‘There are some pictures of a little girl too… hold on.’
‘What?’
‘These pictures weren’t here before. Do you remember? There were just three faded rectangular shapes with rusty nails sticking out of the wall. Someone has put them back.’ I’m about to ask if it was her, but bite my tongue. ‘I think this picture is of—’
I spot something over her shoulder before she finishes her sentence.
‘One of the other doors is open,’ I interrupt, rushing towards it.
All of the doors on the landing were locked last night, except for the one leading to the bedroom that we slept in, and the one to the bell tower. But now another door is wide open, and I find myself standing inside a child’s bedroom.
Everything is covered in dust like the rest of the chapel, but this room is also full of cobwebs. It smells musty, like it hasn’t been aired for months. Maybe longer. The creepiest thing to catch my eye is the large doll’s house in the middle of the room. It looks antique. It also looks remarkably like our London home – a double-fronted Victorian house. I’m unable to stop myself from opening the dusty doors, and when I see that the rooms inside are decorated in a similar way to our house, I start to feel sick. The same two carved wooden dolls are in every room, but they are not miniature replicas of Amelia and me. One is a doll-sized old man, wearing a tweed jacket and bow tie, the other is a little girl doll, dressed in red. In every make-believe scene they are holding hands, and the old man is always smoking a pipe. When I take a closer look, I see that the pipes are really acorn cups and stalks.
‘Have you seen this?’ Amelia asks.
She is holding an old Jack-in-the-Box. I had one exactly like it myself as a child, and it terrified me. I don’t understand the significance at first, until I see that the name Jack has been crossed out, so that now it says Adam-in-the-Box instead.
My mother taught me the French name for these things when I was a little boy: diable en bo?te, literally ‘boxed devil’。 So many unexpected things remind me of her. And whenever they do, I relive the night she died: the rain, the terrible sound of screeching car brakes, her red kimono flying in the air. The dog was mine. I begged her to let me have one, but then I didn’t look after it. If thirteen-year-old me had walked the dog myself, like I promised to, she wouldn’t have been killed walking along the pavement that night.
My fingers, seemingly independent of my mind, find the crank on the Adam-in-the-Box and turn it. Slowly. The nostalgic tune plays and my mother’s voice sings along inside my head.
My mother taught me how to sew,
And how to thread the needle,
Every time my finger slips,
Pop! goes the weasel.
The Jack bursts out of the box and I jump, even though I knew what was coming. With its wild red hair, painted face and spotty blue outfit, it looks terrifying, even more so than the one I remember as a child, because its eyes are missing.
I think I understand the not-so-subtle message, but what else am I not seeing?
As I turn to take in the rest of the bedroom, I notice that the wallpaper, curtains, pillows, and duvet are all covered in faded images of the same thing: robins. Then I see the dusty, freestanding child’s blackboard in the corner of the room. The chalk words on it have faded, and were clearly written years ago, but I can still just make them out:
I must not tell tales.
I must not tell tales.
I must not tell tales.
Tin
Word of the year:
metanoia noun a transformative change of heart. The journey of changing one’s mind, self, or way of life.
28th February 2018 – our tenth anniversary
Dear Adam,
It isn’t really our tenth anniversary. I’m writing this letter a little late because of what happened.
I thought things were pretty good with us this year. I thought we were happy. I was, and I thought you were too. From the outside looking in, our marriage was definitely pretty solid. But I was blind stupid a gullible fool wrong. Nothing seems real now that I know the truth. I feel like I’m trapped inside a snow globe; one more shake and I’ll disappear completely.
For a long time, it has felt as though someone was watching us. I can’t quite explain the feeling, or put it into words, but I think we all know when we’re being watched. Whether at work, or walking the dog, or just on the Tube. You can feel it when someone else’s eyes are staring in your direction for longer than they should. You always know. It’s instinct.
Normally, when I get home from work, you’re still in your writing shed. But the night before our tenth anniversary, I found you sitting in the lounge, in the dark, watching an old episode of The Graham Norton Show on BBC iPlayer. Henry Winter is known for never giving interviews, but to celebrate the publication of his fiftieth novel in fifty years, he agreed to do one last year. We watched it together at the time. Graham Norton was as funny and charming as ever, but I remember feeling sick when he introduced Henry. An old man I barely recognised hobbled out onto the stage before taking a seat on the red sofa. The walking stick, with a silver rabbit’s head handle, was a new addition to his tweed-jacket-and-bow-tie uniform. As was the smile on his face. It looked like it hurt.