If you had stood outside Braër House and looked at it, really studied it, in the year that followed, you might not have thought that anyone was living there at all. The door remained unanswered to knocks, the curtains remained closed, the grass in the garden grew long and barbed. A windowpane at the front of the house was broken by an overenthusiastic fan who threw a stone at it. It stayed that way for months, cracked and splintered, until I eventually boarded it up with layers of cardboard.
When the final book had first been published nearly two years ago, back when Dad had been well enough to care about it, there had been an excited buzz from fans and press alike. People believed that once the last book came out, everything would slot into place and it would only be a matter of time before the treasure was revealed.
But as the months wore on and nobody was able to crack the code, the fans became disillusioned, becoming interested in other things; new fads to get their teeth into. The treasure hunt obsession began to wane, and people started to forget.
With the decline in sales came a reduction in royalties. The checks that used to come regularly from the publishers dried up, and things that we used to buy whenever we needed them became luxuries. The money I had stashed in the beech tree started to run out too, and I spent the daylight hours digging a vegetable patch in the garden, and foraging for food and firewood in the countryside. I grew potatoes and carrots, things that would sustain us over the winter, filling us up and keeping us warm.
In the spring, the trickle of money from the publishers dried up completely. I searched the beech tree for the last remaining notes, but they must have rotted along with the tree trunk, or else been blown across the garden in a winter gale. Life became even harder. I took to rummaging in bins, stealing milk left on doorsteps, taking eggs from our neighbors’ hens, hunger driving me onward.
I think Braër existed for other people only as a shell at that time, a prop where the lives of the girl and her cat had their adventures. I don’t think they believed we were actually still in there, trying to survive. We were growing smaller and smaller in their memories until eventually we shrank from their minds altogether.
On the morning of my sixteenth birthday, I could sense the box beginning to tick before I became fully aware of it, rather like a hard-to-reach itch that I desperately needed to scratch. I luxuriated in the space around me, my feet stretching in the coolness of the sheets until my toe touched the tip of Monty’s nose at the bottom of the bed. He gave a shake of his head and purred, waiting impatiently for the early morning sun to curl round the corner of the window and lick at his ears.
I closed my eyes and tried to get back to sleep. There was no hurry to get up; it was still so early. But as I lay there, my mind began to wonder what the day would bring. No longer did Dad make a special effort on birthdays. No longer did we feast together on quirky banquets laid out on the kitchen table. Dad’s appetite had shriveled up. He seemed to survive on watery tea and the apples that I had stored in the pantry from last autumn. I knew not to expect a present from him, let alone a birthday cake. I fantasized about the giant Victoria sponge Beatrice had brought for my fourteenth birthday. Even last year’s pink cupcake from Lidiya seemed far beyond the realms of possibility now.
At six o’clock, Monty and I left the box in my room to tick alone, hoping that when we came back it would have revealed a new gift, nestled on my quilt like a freshly laid egg.
Dad was already sitting at the kitchen table, a milky coffee in his hands. He smiled at me as I sat down warily, the cat winding his way around my legs.
“Now, I know you. Remind me again?”
I sighed and picked up a piece of bread, buttering it thickly before placing it in front of him. “I’m Romilly.”
His frown melted into understanding, and he nodded. I touched his coffee mug. It was stone cold. Lumps of coffee powder floated on the surface.
Dad lived now in a world of smoke and mist, lumbering through it until he strayed into a pool of lucidness, and there he would try to stay, his hands clinging to the edges of the fog to keep it at bay. Sometimes I was able to anchor him there for minutes, hours, or even days, speaking gently, reassuring him that everything was all right, but always in the end the mist evaporated between his fingers, and he would be powerless to stay, sucked back into a world of shifting thoughts and memories.
Today was a day of thick fog. I could see it swirling in his eyes.
“Yes,” he said, nodding slowly, “that’s right, we’ve met before. You’re my daughter, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
“And there’s something special about today, isn’t there?” He was looking at me quizzically. My heart leaped.
“There is,” I said, beaming.
“That’s right. Stars in their Eyes is on later, I think. Shall we check?”
I swallowed painfully. “Actually, I was thinking we could go for a birthday walk. And then—” inspiration struck me, eyeing the last remaining egg on the kitchen worktop “—maybe when we get home I could bake a birthday cake.” There might still be enough flour in the pantry, I thought hopefully, as long as the weevils hadn’t got there first.
“A birthday stroll, what a marvelous idea. Is it my birthday?” His face was childlike in his excitement.
“No, Dad, it’s mine.”
“Of course it is.” He ran his twinkling eyes over me and placed his huge hand over mine, smiling warmly. “Where shall we go, daughter-mine?”
We stomped over the fields, crossing the little bridge under which Stacey and I had found our magical brooch oh so long ago. Condensation trembled on the wooden balustrades, and my bare arms tingled from the cold morning air. In the distance, the quarry that Stacey had shown me two years ago glimmered, full after unseasonable June rain.
We made our way out onto the boardwalk that wound through the field of reeds. Far away I could see the tips of the windpump’s sails, moving assuredly in the breeze. Dad marched on ahead, stopping now and again to pick a gently swaying reed. He had developed a fascination with collecting things. At first it had been horse chestnuts, but now his pockets were always brimful of stones and leaves and snails’ shells, just like a schoolboy’s.
I caught up with him and took his arm, noticing the reeds he had collected were falling from his grasp like a trail of breadcrumbs.
“Stacey and I used to walk here when we were younger,” I said, “when we used to go exploring.” I remembered how she had purposefully stepped off the planks and into the petrol-sheened mud, grasping the reeds for support as the mud sucked at her trainers.
A line of drool hung from my father’s bottom lip. He snapped off a stalk and examined the tip of a reed. As I watched, he edged his overlong fingernails under the layers so that pale husks floated down onto the wooden planks. A piece got caught deep in his nail and a flush of blood bloomed. He didn’t seem to notice.
I pulled at his sleeve, dragging him along. “Come on, Dad,” I said, and then, when he didn’t respond, “Come on, Tobias.”
At his name, he lifted his head and smiled properly, the bags round his eyes crinkling. He took my hands in his, and I could feel the fragments of reed crushed beneath our skin as he beamed at me, nodding and smiling like an automaton.
As we walked through the village on our way back, I stayed behind, seeing him afresh. His walk had changed over the last year, the pattern of his steps imperceptibly different. He shuffled along now, occasionally stumbling as if his brain could not keep up with his feet.
It was still early, cool and peaceful. At the center of the village there was a triangle of green with a solitary oak tree grown deeply into it. Dad had stopped to pull a branch toward him, tracing the curves of the leaves, picking the best ones. It would have made a beautiful painting, I thought as I watched him silhouetted next to the tree, but he hadn’t picked up a paintbrush in nearly a year.
“Dad, this way,” I said, tugging at his arm, wanting to get home now, but he planted his feet stubbornly on the grass, refusing to move.
“Psithurism,” he said, staring upward, still pulling the branch toward him.
“Dad, come on.”
But he just carried on repeating the word, gazing at the tree. Angrily, I stalked off. I would leave him on his own. He could find his own way back. A small voice told me that he might get lost, but I shoved it aside in my annoyance and stomped up the road.
At the mailbox I paused and looked back.
“Romilly Kemp, I presume?”
A man was standing nearby. He was unnaturally tall, curving with pleasure over me.
“I’m a huge fan,” he said, standing a little too close, his voice slightly gravelly. “Do you mind if I take a picture?”
I shook my head. “No, of course not.”
He lifted the camera, and the lens flashed in the sun. Something about it dug at a long-forgotten memory.
“Thank you, dear. May I shake your hand?” Not waiting for permission, he leaned in and clasped my hand, bringing it to his lips fleetingly and kissing it. His mouth was cold and wet. I took a step back.
“Is that your father over there?”
Dad was reaching far up into the branches of the tree, smiling at something the man and I could not see. He had an armful of leaves already, chartreuse and deep green cradled like a baby in the crook of his arm, and I felt suddenly embarrassed by him.
The stranger’s hand was on my elbow, stroking it gently.
“How is he, your father?” he said, leaning toward me. “The Great Tobias Kemp?” The glint of his camera lens caught my eye again, blinding me for a moment.
“I heard he’s going a bit mad?” he continued. He was close now, close enough that I could see a tiny piece of blood-soaked toilet paper clinging to his skin where he had cut himself shaving. He ran his eyes over my body, his fingers still stroking my elbow, and in that instant, I had the sensation that my whole world was transforming, tipping onto an axis I couldn’t quite comprehend.
Desperately, I looked over to Dad, but he was still near the tree, gazing with love at the newly acquired leaves in his arms.
“Dad!” I called.
I was suddenly aware of my chest beneath my thin T-shirt, the shape so new to me that I had forgotten to put a vest on underneath. I reddened, and at the same time the man lifted his hand from my elbow, eyebrows raised as if he were asking my permission, and then he leaned forward and stroked his hand down the front of my top.
My brain refused to register what had happened. I took a step back, the feeling of his hand on me still. In the same moment, I became aware of a sort of pained whine roaring toward me like a fine-tuned missile. Dad’s bellow, as he barreled into the man, was something otherworldly, as if his soul had ripped from his body and was rushing into the very depths of the man to destroy him from within.
The force of the blow sent me off balance, and I landed heavily, banging my head on the mailbox as I went down so that everything appeared in twos. Two dads, two horrid men. Two Romillys, I thought with a drunken giggle. Falling oak leaves were spinning down all around me. I tried to sit up, but my skull felt like it had been compressed in a vise, and I laid my head back down on the cool pavement. From this angle all I could see were two pairs of ankles and feet dancing a macabre tango around me.
My eyelids closed. I could hear the soft patter of oak leaves falling nearby, and then the sudden thud of a body falling to the ground.
“Dad,” I whispered, opening my eyes and trying to see who had fallen, my voice reverberating painfully through my skull. The standing man lifted his left leg and aimed a hard kick at the lifeless body on the ground.
“My...dad,” I pleaded again. Again, the leg lifted, and again it kicked out, like some sort of clockwork device that could not work out how to stop. There was a spattering of blood on the standing man’s trouser cuff now.
I tried to raise my head again, the double vision clearing, but now blackness was pulling into my sight from every edge, and everything began shrinking down into a small circle, as if I were looking through a telescope. Dad’s face was in that circle, and to my relief he was upright, standing over the other man, pacing, muttering, his hands sweeping over his beard and his hair. There was a smudge of blood on his cheek in the same place as my mole, and I tried to reach up, to point out we were now twins, but then he turned to the wall and drawing back his fist, smashed it into the brick repeatedly, the skin of his knuckles mashing into the wall so that I couldn’t tell if it was blood or brick dust coating his knuckles. I tried to shake my head, but it would not move, and instead I found my sight locked onto my dad as he lifted his head high, looking for a moment toward the bright, bright summer sky. And then, with an ursine roar, he brought his head down against the brick, his forehead meeting the wall with a dull thud.
“Dad!” I shouted silently, the telescopic view shrinking further until I could hardly see at all, but I could still feel the sickening thump of his skull ringing in my ears. I laid my head down so that the fallen man was in my vision, still and silent on the ground, his camera shattered beside him. A droplet of blood landed on my hand, and I focused on that instead, turning away from the stranger and my dad and the pained animal sounds he was making. The drop of blood lay on my hand, quivering, and in it I could see the whole world.
From out of the shadows, dark paws emerged, padding toward me, huge and velvet.
The panther stopped by my side and slowly shook his magnificent head as if he had all the time in the world.
“Now sleep,” he said, exhaling his warm, somnolent breath over me, his damask tail twitching. I closed my eyes obediently.
“Sleep,” said the panther, melting back into the shadows, and I did.