SHORTBREAD

Polly

The next day after school Rose and I met in my attic. She brought an extra flashlight, a tin of Scottish shortbread and the box.

We turned both our lights on the box. It was certainly mysterious. The wood was smooth and worn. It must have been very old. It had a familiar smell. I bent down and breathed it in.

“Rose, it smells like roses. Don’t you think that means something?”

“Nothing spooky about that,” said Rose firmly. “It was in a box with my grandmother’s shawl. All of her stuff smells like roses. It was her favorite perfume.”

That was Rose’s story. She had an answer for everything, but I wasn’t convinced.

I munched on a shortbread (they were delicious!) while she told me about seeing her grandfather’s ghost the day before. I nearly choked when she said, “And then I turned around and SOMEONE was sitting in the armchair.” When Rose described how he had called out to his daughter, calling her Winnie and asking her to forgive him, I felt so bad for the poor old guy.

“We’ve got to help him,” I said. “We’ve got to help him, and Winnie too.”

Rose stared at me, and her mouth twisted a little in disapproval.

“She tried to kill you, Polly,” she said. “Why do you want to help her?”

I shrugged. “She’s not going anywhere. She’ll be back, haunting you and trying to keep me out of your house. If we can figure out what happened to her, maybe we can help her stop being so mad.”

Rose was silent, watching me. She looked like a ghost again, her face half lit by the glow from the flashlights, her hair fluffing out around her head.

“Don’t you want to help her?” I asked finally.

Rose shook her head. “She wants me to. They all want me to help. All the ghosts. They never leave me alone, Polly.”

“But your grandfather,” I said softly. “You want to help him, don’t you?”

“I suppose so.”

Another long silence. Despite the brighter light, the shadows of the attic seemed to close around us. I imagined the darkness full of Rose’s ghosts, clamoring for help, plucking at her hair. Plucking at my hair. I gave a little jump and then shook myself briefly, like a dog shaking off a drift of snowflakes.

“It must be awful,” I said. “All those ghosts. All wanting something. Have you never helped any of them?”

Rose leaned towards me and spoke in a quick, fierce voice that I’d never heard before.

“What am I supposed to do?” she hissed at me. “I can’t bring them back to life! I can’t make anything right for them! I can’t DO anything! But they still ask me. I just wish they’d all go away forever. I just wish I was normal, like you. With a normal family, like you. And no Door Jumpers and dead grandfathers and ghostly perfumes sighing in haunted rooms!”

Her face was twisted with fury, and she looked more like Winnifred than ever. I felt a cold shiver crawling up my spine. But I reached out and covered one of her shaking hands with mine.

“I’ll help you, Rose. It’ll be easier with two of us. We’ll find the key and get Winnifred sorted out somehow, and then maybe we can find a way to get the ghosts to leave you alone.”

She looked at me and started to laugh.

Rose

Polly looked so sweet as she reached out to me, blindly swearing to do the impossible. Even now, after being attacked by the Door Jumper and nearly dying, she still didn’t have a clue. You can’t just “fix” things. You can’t just change the way the world is because you want to. She was such a child compared to me.

But that’s why I liked her. She didn’t know what might be lurking in the dark but she jumped in anyway, and she actually believed she could make a difference. So I laughed.

“All right,” she said, dropping my hand and looking relieved that I wasn’t raving anymore. “So, how are we going to find this key? Is there anywhere you haven’t looked?”

“All kinds of places,” I responded. “My parents’ bedroom, the books in the living room, the dining room cupboards. The kitchen. Kendrick’s flat. But it would take me hours to search the whole house.”

“We have to use logic,” said Polly with a little frown. “It’s just a matter of elimination and logic. That’s how the detectives figure things out in murder mysteries.”

I rolled my eyes. Polly saw but chose to ignore it. She picked up the box and slowly turned it, examining each side.

“Okay,” she said, peering at the strip of carved wood. “Okay. So if it was your box, what would you do with the key?”

“Put it in a drawer, a jewelry box, an envelope …”

“Right. And you’ve looked in your grandmother’s dresser and her jewelry boxes?” asked Polly, shining her flashlight at the keyhole.

“Yes,” I said impatiently. “Yes, I looked everywhere in her room.”

“It must be a very small key,” said Polly slowly. “Do you think maybe it was put on a chain?”

“There were no keys on chains in her jewelry box,” I said impatiently. “I would have noticed.”

“I wonder …” said Polly. “Would you have noticed if it was on a bracelet? A charm bracelet? My mum has one, and it has a little golden key on it. A bit too small for this box, but—”

I stopped frowning. “She did have a charm bracelet! She used to take it off and let me play with it when I was little. There was a silver book, and a musical note, and a little man … I don’t remember a key.”

Polly met my eyes. “Was it in the jewelry box?”

“I … I don’t remember. There was a pile of chains and stuff, but no keys, so I didn’t go through them all.”

“Go!” said Polly.