I’m sorry.
All my love,
Rose-red x
I read the letter again. And again. Run my fingers over El’s pen strokes. It’s her handwriting, her voice, I know it, I know her, but at the same time it feels false. Too careful, too scripted. If you’re reading this I’m already dead; El would once have rolled her eyes in dismissive scorn at something like that. Because surely what she’s saying is madness. I try to imagine Ross hitting her, and I can’t. It’s like trying to imagine him hitting me. It can’t be true.
But it was Ross who told me El had wanted to come back here, had wanted the house to look exactly the same as it always had. And I realise now how ridiculous that sounds. How false. Why would she want to come back here to our prison of twelve years? To this place of death and dread and darkness?
But. If I believe that El really was afraid of Ross and is only trying to protect me, why wouldn’t she have told me what she thought I’d forgotten – whatever it is that he’s supposed to have done? Because everything that I repressed I now remember. Those memories are not false. They can’t be. I remember everything that happened in our first life, including the night Mum ended it by smashing Grandpa’s skull with the Satisfaction’s stern lantern. What else is there?
My head pounds. Silver Cross. I know I should know what that is – I know I know what that is – but I can’t think. I can’t remember.
I finish the vodka. Stand up. Because El was right about one thing at least. A thing that makes me feel cold and afraid and uncertain. She thought she was going to die. And now she’s dead.
*
I stand at the entrance to that narrow corridor leading to Bedroom 3, fumbling for a light switch I can’t find. I force myself to walk into the darkness, arms outstretched. Cringe when my fingers hit against the panels of the door at the corridor’s end. Hesitate inside the memory of Don’t go in! We can’t ever go in! This is the only room I’ve never been inside, not even as a child. Mum made sure of that; made sure that El and I were so afraid of it we’d pass by the corridor without ever looking. I think of her screams. The echo of this door’s slam. Grandpa was afraid of it too – sometimes I saw him standing inside the doorway to the Donkshop, staring across the landing at this corridor, and all of him would be shaking, his mouth slack, eyes blank. Would El have hidden something in Bluebeard’s Room? Would she have come in here? I don’t know. But I know I have to look.
When I touch the handle, I realise I’m muttering hard and fast under my breath, ‘He only comes out at night, he only comes out at night.’ I make myself stop. All of Bluebeard’s wives ended up hanging on hooks rusted red with blood, except for the last. And what saved her was ignoring her fear long enough to look, to unlock the only door he told her never to open. And so I turn that handle. Push open that dusty dark door. And go inside.
Bluebeard’s Room has no windows. I knew this on some level because its exterior wall is Mirrorland’s alleyway, but still, it catches me unawares. The darkness. I find the light switch. Turn it on before I venture inside.
The air feels coldly heavy, smells of old paint. In one corner is a battered leather armchair, a standard lamp. Everything else is hidden under draw sheets. I look at every wall, every shadow, as if I still expect to see the corpses of Bluebeard’s wives. Or hear Mum’s shrieks echoing and thrashing their way through the floorboards to the pantry and cupboard and ocean below.
Focus.
I step farther into the room, start pulling off sheets, coughing out dust. Under the second sheet is a big wooden box. I stop. My heart stutters. Not a box. Our treasure chest on the Satisfaction. Bound with bands of black leather and a padlock gold with rust.
I kneel. The padlock hangs open. I take hold of the lid and lift it up, cringing at the loud squeak of its hinges.
It’s full of old sheets. I start taking them out, piling them on the floor. When my fingers hit against something hard, I instantly snatch them back.
Come on.
I reach back in, take out the last sheet.
There are two objects. One large, one small. The large: a blue-handled drill with a hollow cylinder attached. The small: a round steel handle at one end, a black rubber screw plug at the other.
I rock back on my heels. Press my clammy fingers to my face. El didn’t put these things here. She didn’t put them in this awful room for me to find. Because I know instinctively what they are.
I think of Logan’s face, the careful tone of his voice. We found evidence it was scuttled. Deliberately sunk.
I look back down at the hole saw. The transom drain plug.
They’re Treasure Trophies.
*
The stairs are in darkness. The only light comes from the red milky Victorian lamp in the hallway. I feel my way down the staircase, the bannister cold under my palm. The house continues to sleep, loud and old; its clanking, creaking veins like a hidden map of black roads and copper wires, like secrets locked behind doors and inside cupboards, oceans, midnight worlds of fire and fury and fun.
I pass the kitchen, look at my face in the mirror above the telephone table. I open the door to the drawing room. Finally let go of my breath.
The room is warm, golden. The big floor-to-ceiling curtains have been closed against the rain and the night, and the fire
