Brightwood Page 7

  Beneath her fingers, his heart beat slow.

  “My mum tells me this story. It’s the story of her. When she was little, this house was full. There was her family, her mum and dad and brother, and there were lots of people who helped with everything. Her dad was tall and he smelled of lemons, and her mum was the most beautiful woman in the world and she smelled of flowers and new clothes.”

  Daisy stroked Tar’s head. “I’m telling you what they smelled like because I know you’re interested in smells. But the next bit of the story is sad. They had a boat—a really big one. One day they all went out for a lovely trip, but my mum lost something. Or rather, her doll lost something. It’s easy to get muddled up because the doll had the same name as my mum, and she also looked exactly like her. Anyway, Mum got off the boat and it sailed without her and there was a terrible accident and she never saw any of her family ever again.

  “She wasn’t completely alone, of course,” Daisy continued. “She still had her granny and the people who looked after the house. So she was okay. But she wasn’t happy. She didn’t want to go to school anymore or ever leave the house. They got tutors for her so she could learn at home. Then, when she was around fifteen, her granny died. And lots of the old servants left.

  “My mum was good at painting, and when she got a bit older, she tried going away to a place called a college so she could learn how to do it better. But she was lonely. She missed home every single minute of every single day. When she met my dad, she thought he might stop her from feeling so lonely, but he couldn’t. So she came back here to be on her own.

  “Then I arrived,” Daisy said. “And that made everything better. My mum says we don’t need anyone else. Because we have our home and we have each other forever.”

  She glanced down at Tar.

  “That’s the good bit of the story,” she told him. “I told you there was a happy ending.” Her voice trembled. She leaned forward with the baby bottle.

  The water trickled out of Tar’s mouth and wet his paws.

  He was gone. He was never coming back.

  “Hey,” Tar said in a feeble voice as he opened his eyes. “Am I dead?”

  “No,” Daisy cried. “You’re alive!” She wanted to kiss him although she knew he would hate it.

  “I ought to be dead,” Tar said. “I ought to have gone to the great sewer in the sky. But rats have ten lives.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Cats only have nine,” Tar said with great scorn. His voice was growing stronger by the second. He sniffed the baby bottle of water. “I can’t drink this, it’s terrible. Water should be nice and dark and swimmy.”

  “Swimmy?”

  “With bits in it,” he explained. “Swamp water is nice and swimmy. Puddle water’s sometimes good too.” He sniffed the bottle again. “This is from a tap!” he exclaimed. “It’s brand-­new! Got no vintage at all!”

  “I did my best,” Daisy said. “It was your fault you got sick. You shouldn’t eat so much.”

  “What nonsense!” Tar said. He wiped his whiskers and gave his hindquarters a good scratch.

  “This a raisin?” he asked, nibbling at her cardigan.

  “No, it’s a button.”

  “Can you eat it?”

  “No.”

  “What’s the point of it, then?”

  “I love you, Tar,” Daisy said. But he had run away.

  Daisy tidied up the kitchen and wiped down the surfaces. Then she went back up to the Portrait Gallery to put the baby bottle back.

  Her mum was strict about keeping things in the right Day Box.

  Before she closed the lid, she looked to see what else was in there. She reached in and pulled everything out of the box. There was a rolled-­up piece of paper, a scarf, and an envelope.

  The scarf was bright blue. Daisy remembered her mum wearing it. That was after the only real snowstorm of the winter. It had snowed all night, and in the morning, Daisy and her mum had gone out to play. Brightwood Hall was perfectly white, glittering like sugar in the wintry light. The only color to be seen was the blue of her mum’s scarf and the hint of pink in her pale cheeks as she and Daisy made a huge snow rabbit out on the lawn.

  Daisy couldn’t help thinking that it was a terrible waste to put the scarf into the Day Box. It was so soft and beautiful.

  She unrolled the piece of paper. It was a list of things from the bulk-­buy store. It was all printed out, and Daisy guessed the store had given it to her mum to remind her of everything she had bought and to tell her how much it had all cost. It was a long list. Daisy couldn’t get to the end of it because the paper kept trying to roll up again as fast as she unrolled it.

  The day before, the man had pointed out something very obvious to Daisy, and now something different although equally obvious occurred to her.

  Even if they lived for two hundred years, they would never get through the boxes of cereal, the sacks of flour, the bags of pasta, and all the other food down in the basement and stacked in the reception area. Even if they stopped using electricity, they would never use up the horde of candles, the flashlight batteries, or the LED lights. And even if they wrapped the house itself in string, there would still be hundreds of balls left over.

  Why did her mum buy so much stuff? The question made Daisy feel sad and frightened at the same time. Yet her mum always looked so happy when she came home from her shopping, humming as she sorted through the provisions and made a note in the log for each new item. And every week, the walls of groceries grew a little higher.

  “I know it’s a lot,” her mum had told Daisy, “but you never know what you might need. Better to be safe than sorry.”

  Crazy, the man had called her. She needed help.

  He was wrong. It wasn’t true. Then Daisy wondered how she could be so sure. She had never known anything different, after all.

  She forced the thought away and turned her attention to the last item in the box, the envelope.

  There was handwriting on the outside. Her mum’s name and their address here at Brightwood Hall. The writing was neat and easy enough to read, but the dots above the i’s and j’s were odd. They were very large, as if someone had gone over them several times with the pen, pressing down on the paper with almost enough force to tear it.

  There was something heavy in the envelope. Daisy tipped it into her hand.

  It was a watch. Daisy had never seen it before. It was made of gold, the sort of watch a man might wear, she guessed. On the back there were words engraved in flowing letters:

  For my darling Tony

  I will love you for all time.

  Anne

  Daisy ran a finger over the words, reading them again and again. Tony and Anne were the names of her mum’s parents. They had gone out on their yacht and never come back. She flipped the watch over.

  On the front it said Rolex, and around the dial there were tiny diamonds. It was a beautiful watch. Or it had been beautiful once. Now the glass was shattered and the hands hung crooked, and even though Daisy shook it and held it to her ear, she couldn’t hear a tick.

  It didn’t look as if it had been dropped or accidentally bumped.

  It looked as if someone had taken a hammer and hit it once, very hard and sharp, exactly where it would cause the most damage.

  DAY FOUR

  FIFTEEN

  Little Charles called out to Daisy on her way downstairs the next morning. His voice was anguished.

  “You have to find my dog! My Minette!”

  Daisy stood on her tiptoes and peered through the gap in the books.

  “She needs to poop!” Little Charles said. “It’s urgent!”

  Daisy frowned. If she widened the gap between the two piles of books, the piles themselves might collapse. But she’d promised Little Charles that she would find him more room. She held her breath as she carefully pushed a few more books aside. The piles wobbled slightly yet held.

  Minette’s body appeared. She was gray, with a long, thin snout
and shaggy body. Little Charles gave a whoop.

  “I didn’t think you needed to poop if you were painted,” Daisy said.

  “You don’t,” Little Charles said. “It was a trick.”

  “You’d better be careful,” Daisy said, “or I’ll cover you up again.”

  “You’d do that?”

  Daisy sighed. “No,” she admitted. “I’d never do that to you, Little Charles.”

  It had been a couple of days since Daisy had fed the animals. She fetched the birdseed, went out the front door, and veered right, heading towards the Winter Grove on the far western side of the estate.

  It was more of an avenue than a grove, a broad, sandy path with Himalayan birch trees on either side. Their trunks were pure white, and in winter they made a dazzling display against the cold sky. Now they were hung with a canopy of silvery leaves that sent lace shadows dancing across the path.

  Daisy walked slowly, scattering seed to her left and right. There were a lot of thrushes in this area, and it was a favorite haunt of squirrels. Today, however, it was quiet. Then, so abruptly it made her start, a crow shrieked from the far trees. Daisy looked up.

  The man was standing at the end of the path with a black trash bag in his hand. He hadn’t seen her. He was looking in the other direction.

  Daisy froze in sudden recognition. The way he held himself, with his face half turned away, she had seen it before. He was posed in exactly the same way in the photograph on her mum’s bedside table. He was far younger then, no more than a boy, but now that she had spotted the resemblance, Daisy wondered how she could have missed it up till then.

  That’s James. He was some sort of cousin.

  He had told her he used to visit Brightwood Hall a long time ago. Daisy felt a surge of reassurance. He had been a guest here, a member of the family.

  Just then the man looked up and saw her, and Daisy risked a tiny smile.

  “Didn’t you enjoy the strawberries?” he said, walking towards her.

  Daisy felt her face grow hot. She didn’t want to tell him that she had been forced to throw his gift away.

  “Well, never mind,” he said. “There are plenty more where those came from.” He rolled up the black trash bag and put it in his pocket.

  “I know who you are,” Daisy said. “There’s a picture of you. Your first name is James.”

  “So you guessed it,” the man said. “I wondered if you would.”

  “You must have the same last name as me,” Daisy said, feeling more reassured by the second, “because you’re a relative.”

  “People in the same family don’t always have the same name, don’t you know that?” He paused. “No, of course you don’t. Why would you? My name is different from yours.”

  “What is it?”

  He hesitated and then shrugged slightly. “It’s Gritting,” he said. “James Gritting.”

  Daisy thought Fitzjohn was a much nicer-­sounding name than Gritting, but it would have been unkind of her to say that.

  “Did you know my grandparents?” she asked.

  “Oh, certainly,” Gritting said. “Wonderful people.”

  He paused. “Of course Brightwood Hall was different then. Very grand. I used to think it would make a great hotel. I might have suggested the idea to your mother once or twice. Did she ever mention it?”

  Daisy shook her head.

  “Since then, I’ve changed my mind,” Gritting continued. “I now think it could be so much more. The hotel would just be part of it. There’s space for a golf course and a spa.” He gestured over the meadow. “Cut down those big trees to make room for a parking lot . . . big indoor swimming pool . . . ”

  “My mum wouldn’t want that,” Daisy said. “This is our home!”

  “Yes,” Gritting said, “yes, of course.”

  “We like it just the way it is,” Daisy said, half surprised by her fierce tone of voice.

  Gritting looked at her with his head to one side, his eyes thoughtful. “I tell you what,” he said. “I used to come here every summer. But I bet there are areas that even I’ve never seen. How about you show me around? Give me a tour of the place.”

  Daisy hesitated. “All right,” she said at last. She looked down at her bare feet. She was still wearing her pajamas. “I’ll have to have breakfast and get changed first.”

  “Take your time,” Gritting said. “I’ll be right here, waiting.”

  Daisy went back inside and fetched herself a bowl of cereal. Tar was nowhere to be seen. He was probably still recovering from his illness of the night before. She ate standing up at the sink, watching Gritting through the window. He had fetched the shears and was passing time by snipping and slicing at the weeds again.

  I must tell him to stop doing that, Daisy thought. It will be easier now that I know who he is. She rinsed her cereal bowl and went upstairs to her room to get dressed.

  SIXTEEN

  Frank was sitting on the end of Daisy’s bed. She had rolled up one sleeve of her dirty white shirt and was digging into the flesh of her arm with the tip of her knife.

  “What are you doing?” Daisy said, horrified.

  “Amazonian zombie tick,” Frank told her with relish. “Got to get it out.”

  “Zombie tick?”

  “They keep going until they get to your brain,” Frank said. “Nasty way to die.”

  “There’s no such thing as a zombie tick,” Daisy said. She pulled open a drawer and started rummaging for a pair of shorts.

  “You don’t know much,” Frank said. She dug deeper with the knife, wincing. “Even less than Sir Clarence, and that’s saying something.”

  Daisy slammed the drawer shut with irritation. “You keep saying Sir Clarence was no good, but he must have been! He was knighted! He shot a tiger and stood on top of it!”

  Frank shook her head. “Sir Clarence couldn’t shoot a tiger if it was sitting on his lap.”

  “So who shot it, then?”

  “Nobody,” Frank said. “It’s not really a tiger. I made it from a sack and a bit of orange paint. You don’t think I’d let him kill a tiger for real, do you?”

  She twisted the knife in her arm. “Got it!”

  She pulled out the knife, wiped it clean on her trousers, and stuck it back into her belt.

  “I can’t spend time talking to you,” Daisy said, stepping into her shorts. “I’ve got to show Gritting around. That’s his name, James Gritting.”

  “What you have to do is start thinking,” Frank said. “You go into the jungle with that rival explorer, you’re not coming back out.”

  “He’s not a rival explorer! He’s a relative.”

  “Any reason why he can’t be both? He broke in, didn’t he? You’ve got no idea what he might be planning. Could be anything, in my opinion.”

  Daisy didn’t reply. Frank thought the Wilderness was the Amazon jungle and Brightwood Hall was the Lost City of Valcadia. Her opinions were hardly reliable.

  “Don’t listen to me, then,” Frank said. “Show the fellow around the place. But don’t expect me to fish your bones out of the river after the piranhas are done with you.”

  “Everything you say is completely made up!” Daisy burst out.

  Frank shrugged. “Suit yourself. Do what you want.”

  Daisy hesitated. “Maybe I ought to follow True’s advice,” she said. “He told me to go outside and look for help.”

  “And leave the Lost City undefended?”

  “So what should I do?”

  Frank began counting on her fingers. “Number one: secure the place. You don’t want him getting inside. Number two: find a good spot for a base camp. Number three: gather provisions. Number four: you’ve got to find out everything you can about this Gritting fellow.”

  “How am I meant to do that?”

  “Go find some relics,” Frank said. She cast her eyes around her with a disapproving look. “Lord knows this place is full of them.”

  “Relics?”

  “You know, pots, mummie
s, hieroglyphics, old tablets, anything with mysterious writing on it. Stuff that holds clues to the past. Sir Clarence is very fond of relics.”

  “You mean like the monkey vase on my grandfather’s old desk?”

  Frank snorted. “That thing? That’s no relic! Sir Clarence found it in a cave in Africa. Thought it must be priceless. He hadn’t noticed they were selling hundreds of the things in the market down the road. Two pence each!” She smiled scornfully. “And that was before haggling.”

  Daisy reached under her bed, where she had placed the envelope with the smashed watch. “Do you think this could be a relic?” she asked.

  “It looks like one,” Frank said, glancing at it. “Has it got mysterious writing on it?”

  Daisy turned the watch over and looked at the inscription. “No,” she said. “I can read it just fine.”

  “Well, it’s probably still a relic,” Frank said. “It’s old, isn’t it?”

  Daisy didn’t reply. She had just remembered something her mum had told her. James Gritting used to visit Brightwood Hall every summer. Then he had stopped coming and there had been a reason for that.

  He stole a watch. Or they thought he had.

  Daisy stared at the watch in her hand, frowning. “How did it end up in one of Mum’s Day Boxes from just a few months ago?” she asked.

  But Frank had gone. Daisy was just talking to an empty space on the bed.

  SEVENTEEN

  Frank’s talk about piranhas was all nonsense, of course, although some of her advice made sense. She had told Daisy to secure the place, which was another way of telling her to lock up the house. Daisy thought she might as well do this at once, just to be on the safe side.

  She went downstairs and made sure the key was turned in the kitchen door. There was a bolt at the top of the door, and she stood on tiptoe and drew it back. She looked around the kitchen, thinking. There was a storage unit, with a chopping block built into the top, that looked heavy. Daisy leaned her whole body against it and shoved it inch by inch until it was wedged against the door.