It was the funeral that afternoon. People would be coming back to the house after the burial. A few old friends. A couple of distant cousins. No religious service though. Grandma hadn’t believed in any of that.
“If there is a God, Claire,” she’d said, “then he isn’t in the churches. He doesn’t speak through them. No, when you find wickedness in this world, don’t look to anyone else to save you from it. You have only yourself.”
Now she was dead and Claire was sent running upstairs to fetch chairs. People would need somewhere to sit as they sipped their drinks and ate their sandwiches. As they laughed too loudly, saying what a shame it always took a death to bring them together like this.
She found a bentwood chair on the landing. It was light as a feather, so she took that down first.
“Any more?” said Claire’s mum, sounding fussed and distracted. Looking tired, and puffy-eyed. “Try Grandma’s bedroom.”
She didn’t hear Claire’s sharp intake of breath. Had no time anyway for a daughter who might not want to go into the room where Grandma had died just a week before.
“Hurry!”
So there she was, standing outside Grandma’s bedroom door, feeling unsteady and afraid. She had to take a deep breath before she could turn the brass knob and push open the door into the wide silence of the room.
Heavy lace curtains filtered only a very little light through the bay of the window, but Claire could still see, just.
There was the big bed, so high off the ground that Grandma had needed a stool to climb in. A chest of drawers to one side, at the right height for a mirror. A small clock, still ticking. A hairbrush, strands of Grandma’s long dark hair caught in it. A pillbox. A jewellery case, already lightly covered with a talcum of dust. And on the other side of the bed, a heavy looking carved oak chair with Grandma’s silk dressing gown still tumbled over it.
“Claire! What are you doing? I need those chairs now, not next week!”
“Coming! I’m coming!” She hurried to pick up the dressing gown, breathing in as she did, an echo of the sharp smell that was Grandma. And it was then that she uncovered it. An emerald-green box, resting on the seat of the chair and shimmering softly in the half light.
She dropped the dressing gown onto the bed, then hunkered down on her heels so she could get a better look. It wasn’t very big. As long as her hand, and a hand’s length deep. And when she plucked up the courage to touch it, it was as smooth as glass under her fingers.
It was unexpectedly light. It almost seemed to float in her hands. She turned it this way and that, looking to see if there was any clue as to what it might be. There was nothing. It wasn’t decorated at all, except for a faint line marking the edge of the lid. She looked closer. There was an oval etched deep in black, just at the place you’d expect a keyhole to be. And etched inside the oval, a crocodile’s head resting on the palm of an outstretched hand. She knew at once that it was some sort of hieroglyph. She’d seen writing just like it at the museum.
Giving the box one last look and quite forgetting about taking the chair, she tumbled down the stairs, breathless, thinking, I’ll ask Mum about it later. When everyone’s gone. Maybe she’ll know what it is.
But maybe she wouldn’t ask, because Claire’s dad had come to the funeral. Uninvited. Looking like a stranger in his charcoal-grey suit and black tie. And her mum had got very emotional when he’d said, “Let me take them back home, Jill. Give you some space.”
Them being Claire and her little sister Michaela. Micky for short.
“Space,” she’d shouted at him, loud enough for everyone to hear. A split-second’s uncomfortable silence, then a crescendo of embarrassed chatter. “I thought you were the one who needed that… to, what was it… find out who you really are?” Her face was drained of colour. Her hands clenched so tight her knuckles showed white. “Well I know what you are. You’re weak and selfish. No, you can’t have them. Their home’s here, in their grandmother’s house. It’s my house now and they’re staying.”