, that Friday evening was when you were supposed to make a start on your homework, and that ten o’clock was not the time to start watching Resident Evil on the television.
Well, they should be telling Daniel, anyway…
The following morning, there was a postcard lying on the mat by the front door. It was a picture of a mountain, its peak shrouded in clouds, and was addressed to William & Daniel Seward under a French stamp with a smudged postmark.
William read the message, written in his father’s careful handwriting.
Hi! Just arrived and settling in. Our tent is about a mile from this peak and we’ll be walking up it this morning. Everything’s wonderfully peaceful and calm – just what we needed! Don’t forget to help Uncle Larry as much as possible. See you soon! Love, Dad.
It was the card that decided it for William, though he waited till Daniel had gone to see Amy before buzzing the intercom in the kitchen that connected to his father’s office.
‘Yes?’ Uncle Larry’s voice, when he eventually answered, sounded as if he had just woken up.
‘I need to talk to you,’ said William.
‘Now?’
‘Yes. Now.’
‘OK. I’ll be right up.’ There was a noise like someone yawning, then Uncle Larry broke the connection.
William waited and, a minute or two later, heard the sound of footsteps coming from his father’s office, then Uncle Larry appeared in the kitchen. His suit looked more crumpled than ever, and there was a button missing from the jacket.
‘Is that from your father?’ he asked, pointing to the postcard on the table. ‘Are they having a good time?’
‘I’d like to know what’s really happened to them,’ said William.
‘I’m sorry?’ Uncle Larry looked startled.
‘My parents,’ said William. ‘I want to know what’s happened to them.’
‘Well,’ said Uncle Larry, ‘if you read the postcard, I’m sure –’
‘The postcard’s a fake,’ William interrupted. ‘It takes more than a day to get a postcard from France and, even if they broke all the records, it still wouldn’t have arrived yet because the post doesn’t come till midday on a Saturday.’
‘Ah…’ Uncle Larry made a vague gesture with his hands. ‘Maybe today, the postman –’
‘Look, I know my parents haven’t gone on holiday,’ William interrupted firmly. ‘Apart from the postcard, all their clothes are still hanging in the cupboards. Dad’s walking shoes are in the porch. Mum’s got an essay due in on Monday which is still sitting on the dining-room table, half-finished. Their passports are both still in the drawer and, if they ever did decide to go on holiday, I can’t believe they’d leave us with someone who can’t drive, can’t shop and doesn’t even know how to turn on a tap. I’m not saying you’re a bad person, and Mrs Duggan says that Dad trusted you, but whatever’s going on, it’s not what you said and I want to know the truth.’
There was a long silence.
‘Well?’ said William eventually. ‘Where are they?’
Uncle Larry gave a long sigh, pulled out a chair and sat down. When he finally spoke it was in a low, rather depressed voice. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ve spent most of the last thirty-six hours trying to find out, and I still have no idea where your parents are. I wish I did, but I don’t.’
Mrs Duggan stood halfway up the hill, staring thoughtfully down at the view. The big farmhouse where the Sewards lived was over to her left, her own cottage was directly below, and all the rest was fields and woodland, with the lane winding through it down to the main road.
At the junction, she could see the tiny figures of Daniel and Amy crouching over something on the tarmac. Probably a dead animal of some sort, she thought. There wasn’t a lot of traffic on these roads, but enough to mow down the occasional rabbit or pigeon. It should keep them happy for an hour or two.
Both the view and the children, however, occupied only a tiny part of her thoughts. The deeper worry, the one that nagged like a toothache at the back of her mind, was whether or not she should tell William what she knew about his parents.
Part of her said that she should – she suspected he didn’t believe the story about them going on holiday anyway – but another part pointed out that she had promised not to say anything. And a promise to Jack Seward was not something she took lightly. Not after all he’d done for her.
And how would telling William help anyway? It might just leave him more confused than he was already. Once again, she was forced to the conclusion that the best thing was to say nothing – at least for the moment – and see how things turned out. If it looked like they were going badly off the rails, then she might step in, but in the meantime she would wait. Keep an eye on things, obviously, but wait.
Down in the valley, she could see Timber emerging from the workshop and beginning the long climb up the hill towards her. She’d sent him down to get a hammer, so they could do some fencing up by the quarry. She hoped he had the right tool this time. Yesterday, when she sent him off for a bucket of nails, he’d come back with a set of socket spanners…
‘You have no idea where they’ve gone?’ William followed Uncle Larry down the hall towards his father’s office. ‘No idea at all?’
‘Well, I have an idea,’ said Uncle Larry, ‘but even if it’s right, I don’t know why they’ve gone there without telling anyone.’ He pushed open the door and waited until William had followed him inside. ‘Have you been in here before?’
William nodded. He had been in his father’s office on several occasions, though it was not something his parents encouraged. If Dad was making a business call, people bursting in and asking questions didn’t give the best impression of professionalism and efficiency. That was why they had the intercom from the kitchen.
‘Did your father ever tell you what he does for a living?’
‘He’s a shipping broker.’ William was a little vague on the details but he knew roughly what this meant. ‘If people want something shipped or flown anywhere, he’s the one who arranges it for them.’
‘Yes…’ Uncle Larry nodded. ‘That’s the cover story.’ He stepped across the office to the desk under the window, picked up the phone, and began tapping in a number. ‘And I’m afraid the truth is going to come as a bit of a shock. Normally, I’d take a bit of time to prepare you for this, but in the circumstances I think we just have to dive straight in…’
As he pressed the final button, a section of wall on the right of the room disappeared. One moment there was a wall with a picture and a skirting board, and the next there was an opening to a space the size of a broom cupboard.
‘If you’d like to join me?’ Uncle Larry had replaced the phone on the desk and was already stepping into the space. ‘All perfectly safe, I promise.’
William opened his mouth to speak, then changed his mind and, after a moment’s hesitation, walked over to join him. As he stepped inside, the floor disappeared and he found himself dropping through empty space.
‘It’s a lift,’ said Uncle Larry, shouting so that he could be heard over the noise of William’s scream. ‘Takes us down a couple of hundred feet. Quite fun when you get used to it. There we are, you see?’
The floor had reappeared and a dazed William looked out into a large circular room with a stairwell in the centre and a series of doors running round the outside.
‘This is William,’ said Uncle Larry, stepping out into the room. ‘I’m just going to show him around, OK?’
‘Yes, of course, Larry.’ The voice was a woman’s, soft and gentle. ‘Welcome to the station, William.’
William looked round, but couldn’t see who was speaking. It was hard to tell, but the voice seemed to be coming from the ceiling.
‘If you could say something,’ said Uncle Larry, ‘so Emma can recognize your voice? She’s in charge of security, you see.’
‘Why… Where… What is this place?’ said William.
‘Thank you. Now…’ Uncle Larry pointed to the first door on their left. ‘That’s what your dad calls his pantry.’ He pointed to the other doors in turn. ‘Kitchen, wardrobe, recreation room, main reception and visitors’ suites, but the important bit… is over here.’
He walked briskly to a doorway on the far side, pushed it open, and waited for William to follow him inside.
The room was about ten metres long, wider at the far end than it was near the door, and entirely white. The walls, the floor and the ceiling all seemed to be of the same material, with no visible join where they met. It was brightly lit, though William could not see where the light was coming from, and the only furniture was a single, heavily upholstered chair by the wall on the right. Above it was a hook, on which hung a large white dressing gown of the sort provided by upmarket hotels.
In the centre of the room was what looked like a pool, set into the middle of the floor. It was circular, about two metres in diameter and the lip, made of the same material as the walls and floor, was about fifteen centimetres high. Inside, there was a milky liquid that rippled and swirled, though the more he looked at it, the more William wondered if it was really a liquid at all, and then he found that staring at it made him slightly seasick.
‘That’s where your parents went.’ Uncle Larry pointed at the pool. ‘At least I think it is.’
‘What… what is it?’ asked William.
‘It’s a Portal,’ said Uncle Larry. ‘A Star Portal.’