12. Goldie
CHAPTER TWELVE
GOLDIE
We return two nights later, and this time we are brave enough to venture beyond the basement. The stairs leading out of it are rickety, but they bounce with each step, as if encouraging us further, and the door to the ground floor opens easily. The house wants us inside it. It wants us to explore.
We discover the front doors are not only boarded up on the outside but completely blocked on the inside, with boxes piled up in front of them.
Most of them are taped shut, but the ones on top are wide open, revealing various trinkets inside, like old toys, a dusty lamp, an ancient alarm clock, and actual CDs.
None of us recognize who the artists are, and it all looks so funny, like a time capsule from a bygone era.
Even the toys are strange—a cuddly penguin and a few tiny race cars and a china doll with matted hair and a missing eye.
The front hallway is amazing though, a wide-open space with a set of stairs right in the center leading to the upper floors, and doors leading to other rooms on both sides like a real mansion.
The floor is that old varnished wood, and the banisters have carved, complicated designs, and the ceiling has that white plaster with patterns on it.
The wallpaper has been ripped down, revealing the bare wall underneath, and Cuckoo grabs a marker pen from one of the boxes and draws five birds next to someone’s scribbles about a potential paint to use.
“So we’re here forever,” she says. “This is our nest, right? This is ours.”
We run all around the downstairs rooms like it’s a fun house and we’re the only guests.
It’s incredible; this strange house that always looked a bit sinister is actually great.
The living room has even more boxes and fancy velvet furniture and a huge fireplace.
There’s an ordinary kitchen that feels comfortable and welcoming, and there’s even a library, empty shelves full of dust where rows of books used to be.
There are a couple leftover, those posh leather-bound ones with titles no one has heard of.
I picture myself in an armchair reading by the fire, an aristocrat like in Pride and Prejudice.
I wish we really did live here, the five of us.
That this was our home and we could do whatever we wanted all the time.
“Guys! You have to see this!”
Starling’s voice is coming from one of the side rooms toward the back of the house.
I’m there first, and I have to laugh. She’s in a bathroom, complete with a golden toilet.
It’s the most ridiculous and brilliant thing I’ve ever seen, especially with Starling standing next to it, arms outstretched, as if introducing her glamorous assistant.
She steps one of her battered Converse trainers onto the lid for an even more dramatic pose.
“A gold toilet!” she squeals. “Literally, what?”
“Oh my God.” Cuckoo’s braying laugh comes from behind me. “That’s hilarious.”
By the time Wren and Crow arrive, we are all in stitches.
“I love it,” Starling says. “I want one in my house now.”
“What kind of people do you think used to live here?” Crow asks, lowering the toilet lid and sitting on it. “Who installs a gold toilet?”
“Maybe they were weirdly into going to the bathroom,” Starling says. “Obsessed. It was like a whole event for them.”
“Maybe a celebrity lived here,” Wren suggests. “They always have weird decorations.”
“As if!” Cuckoo laughs. “We’d know about it if a celebrity lived here.”
“An artist then,” Wren says. “Some lone genius who insisted on decorating the place like this.”
“Then why isn’t the rest of it covered in gold?”
“They ran out of money,” Crow says, which makes me smile.
It’s so bizarre I can’t help loving it. When I have my own fancy apartment, these are the kinds of things I’d want to put in. Golden loo, crystal chandelier, crazy wallpaper. The kind of place people would remember, loud and bright and everything Patricia’s dingy little flat isn’t.
We gorge on these nights out together, over and over, and no matter how many times we do them, we are never satiated. There is always more, and I never feel sick.
“I wonder why they left,” Wren says, shaking me from my thoughts. “And other parts of the house aren’t like this at all. Did they start decorating and then have to leave?”
“I wonder where they are,” Starling murmurs. “They could have had to go, like something happened. Some deep, dark secret.”
She’s always so dramatic. Too many documentaries. But it makes me think about the previous owners, why they’d leave so much stuff lying around. Maybe something really did happen. Who owns the house now? Is it still them? Or someone else? Why has it been allowed to stay like this?
“If we lived here,” Cuckoo says, “there’d be a gold toilet in every room.”
I laugh, and all thoughts of the previous owners, the ones who cared enough to install a golden toilet but not enough to take their things with them, are pushed away. We try to flush it, but there’s no water in the bowl. All of the mains must have been long disconnected.
Later, we explore more of the garden. It’s big enough to fit dozens of houses, and it’s mad to think it’s been left to overgrow like this.
We head to the medieval remnants of the bishop’s palace, which are a couple of mossy stones and not much else.
Crow hoists her sleeve up to cover her hand and wipes away some of the moss along the side, revealing an ancient carving.
Difficult to make out with parts of it chipped away or worn down, but it seems to be someone kneeling in prayer, the proportions all wrong, their head larger than everything else.
There are patterns carved into the rock too.
Maybe this used to be a pillar of some kind, part of the structure holding the palace up.
“Do you think it misses what it once was?” Crow whispers.
“You’re the one always waffling about the importance of change,” Cuckoo says. “I’m sure it’s delighted we’re here now, livening the place up again.”
It is calm out here. Even though we’re only meters from the road, a sense of peace falls on Bishop’s House and its surrounding gardens as if we’re miles from anyone.
Even if this were like normal times, and there were people out walking their dogs and chatting and cars speeding up and down the road, I feel like it would still be silent, like we’re in another world entirely. I press my hand on the cold stone.
“There are some other grand houses the road over from this one,” Wren says.
“They must have been built shortly after Bishop’s House, because they have the same kind of red brick, only they’re not quite as fancy, and they don’t have nearly as much space.
Still big, huge gardens though. I bet they were inspired by here. ”
“I always thought you were scared of this place,” Starling says to her.
Wren blinks at this. She definitely was scared that first time we arrived. Cuckoo was pushing for her to climb over the gate so I stepped in, but Wren surprised me by going first anyway. She flushes now, but she isn’t nervous. She smiles broadly at Starling.
“Why would I ever be scared of somewhere so wonderful?” she asks. “I will show you those other houses. You’ll see what I mean.”
Cuckoo exchanges a glance with me, as intrigued as I am by Wren’s sudden boldness. “Let’s go then.”
They are grand, though nothing compared to Bishop’s House, just as Wren said.
The road behind this one is another hill, and the houses are spread out all the way, never quite meeting each other on the opposite sides, like a diagonal zigzag.
Wren doesn’t seem to realize that these houses somewhat resemble her own, which she’d never describe as grand.
Alright, hers is semidetached, and the garden is nowhere near as big, but she lives a ten-minute walk away at most. This is her neighborhood.
I remember the first time we all went to Cuckoo’s flat and Wren seemed utterly baffled by the idea Cuckoo had to share a room with her sister, that there weren’t enough bedrooms for everyone.
One of the houses in particular stands out on this street.
All of the original windows have been taken out, and instead the front is half brick, half glass, with one giant window showing off both floors of the house.
Even from out on the street, with the driveway and front garden in the way, it would be easy to see inside if it were daytime.
Instead, it’s night, and the blinds are closed, but it is an amazingly ugly piece of design, an affront to all the other houses on the street that have kept themselves uniform.
“All money and no sense,” I say.
“I haven’t shown you the best part,” Wren says.
She takes us to the top of the road and around a corner, and there is a small alley that lines the back of the houses.
Beyond that is a large park, the kind that doesn’t have teenagers getting up to no good in it, and instead probably has Yoga Saturdays and Fun Runs and organized picnics.
It might even just be for the residents, as there’s a gate around it and no sign of how to get in.
Some of them have back gates that lead out to this alley from their gardens, but most don’t, brick walls shielding their gardens from anyone who walks this way.
They’re taller than us, but not by much.
Wren stops at the back of one house that is similarly bricked up from view.
“This is the back of that glass house,” she says.
“I know because if you stand back enough, you can see they have the same terrible glass feature at the back of their house too.”
“How do you know about this?” Cuckoo asks.
“I take this alley walking to and from school.”
I wouldn’t take any alleys near where I live, but that’s where we’re different.
“Shall we take a peek of their garden?” I suggest.
“They might have an alarm, or some kind of security light,” Starling says. “In fact, they almost certainly will.”
“Just a peek. I won’t go in.”
Cuckoo grins. “I’ll help you up.”
She gives me a boost, and I place both hands on the top of the wall and pull myself up to sit on top of it. The garden is bigger than I expected, but before I can look at it properly, Starling’s warning comes true. The darkness suddenly bursts into light, shining practically directly on me.
A security light.
Shit.
“Quick!” Cuckoo cries, but I don’t wait for her attempts to help me down. I jump straight off the wall and land with a thud on my feet. It’s an awkward landing, and my ankle twists painfully. “Run!”
“Shit,” I say. “My ankle really hurts. I can’t.”
The others have already taken off, but they stop at the sound of my voice.
Whoever lives in that house will be coming out soon to investigate. The light bursting on like that, targeted at the wall. They must have loads of them for different spots in the garden. And it’s not like they’re right next door to anyone. They’ll know it was something.
But as I limp toward the wall, pressing myself against it, I hear nothing. Just the soft tread of the others’ footsteps returning to me.
“You can go, it’s fine,” I hiss. “We don’t all need to be caught.”
“One for all and all for one,” Cuckoo says. “We don’t leave anyone behind.”
“I don’t think anyone is coming,” Wren says. “I can’t hear anyone.”
It’s true. There’s no sound of a back door opening. And after a minute, when Cuckoo is the only one brave enough, she gets Starling to hitch her up and tells us none of the lights are on inside the house.
“Maybe they thought it was a cat,” Crow says.
“Or maybe they’re not here,” Wren whispers. “Maybe they’re one of those people who have gone away to a second home.”
Another empty home.
Another tempting thought.
“We don’t know that,” Crow says. “They could just be deep sleepers.”
“Then let’s put it to the test,” Cuckoo says. “Wren, pass me that little stone on the ground there, would you?”
“Cuckoo . . .” Crow sighs.
“It’s an experiment. Scientific. You should like that, Crow.”
She takes the stone and throws it over the wall into the garden. Instantly, the security lights come on, more of them, so bright they light us up in the alley too. The stone lands with a clatter, and then Cuckoo ducks her head down.
We wait.
And there is nothing again.
They are not home.
Which means they likely won’t be home for some time.
“Interesting,” Cuckoo says.
My ankle feels better already.