17

The next morning I was up with the sparrows and over at the miracle that was Bromley Cairn. And in the morning light, the room certainly seemed miraculous, the shape it was in, compared to the rest of the house. Hessel had been right about the stairs. There was no way I was going to venture up them. The banister hung at a strange angle away from the steps, and the bottom of one of the posts was visibly crumbling. In the dim light beyond the hall was the open entrance to a dilapidated room – broken floorboards, a strange little alcove with kitchen tiles flaking away from the wall.

But my room (this was how I was already thinking about it – my room) was golden and quiet.

I had checked the bus timetable and there was time for four hours of study before I would go to pick up my package. I could buy an extension lead and a power board while I was in town. I would also buy, as a little house-warming present to Bette and Hessel and to celebrate my coming to stay, an absolute shit-tonne of mouse traps.

And I studied. For the first time since the mad dash, two days ago, I was again in control of my own mind, my own space. I would have even put up my memento mori if I could have seen a place to hang it. But the big stone walls had no studs to drive a nail into, and at even the mildest touch of my fingertips the ancient plaster caked off in fist-sized chunks. I leaned the memento mori under the mantle of the empty fireplace on the far wall of the room and, even just leaning there, the picture looked at home. There, in front of the fireplace and the stone wall, it was as though it finally courted the grandeur it had always craved.

But it was good – I may have been tempted to treat hanging the memento mori as a project had it not seemed impossible: as it was, with only a chair, a table, and enough light from the window, all I could do was study. And by the time three hours had passed, I felt my brain was fat with information and the mastery of concepts. For the first time in days I felt in control.

Bette appeared suddenly in the doorway and told me that it was time for coffee in the Dutch Room.

Coffee. Of course. I had completely forgotten.

Bette turned tail quickly and headed back across the gravel in her apron, with her long sleeves drawn down over her bandaged arm. I reluctantly turned away from my desk. I arranged my things before leaving – I always liked to arrange my desk just so for the future-me who would be sitting here again – and as I did, I was interrupted by a creaking sound upstairs. I angled my head and listened for it to come again, and there it was, a high-pitched woody creak, followed by a lower creak, coming from one of the upstairs rooms far across the other side of the house.