‘You know what I think?’ she smiled. ‘I think you got a scare when the lights went out and maybe had a little panic attack.’
‘I did not!’
‘Hard to breathe,’ said Mum, listing off the symptoms, ‘wobbly legs, feel like the room’s closing in on you…’
Reluctant as I was to admit it, it would help explain why I’d reacted the way I had. I’d never felt that scared before, and all because of what? A scraping noise? Idiot.
‘OK,’ I reluctantly confessed, ‘maybe it was.’ Mum flashed me a sympathetic smile and rustled my hair. ‘You seem to know a lot about them,’ I said. ‘Do you get them?’
‘Me? No,’ said Mum, shaking her head. ‘But your da—’
She stopped, biting her lip just as I had done in the kitchen. She’d almost let something slip about my dad.
‘But my dad did,’ I guessed. ‘That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it? You were going to tell me my dad used to have panic attacks.’
‘No, I wasn’t,’ Mum replied. She had her defences back up and was getting to her feet. ‘I was going to say you’re darn lucky you don’t get them more often.’
She was lying, I could tell, but she was making for the door now, and more than anything I didn’t want to be left alone in this room.
‘Mum!’ I spluttered. She stopped in the doorway, hesitated, then turned back to me. I should have told her I was sorry for our argument in the kitchen, but when I opened my mouth all that came out was: ‘I really did hear something in the attic.’
Mum looked at me for a long time, her eyes scanning my face. Eventually, she shrugged and smiled a thin-lipped smile.
‘Well, then. Let’s check it out.’
*
A chill breeze rolled down through the hole in the ceiling as Mum slid back the lock and let the wooden hatch swing open. Stale, years-old air filled my nostrils, forcing me to take a step back. The smell reminded me of the day room in the home Nan stays in. Somewhere in the shadows, the hot water boiler hissed quietly, making it sound as if the loft itself was breathing.
The beam of Mum’s torch cut through the darkness of the attic, projecting a misshapen circle of light on to the bare wooden planks of the roof. Shoulder to shoulder we stood on our tiptoes, peering into the gloom.
‘See anything?’ I asked, trying to disguise the shake in my voice.
‘Nothing from here,’ Mum replied. Her voice sounded confident – a little amused, even. I felt a hot flush of embarrassment sweep up from my neck. I was acting like a scared kid, and she knew it. ‘I’ll pull the ladder down and we can have a proper look,’ she said, passing me the torch.
She reached carefully up through the hatch and felt around for the edge of the wooden steps. My breath caught at the back of my throat, as Mum suddenly let out a sharp cry of fright. As one, we staggered backwards away from the hole, until our backs were flat against the wall. Hands shaking, I directed the torch’s beam up into the attic once again, and almost screamed. Just inside the hatch a pair of piercing eyes glowed brightly in the trembling torchlight.
‘M-Mum,’ I began, not knowing where the rest of the sentence was going. I was gripping her arm tightly, too terrified to move.
Then, with a faint squeak, the eyes turned and darted off into the darkness of the roof space. For a moment we heard the mouse’s claws scrape against the wooden floor as it fled in panic.
I blushed for the second time in as many minutes, as Mum looked down at me. Quickly, I let go of her arm, trying to pretend I hadn’t been afraid. She saw right through it, though, and I heard her let out a giggle. Before I knew it I was giggling along with her. We stood there together for a while, laughing out of sheer relief, until our sides ached and tears ran down our cheeks.
‘You hungry?’ she asked, when we’d both calmed down a bit.
‘Depends. Are we allowed to eat the little sausages yet?’
‘Come on,’ she grinned, ‘let’s go have dinner.’ Arm in arm we walked down the stairs, and every time our eyes met laughter filled the air.
Nan watched me impatiently as I cut her turkey into bite-sized chunks. She was proud of the fact she still had her own teeth, and mentioned it to anyone who’d listen. What she failed to go on to say was that they were now so blunt they could barely get through custard. Her arthritis was playing up with the cold, so I’d ended up on slice-and-dice duties.
She’d chuckled when me and Mum had told her the mouse story, but it didn’t amuse her as much as it had us. I suppose you really had to be there.
‘At least it wasn’t that other fella,’ she said, as I cut and peeled the skin off her little sausages. She didn’t eat the skin, it gave her wind. Nan didn’t actually mind too much, but Mum and me had insisted we remove them.
‘What other fella?’ I asked, only half listening. I was thinking about my own dinner, which would be getting cold.
‘Oh, you remember,’ she clucked, knocking back another glug of sherry, ‘that friend of yours. Wassisname? Used to live in the loft, you said.’
I heard Mum’s fork screech against her plate. She gave a cough which clearly meant ‘shut up’, but either Nan didn’t notice, or she was too tipsy to care.
‘Mr Mumbles,’ she announced, triumphantly. ‘That was him! Your invisible friend.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘Bless.’
Something tingled deep within my brain, and then was gone. I glanced over at Mum, but she had her head down, her eyes focused on her plate.
‘I didn’t have an invisible friend,’ I frowned. ‘Did I, Mum?’
‘For a little while,’ Mum said, not looking up from her dinner. ‘It was a long time ago. You stopped talking about him years back.’
I finished cutting up Nan’s meat and gave her back her knife and fork. She was already shovelling turkey into her mouth by the time I made it round to my side of the table.
Me and Mum had taken the table through to the living room so we could eat in front of the fire. Normally we just ate on our laps, but Christmas dinner was special.
Still wracking my brains, I lowered myself back on to my chair and popped a chunk of carrot in my mouth. It tasted better than carrot had any right to taste. How did Mum do it?
‘I don’t remember,’ I shrugged, at last.
‘You were only four or five,’ Mum explained. ‘A long time ago. It’s no surprise you’ve forgotten.’
‘Used to talk about him all the time,’ said Nan, her mouth half full of mashed potato. ‘Mr Mumbles this, it was. Mr Mumbles that.’
‘Leave it, Mum,’ my mum said. ‘He doesn’t remember, let’s leave it at that.’
‘He used to live in the loft, you said,’ Nan continued, completely ignoring her. ‘You used to say he’d knock on your bedroom window when he wanted to play. Remember, Fiona?’
Mum glared at her. ‘Leave it, I said.’
‘Knock, knock!’
‘Mum! Enough!’
Nan pulled a face, and silence fell over the table. I mopped up some gravy with a slice of turkey and slipped it in my mouth. Something stirred at the back of my mind.
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Was there…did he have a hat?’
‘Let’s just forget it, Kyle,’ Mum urged.
‘There’s something…I think I remember something about a hat.’