‘NO TIME FOR A LIE-IN,’ Tom says, bursting through her bedroom door.
‘It’s still dark,’ Lily says, pulling the duvet up to her neck.
‘Can’t you hear the drummers drumming? It’s the last day. We’ve got till four this afternoon to find the secret room.’
‘Yay,’ Lily says.
‘I’ve told you before, Lily,’ Tom says, coming so close to her she can smell yesterday’s booze metabolising through his pores. ‘Leave the sarcasm. It doesn’t suit you. You’re better than that.’
‘How are we going to get the last sonnet without Mrs Castle to spoon-feed us?’ Lily asks.
‘Bless the old coot, Mrs Castle thought of that. I went to get firewood from the store as she said, and on top of the basket of kindling was a cake.’
‘A Twelfth Night cake,’ Lily says. ‘We always used to have one.’ A sense memory comes back to her of spiced cake, dusted with icing sugar. One Christmas, Tom had found the traditional dried bean inside his piece of cake and so was crowned King of the Revels for the night. Sara had found the dried pea in hers that made her Queen. They had paraded around the house as if they’d owned it.
‘Yeah, I remembered that things were hidden inside the cake,’ Tom says. ‘So I smashed it, and there were the sonnets. Only two of them, though, as if she knew.’
Tom pulls the sonnets from his pocket. He makes sure she sees that the other pocket contains the gun. ‘I’ll read it to you,’ Tom says, ‘I saw how much you liked Gray’s recitals. Shame he’s not here.’
Dance, let’s, you and I, when we’re dead and gone,
A room that echoes with past laughter, dance
Our ghosts across the floor till we’re done in,
Again. The living will give us room, glance
Our way and shiver, never knowing why.
Death won’t be a dirge for us, we will sing
Our favourite songs and never say goodbye.
Our bones will rest, phalanges entwining
Within our tomb, while our spectres foxtrot
And watch old movies on repeat. They’ll think
The telly’s on the blink, the old clock stopped,
Taps ever dripping in a mist-filled sink,
’Cause they’re faulty, not us, being naughty,
And we thought we had fun with our bodies . . .
It feels wrong to hear those words said by Tom. He has no awareness of rhythm, no dynamics, no beauty. And that last line, said with his waggling eyebrows makes her want to run and be sick.
‘Romantic, huh?’ Tom says.
‘Who do you think Liliana was talking to in this one?’ Lily says. ‘Because it doesn’t feel like me.’
‘Aunt Lil didn’t have a boyfriend, did she? I was barely alive when Uncle Robert died so I’ve never seen her with anyone,’ Tom says.
‘It might be to my mum. It says they were both done in. Suggests their ghosts will dance here forever.’
‘What does it matter?’ Tom says, impatience cracking through. ‘Where do we look for the key?’
Lily once again – and for the last time – turns her brain to the sonnet. She smiles at “Dance, let’s”. Liliana couldn’t resist a last Bowie reference. ‘It mentions the “living”, she says. ‘And “room” in one line so it could be there. But this feels so different, a love poem to two people dancing forever together. I think this clue could be the simplest of them all,’ Lily says. ‘Where else would you dance at the Twelfth Night Ball?’
*
The clue makes Lily sees the ballroom anew. She can almost see the ghosts twirling, reflected in the mirrored walls. There’s Lily’s five-year-old self, standing on Mum’s feet, there’s Rachel with her back to them all, reading. And there’s Liliana and Mum pirouetting together when they were young. Maybe they danced here with their loves. Maybe the poem is from Liliana to her late husband, Robert. Telling him she’ll join him in a dance after her death. Or maybe it’s to someone else entirely.
‘We don’t have time for you to look at yourself in the mirror,’ Tom says. ‘Do your thing.’
‘My what?’
‘Your magic eye thing, where the clues fall into line before you.’
Lily gives a cursory look at the clue. ‘I think even you can work this one out.’
Tom flushes. He bites his lip. He’s the little boy again, the one who can’t bear to be seen as stupid. He takes the gun from his pocket. ‘You’ll tell me where to look,’ he says.
Lily wants to say that if he shoots her, he’ll never be able to find the key, or the secret room. But that would just anger him, and she’ll never know the truth if she’s dead.
‘Look in the clock. The clue says it’s stopped, so maybe the key is arresting the mechanism.’ Lily points to the ‘old clock’ hanging on the wall. She imagines a ball where it chimes at midnight, and a stunning woman in a dress half rags, half riches, runs away. She’d like to make that dress. She’d like to meet the woman.
Keeping the gun trained on her, Tom steps slowly backwards until he’s by the antique oval clock that hangs on the wall. In the silence, its lack of tocking is obvious.
Tom stares into the face of the clock. ‘The key’s here,’ he says. ‘You were wrong, it had replaced one of the hands. Not so clever now, eh?’
Lily doesn’t reply.
‘Tell you what,’ Tom says, coming over to her, his open grin stitched back in place. ‘Let’s celebrate getting the final key by having a dance.’
‘Here?’ Lily says.
‘Where else?’ Tom echoes her from earlier. He reaches for her, to pull her into his arms as he did Sara.
Lily turns away, wrapping her arms around herself.
Tom’s face turns. His jaw clenches and his eyes bore into her.
‘There’s no time,’ Lily says, quickly. ‘I need to work out where the secret room is. We’ve only got till four then Isabelle will get the house and give it to the cats.’
Tom flexes his fist. Points the gun at her head. ‘Then you’d better get to work,’ he says.