Chapter 13
It’s barely thirty-six hours since we moved in, since I pulled the old fitted wardrobes from the wall in the smallest of the top bedrooms and discovered this strange cobwebbed space, with its dusty dresser and motley collection of forgotten things.
A day and a half in which I had looked for answers to satisfy the hunger of my own curiosity, but found only more questions.
The mystery of the little annex had become more tantalizing and frustrating with every new question.
Even as I suppressed a niggling sense that I had awakened something that I didn’t understand—and perhaps should have been better left alone.
A threat or a warning, like a whisper on the wind that hints of a coming storm.
I take a small, tentative step, leaning down until my fingertips graze the moth-eaten fabric of the old armchair.
Turning, I ease myself down into it until the old springs creak beneath my weight.
Sitting there in the perfect darkness, I let my mind wander.
Might this actually have been a place where someone had been kept against their will?
Could that be it? No, it didn’t make sense.
There was a brick dividing wall but anyone shouting at the top of their lungs might still be heard in other parts of the house.
Maybe not all the way down to the ground floor but on the first and second floors, almost certainly.
Anyone able to shout, to scream, would be able to make themselves heard in the nearest rooms.
Unless… the whole house was empty? There was no window to shout through and this side of the house faced out onto the back garden, so the sound would be muffled, deadened by the bricks and timber of the rest of the house.
Someone in here would need to sit fairly still and quiet to ensure they weren’t heard in any of the top-floor rooms, or the landing that connected them.
Still and quiet.
I click the light back on, blinking against the sudden brightness.
Jess was right. This was ridiculous. Eric Hopkins had barely been able to climb the stairs in his last years in this house, according to the estate agent; it was one of the reasons why the first and second floors were so neglected.
Why the three rooms up here felt so removed from everything else, from a human touch, as if they’d been all but abandoned.
A plastic bag is in my pocket to gather up the remaining items in the dresser and leave them downstairs in the hall for getting rid of—one way or another.
Perhaps I should parcel up the items and send them to the PO box address, forget all about it, and move on. Jess was right, of course. We should just dispose of it all, knock down the wall, redecorate the whole bedroom, and forget this little cubbyhole ever existed.
But the plastic bag is still empty, still folded up in my back pocket. The collection of items laid out on top of the dresser.
The problem is Jess’s instinct to make a clean break, to expunge all traces of this hidden room from our house.
My instinct is the exact opposite.
And the text message she’d received just made the mystery deeper and the puzzle more intriguing. An itch that I had to scratch.
This stuff meant something to someone.
The watch, of course, because it was valuable. Hard cash that was now sitting in my bank account. But what possible interest could they have in the rest of it? In a few old rings, a pair of glasses, a scarf?
The answer to that question wouldn’t only solve a mystery—it might also get the mystery texter off our backs.
Because he hadn’t specified what he was actually looking for.
And if he didn’t know a particular watch was included among the “personal items,” then I could just give him the rest of the stuff and he’d be none the wiser. He’d leave us alone.
I pick up the old leather wallet, turning it over in my hands.
The worn silver initials DF on the front bottom corner, a smaller stamp on the inside that is so faded as to be illegible.
It has two compartments for bills, six slots for cards as you open it up, a small button-down pouch for coins.
More slots on one side for more cards. I check each of them again, holding it under the lightbulb, the worn brown leather soft against my palm.
Reaching my index finger all the way into each slot, sliding it along to feel for anything, a picture, a note, something that might have a name on it.
Something I might have missed first time around.
All empty. Except…
It’s not empty. Not quite.
In the credit-card-sized slot behind the coin pouch, my finger brushes against something pushed right up against the lining where a casual search might not reveal it.
I reach in further and pull it out with a flare of excitement: a small piece of paper, folded several times into a tiny, white square.
Maybe a name? An address? I unfold it carefully, letting out a sigh of disappointment when I see what it is—and why it has probably never been missed.
It’s a cashpoint receipt. Numbers and letters printed in faded black ink, an amount—￡60—and the name of a high street branch in Market Harborough.
Date and time in hours, minutes, seconds.
May 21, 2000, just before 9 p.m. I had been seventeen back then, studying for my A-levels—a lifetime ago.
The account number on the slip is obscured with asterisks apart from the last two digits, a three and a nine.
The hard folded grooves have marked the paper slip with a criss-cross pattern in the intervening twenty-four years.
I hadn’t requested one of these from the hole in the wall for years—they’d always ended up crowding my wallet or coat pockets.
I fold it up into the small square again and slide it back into the wallet, running my thumb over the printed initials on the front, frustration mingling with the disappointment.
Who are you, DF? Who were you? What did you spend this sixty pounds on?
Next to it, the tag on the dog collar is dulled with age but the engraving is still legible when I hold it nearer to the bulb over my head.
Woody. And on the other side of the disc, 167 Sumner Street.
The phone number inscribed below it is just seven digits, with no area code.
I guessed that if Woody had ever run off at the park, his owner wouldn’t have needed an area code because he wouldn’t be that far away.
The new tags I’d had cut for Coco and Steve last week have my mobile number on them, rather than a landline.
Did anyone use a landline for this kind of thing anymore?
I take out my phone and type the number in, prefixed by the local area code.
There is a short silence before an electronic female voice comes back.
“I’m sorry, that number isn’t recognized.”
I google the address. Maybe Woody’s former owners still lived there, might know why or how this tag had ended up tucked away in my house.
Maybe they’d lived here at some point—a lodger or a guest or a relative—and couldn’t bear to part with this last memento of a much-loved pet.
Perhaps Mr. Hopkins himself had lived there before he moved here.
The closest Sumner Street I can find is about three miles away from here in the small town of Kimberley; there also seem to be dozens of others in towns and suburbs around the country. But Kimberley was as good a place as any to start.
I can get there and back tomorrow before anyone knows I’m gone.