‘But Roar was our favourite. There were wizards and mermaids and we’d fight and have adventures. We played it loads!’
Rose looks at me with wide, amused eyes. ‘If you say so, Arthur.’
I point at the blackened castle rising out of the sea. It’s labelled The Crow’s Nest. ‘That’s where the baddie lived, and look –’ I tap a black circle – ‘that’s my ninja-wizard’s cave. There he is!’ A smiling face peeks out of the cave, a pointed hat sitting on his head. ‘I’m sure you had a friend too . . .’
Rose searches the jelly-shaped islands until she spots something: a girl’s head poking out of the sea. She has blue hair drifting around her and the word ‘Mitch’ written by the tip of her silver tail. ‘Mitch . . .’ says Rose, frowning. Then she smiles. ‘She was a mermaid-witch!’
‘With a bad temper –’
‘And webbed fingers and a magic tail!’
Sun streams through the window and outside the birds sing. Just for a moment, it’s like it was when we were little, when we used to finish each other’s sentences and make stuff up faster than we could think it.
Together, we stare at the map. Suddenly Rose shakes her head and jumps to her feet. She grabs a bulging bin bag and drags it towards the door. ‘Hurry up, Arthur,’ she calls over her shoulder, ‘or we’ll never get our den.’
When I hear the bag thumping down the stairs I turn back to the map. I can’t resist.
My eyes wander over pathways and streams and mountain passes, and I start to lose myself in this strange place we invented. Then something catches my eye – a flicker of movement, a flash of light – and I find myself staring at the Crow’s Nest. I see something that I missed before. A face is looking out of a window. The face is pale with round eyes and a crooked stitched mouth. It’s a scarecrow, a boy, and I can just make out two wings sprouting from his back.
‘Crowky,’ I say, the name coming easily to my lips. I stare at his black button eyes and his smile seems to stretch.
‘I’d almost forgotten about you,’ I whisper.
After lunch Rose disappears to our room, and Grandad comes up to the attic to check on our progress.
‘Carrying all the stuff down the stairs is taking ages,’ I complain, staggering under a pile of magazines. ‘We need a quicker way.’
Grandad looks out of the attic window. ‘Maybe you could use this.’
I join him and I see that the garden is directly below us. ‘I suppose we could lower everything down on a rope . . .’
‘Or maybe,’ Grandad says, grabbing a handful of my magazines, ‘you could chuck it all out!’ And before I can say, no, that’s a ridiculous idea, he’s hurled the magazines out of the window. They flutter through the air and land all over the grass. He turns to me with a gleam in his eye. ‘Your turn, Arthur!’
‘Isn’t it a bit dangerous?’
‘Not if we only do the small stuff. And no glass or metal, right?’
‘Right,’ I agree, nodding seriously. Then, with a yell, I hurl out the rest of the magazines making Grandad laugh with glee.
Then we get down to the serious business of throwing the contents of the attic out of the window. We go into a bit of a frenzy, whooping and yelling as bags burst open mid-air and boxes explode on the patio.
Eventually, and predictably, Rose comes up to ruin our fun.
‘Grandad, your pants are hanging in a tree!’ she cries. ‘Why have you even kept them?’
‘I was saving them to use as dusters,’ he explains, then, possibly because Rose looks so disgusted, he shuffles off to collect them, coughing all the way down the stairs.
‘Inhaler!’ Rose and I call after him. Then Rose flops down on the sofa, pulls a piano keyboard on to her lap and starts randomly pressing the keys.
‘Do you want to chuck some stuff out?’ I ask, hauling a bag towards the window. ‘This one’s full of cuddly toys.’
‘Nah.’
So, while Rose’s creepy music fills the attic, I throw the cuddly toys out. Grandad appears and tries to catch them. When a stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh hits him in the face he starts to fight it. It’s really funny. I turn round to tell Rose to come and watch, but then I change my mind. There’s no way she’s getting off that sofa.
Rose used to be all right. No, she was better than all right. She was funny and laughed at my jokes and, except for the dark, she wasn’t scared of anything. It was Rose who jumped off the harbour wall one summer, right in front of all those teenage boys, and Rose who worked out that we could sledge down the sand dunes on trays. At school we were in the same class and played together every break time. I thought Rose liked this as much as I did, until our head teacher decided to mix up the Year Five classes.
We were given a piece of paper and told to write down the names of three people we wanted to be with. I wrote down one name: Rose. I didn’t need anyone else. But then our teacher left the pieces of paper on his desk and I saw Rose’s list. She’d written:
Angel
Nisha
Briony
Rose was really happy in 5A with her three friends. Across the corridor in 5B, I wasn’t so happy. Then Rose got her phone and got into YouTube, make-up and her mates, and the Rose I knew just sort of disappeared.
I turn back to the window and shake out the last of the toys. Grandad is lying flat on his back now, letting them fall all over him. After the last teddy has bounced off his stomach I go to clear out the darkest corner of the attic.
I push aside a chunky TV and find myself staring into the sparkly eyes of a rocking horse. It rocks slightly, eyes wide, teeth bared, as if it’s angry about being left in this dingy spot for so long.
I grab its mane and pull it out. ‘Look who I’ve found, Rose!’
She looks up. ‘What? It’s just the old rocking horse.’
‘Yes, but it’s your old rocking horse, isn’t it? It was you who painted it black and covered it in glitter, and then you said it belonged to you and I was never allowed to sit on it. What did you call it?’
‘Prosecco,’ she says flatly. ‘You’d better put it in the charity shop pile. Someone might want it.’
Suddenly I want to make Rose admit that she used to love this rocking horse. I want her to look at it, and be interested in it, and stop being cool, just for a second . . .
‘Hey, Rose.’ I drag it towards the window. ‘Do you think Prosecco would like to fly?’
She looks up. ‘What’re you on about?’
‘He’s been stuck in the attic for too long. I think he’d like to feel the wind beneath his hooves.’ I’m at the window now.
She leaps off the sofa and grabs hold of the mane. ‘You can’t throw him out of the window, Arthur. He’s an antique!’
‘He?’ I say. ‘He? ’
Rose narrows her eyes.
‘Do you think you can you still talk to him, Rose?’
She yanks the rocking horse out of my hands. ‘Let’s see, shall we?’ Then she crouches down and presses her ear to his mouth. ‘What was that, Prosecco? Uh-huh. Got it.’ She looks up. ‘Prosecco wants me to tell you that you smell like the corridor outside the