Chapters (105)
- Cover
- Title Page
- Epigraph
- Before it All Started
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Four Weeks Ago
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Chapter 11
- Chapter 12
- Chapter 13
- Chapter 14
- Now
- Chapter 15
- Chapter 16
- Four Weeks Ago
- Chapter 17
- Chapter 18
- Chapter 19
- Chapter 20
- Chapter 21
- Chapter 22
- Chapter 23
- Chapter 24
- Chapter 25
- Chapter 26
- Now
- Chapter 27
- Chapter 28
- Three Days Ago
- Chapter 29
- Chapter 30
- Chapter 31
- Chapter 32
- Chapter 33
- Chapter 34
- Chapter 35
- Chapter 36
- Chapter 37
- Chapter 38
- Chapter 39
- Chapter 40
- Chapter 41
- Chapter 42
- Chapter 43
- Chapter 44
- Chapter 45
- Chapter 46
- Chapter 47
- Chapter 48
- Chapter 49
- Chapter 50
- Chapter 51
- Chapter 52
- Chapter 53
- Now
- Chapter 54
- Chapter 55
- Chapter 56
- Chapter 57
- Chapter 58
- Chapter 59
- Chapter 60
- Chapter 61
- Chapter 62
- Chapter 63
- Chapter 64
- Chapter 65
- Chapter 66
- Chapter 67
- Chapter 68
- Chapter 69
- Two Hours Later
- Chapter 70
- Chapter 71
- Chapter 72
- Chapter 73
- Chapter 74
- Chapter 75
- Chapter 76
- Chapter 77
- Chapter 78
- Chapter 79
- Chapter 80
- Chapter 81
- Chapter 82
- Chapter 83
- Chapter 84
- Chapter 85
- Chapter 86
- Chapter 87
- One Week Later
- Chapter 88
- Chapter 89
- Acknowledgements
- Keep Reading …
- Books by Ross Welford
- About the Publisher
Andi drags Dennis down the hall and back into the kitchen. She has left the tray of tea things on a hall table and I remember I was going to take the leftover butter cake back for Sebastian. A few weeks ago, I probably wouldn’t have bothered, but he’s been okay recently.
‘Wait for me,’ I say to Susan. ‘I’ll just be a minute.’
I turn back and the front door bangs shut behind me. I’m on my own. Well, not exactly on my own, only that Kenneth is on the phone to his son in the living room, while Andi has turned on a noisy blender in the kitchen. No one knows I’m here and it’s a slightly odd feeling.
A long, tiled hallway stretches to the back of the house where the tea tray is, and it takes me past a room on the left with the door slightly ajar.
Don’t judge me. I just want to have a look inside. Just a peep, you understand. It’s not as if the door is shut, either, so it can’t exactly be super-private, can it?
No one knows I am here. I push the door and it makes a soft shushing noise as it scrapes over the thick carpet in the room. I can see the bottom corner of a bed. I poke my head round the door and take in the rest. It’s just an old man’s bedroom. There are slippers on the floor, a pair of trousers folded over a chair, a dressing table with a hairbrush and comb. And there, twisting above the bed in the slight breeze from the open window, is a Dreaminator.
It’s bigger than the ones in our bedroom, but there’s no mistaking what it is. I walk closer to get a better look and my eyes widen.
Kenneth McKinley’s Dreaminator is a thing of wonder, and as different from mine as a Rolls Royce is from Mola’s beaten-up old SUV. Where mine has a hollow plastic hoop, and a cheap-looking pyramid ‘roof’, with wires and strings attached, this is made of pale, weathered bamboo, bent into shape with no visible joins. Set into the wood are tiny flakes of glittering pyrite. There are little carved eagles, flowers, mysterious symbols and writing of a kind I don’t recognise.
And there, on one of the pyramid’s sides, three letters: URI.
Wasn’t that the name he said when he answered the phone? His son?
Inside the hoop, fine threads that look like pure gold are woven in a tight, intricate formation of circles repeated again and again, with beads and jewels sewn into the mesh. Hanging down are long strings, wound round with more gold thread, some with fine black feathers attached, and with large bluish crystals at the end. Even the battery housing is carved and inlaid with more stones.