How did this happen? In Daniela’s memory the old place was alive, awake, with washing lines strung across the garden and toys scattering the front lawn. Now there wasn’t so much as a light in the window or a trail of smoke from the chimney. At some point in the intervening years the old house had died.
She’d thought Stephanie had been evasive about how little the house was worth. Now she saw the truth. No wonder they couldn’t sell the place.
She made her way down to the front gate. It was wedged open by years of rust.
The water was almost a foot deep around the house. Daniela felt her way along the path. Ripples sent reflected light bouncing across the windows. A half-hearted stack of sandbags guarded the front door.
Halfway up the path, Daniela paused to listen. The only sounds came from the wind in the trees and the occasional hoot of a woodpigeon somewhere among the stripped branches.
Daniela reached the front door. A piece of sticky tape across the inoperative doorbell was so old it’d turned opaque and flaky. She leaned over to peer through the sitting-room window. Floodwater had invaded the house as well. The front room was awash, the furniture pushed back against the walls, a few buoyant items floating sluggishly. Obviously the sandbags hadn’t done the trick.
She felt a flush of anger at Auryn. Why hadn’t she made sure the place was watertight before she left? And what about Stephanie? She was right here in town but hadn’t bothered to keep an eye on the house?
The front door was locked. In a village like Stonecrop, people hardly ever locked their houses, except when they went away. But Daniela had kept her key, or rather she had never got rid of it. It was still strung on her keyring like a bad reminder. So long as Auryn hadn’t changed the locks …
She hadn’t. The Yale clicked open. Daniela pushed the door but the water held it closed. She leaned her weight onto the wood and pushed it open a half-inch. It was more than just water behind. More sandbags, possibly. She couldn’t open the door enough to get her foot into the gap.
Giving up, Daniela stepped off the path and made her way around the side of the house. Clouds of muddy water swirled around her wellies. Now she risked not just flooded boots but tripping over the uneven ground into the freezing water. She kicked aside debris with every awkward step.
At the side of the house, the small vegetable garden was now an empty lake. A few tripods of discoloured bamboo canes protruded like totems. Against the far wall, the old beehive was a pile of mushy timbers. Dead leaves sailed like abandoned boats. Eddies of twigs had collected below the window frames. Daniela paused by the window of the utility room next to the kitchen, but the net curtains obscured her view.
There was more neglect at the rear. The back porch lay in a crumpled heap of broken wood and corrugated plastic, as if someone had angrily tossed it aside. The apple tree by the porch was dead. A frayed length of knotted rope still hung from a branch – the makeshift swing that Franklyn and Stephanie had put up.
The back door of the house was also sandbagged. When Daniela tried the handle, she found it locked too. Either that or the door was so tightly wedged it wouldn’t budge. She didn’t have a key. The sash windows on either side were stuck, the wood swollen.
By now she was sick of sploshing around. Despite her best efforts, water had trickled into both boots, and her toes were numb. She was tired and annoyed and already thinking how long it’d take her to get back to the pub.
And, besides all that, a niggle of unease wormed into her stomach. The house felt creepy and abandoned. She felt like an intruder.
She went to the base of the old apple tree that reached up past the roofline. Her eyes automatically traced the route she’d used to climb up and down the trunk a hundred times in her youth. The branches were sturdy and evenly spaced, and it was no more effort to climb than a ladder. Daniela was halfway up before she really stopped to think what she was doing.
The trunk was twisted towards the wall, bringing it close to the window of the old junk room, which Auryn had turned into a separate bedroom for herself when she’d got tired of sharing a space with Daniela. Daniela shimmied along a branch to the window, with only a twinge of vertigo when she glanced down. It’d been a long time since she’d been up a tree. There wasn’t a lot of call for it in adult life.
The window to Auryn’s room was stiff, but, with a certain amount of effort, Daniela slid the wooden sash up.
‘Hello, house,’ she whispered.
She clambered in through the window. Home, she thought, then shoved the idea away. This place hadn’t been home in years. Daniela had assumed she’d never come back, especially after Dad died. In fact, until this morning she’d assumed the place had been sold, and she’d never have to lay eyes on it again. Today was not working out at all as she’d hoped.
She paused with one foot on the carpet and one on the sill. It hadn’t occurred to her how weird it would feel to step into Auryn’s personal space like that. To be honest, the bedroom didn’t look much like Auryn’s anymore. Auryn had always been tidy to a fault, even as a kid. It was strange to see the bed in disarray and clothes scattered across the floor. On a cluttered table next to the bed was a half-empty bottle of wine and a half-full ashtray. Auryn had never been a big drinker, certainly never a smoker.
Daniela took off her boots and carried them so she wouldn’t track mud through the house. On soft feet, she padded across Auryn’s room to the door.
Out on the upstairs landing, there were more obvious signs that the house was neglected. The old wallpaper had turned yellow with age. A faint smell emanated from the drains backing up into the kitchen. The whole place was damp and cold. Daniela tried the light switch but the power was off.
She closed her eyes and breathed. The smell of damp and drains couldn’t entirely overpower the familiar scent of the house. Daniela was grateful the bedroom doors were closed; she couldn’t face seeing Dad’s room. Nothing in the house had been updated, aside from a few new items of furniture. A layer of dust and age covered everything.
The door to the attic room squealed as she pulled it open. It released a waft of cold, stale air, loaded with familiarity. It made Daniela nineteen again. She shuddered.
Up in the converted attic, a window in the gable wall was broken, an inexpertly fixed piece of plyboard keeping out the chill wind. All the furniture had been cleared out and the wide expanse of floorboards was patterned with dust. A leak in the roof had spread patches of damp across the plaster walls.
Daniela wondered if Auryn had emptied the other bedrooms or just this one, which they’d shared as kids. Back then, it’d made sense for her and Auryn, the youngest two, to share a room. They’d been so close in age. As time went on and they’d started wanting their own space, their father promised he would fix up the spare room for Auryn, but it remained as a junk room, with a battered futon shoved in one corner, until Auryn lost patience and moved down there anyway, carving out a neat little space among the clutter.
Daniela stepped into the centre of the room like a sleepwalker. Everything seemed unreal, like pictures in a faded book. Her bed had stood against one wall, with Auryn’s directly opposite, beneath the skylight. An empty wooden shelf was still fixed to the wall beside the window. Back in the day, it’d been laden with Auryn’s paperbacks and emergency supplies – a spare phone charger, AA batteries, and a pen-torch in case of power cuts. Prepared and paranoid, that was Auryn. Even after she’d moved to the spare room, she’d kept a stash of emergency supplies up here.
The floorboards were scratched where the heavy iron frame of Daniela’s bed had dragged. Daniela knelt and located a gap between two boards that was slightly larger than it should’ve been. A short plank that’d been removed and replaced so many times it’d worn smooth at the edges. Daniela used her fingernails to prise up the board.
Below was a musty space. It was a not-so-secret secret; a hidey-hole she and Auryn had used to conceal bits and pieces they considered valuable. As they’d got older, they’d used it less frequently. Daniela doubted anyone had