Gravenhunger (2 page)

Recently, though, his father seemed to have been spending more time in it than ever.

Perhaps it was just his way of coping, but since Mum had died, he had practically lived in his study, emerging at mealtimes only to remember that if he wanted food then he would have to get it himself.

And so he would fix the pair of them a sandwich or order some tasteless food from the takeaway down the road and they would sit there in silence while they ate. Then he would slope back off to his study, leaving Phoenix to clear up, alone with his mixed-up feelings and the fragile memories of his mother.

Which made whatever it was that was going on right now seem weirder than ever. This evening Dad had actually cooked a meal for them. Made it from scratch with real, fresh ingredients, chopping the vegetables and frying the onions and boiling up the rice.

Of course it was possible the whole thing had been one big softening-up exercise. That it had all been done in preparation for springing the news of this surprise trip on him.

Phoenix crossed the room to his father's desk.

Standing in amongst the books and bits of paper and half-empty coffee mugs was a silver photo frame, its back towards him.

He picked it up and turned it round, a sharp and now familiar pain piercing his chest as he took in the picture of himself and his mother.

It had been taken only a few months before she died. They were sitting together on the garden seat, her arm draped loosely round his shoulders, so alike it was almost uncanny: the same jet-black hair, the same dark eyes, the same firm set of the chin.

He hadn't known she was ill back then. He hadn't even had the faintest clue. He could see it now, though. The strain in her face and the paleness of her skin. And she was thin too. Really thin. How had he failed to notice?

He could still remember the warmth of her touch … how she had stooped to kiss him every night … the musky scent of her perfume. Tucked away in the bottom of his chest of drawers he had one of her old scarves, and when he couldn't sleep he would sometimes take it into bed with him and press it
to his face, desperate to inhale some of its fading sweetness.

Phoenix sighed. He missed her so much.

It wasn't that they'd done particularly exciting things together or anything like that. Mum hadn't been that sort of person. What Dad had said at dinner had been quite true. She'd hated the idea of being away from home, which meant they'd never once gone on holiday like other people's families did.

But it had never really mattered. Mum had made up for it in other ways.

There were the little messages she used to leave him in his lunch box when he was younger. Scraps of paper hidden amongst the foil packages, telling him what she had planned for the weekend or what she was cooking for dinner. Of course, if his friends ever spotted them he would pretend they meant nothing and slam the lid back on, but secretly he'd loved finding them in there.

And then there were all the conversations they had shared. Conversations over the breakfast table; conversations on the way to school; conversations last thing at night before he went to bed. He had never held back, chattering away nineteen to the dozen about anything and everything, loving the way she listened to him so intently, the way she seemed to know him inside out.

Phoenix swallowed.

He put down the photo frame and scanned the papers strewn across the top of the desk – then went round to the drawers at the front.

It was possible, of course, that something might have been tucked inside one of the hundreds of dusty old academic books that lined the shelves. But sifting through those would take for ever. He would just have to make do with a quick look through the desk.

For a fraction of a second he paused, his hands halfway to the top drawer.

He would kill anyone who did this to him: rummaging through his personal possessions without his permission.

But the lure of what he might find inside overpowered his guilt – and besides, if they were making an early start in the morning, it was now or never.

Phoenix pulled open the drawer.

There was hardly anything inside it – just a box of paper clips and some stationery.

And there was nothing much in the next one down either.

Perhaps his instincts had been wrong after all.

Perhaps Dad really did know nothing more about Mum's reasons for keeping the house secret than he had told him at the dinner table.

He crouched down to open the bottom drawer of the desk, then frowned.

Inside it was a red folder. Quite a new one by the look of it, the price label still attached.

Phoenix lifted it out, and there, written in large capital letters in the top right-hand corner, were the two words he had been hoping to find … GRAVENHUNGER MANOR.

Something hard and heavy was lying at the bottom of the folder – and sliding his hand into it, he drew out a huge, old-fashioned brass key.

For a moment he held the key in the palm of his hand, marvelling at the sheer weight of it, wondering at the size of the lock it would open. And then he dropped it back into the folder and began sifting through the papers that had been filed inside.

At the front was a formal-looking document with his mother's signature on it, and behind that were a few other pieces of paper, including an ancient electricity bill and some stuff from the council.

But that was it.

Nothing that looked even remotely interesting.

Sighing, he made to replace the folder – then stopped, his eye caught by a tiny flash of gold at the back of the drawer. Something had been pinned to the wood: a cream-coloured envelope held in position by a single drawing pin.

He put down the folder and unfastened the envelope from its hiding place…

…and there it was, in faded black ink – his father's name laced across the centre in his mother's handwriting, calling to him from another world.

Phoenix jumped as the carriage clock on the mantelpiece chimed the hour. Dad would be back soon. Even Mrs Hopwood with her chatterbox ways couldn't keep him talking much longer.

If he was going to do this, he didn't have long.

Quickly, he lifted the flap and pulled out a single sheet of paper, his guts twisting at the sight of the same spidery hand that had looped his father's name on the front of the envelope. Straightening up, he smoothed it out and began to read.

From outside, Phoenix could hear voices drifting on the evening air. He edged towards the window and glanced out, taking care to keep behind the curtains.

His father was standing on the neighbour's doorstep, nodding and smiling and saying his goodbyes.

He flicked his gaze back to the letter.

Footsteps were coming up the garden path…

His hands shaking, Phoenix tucked the letter inside the envelope again. He bent to re-pin it to the back of the drawer and replaced the folder as he'd found it.

Then he slid the desk drawer shut and hurried out into the hallway – just as his father pushed open the front door.

2.
GRAVENHUNGER MANOR

Phoenix blinked back the sunlight that was streaming towards him and looked at the clock on the dashboard.

Only eleven o’clock, and even with all the windows open the car was like an oven. Perhaps they really were in for a heatwave this summer. It certainly felt that way.

“You’ve been spark out for nearly two hours,” said his father, glancing across at him. “Didn’t you get much sleep last night?” He swung the car down a narrow lane bordered by low hedges and clumps of yellow gorse. “Were you thinking about what I told you last night? About your mum and Gravenhunger Manor, I mean? D’you want to talk about it?”

Phoenix shook his head. “No thanks, Dad. It’s cool, OK.”

His father raised his eyebrows. “Are you sure? It must have been a bit of a shock.”

A bit of a shock
. It was the same expression his mother had used in her letter.
I’m sorry you have had to find out about it this way … I expect it has all come as a bit of a shock
.

Too right it was a shock. How else were you supposed to feel when the person you thought you knew so well, the person you had shared all your thoughts and worries and feelings with, turned out to have had a strange and secret past?

“Really, Dad, I’m fine,” he murmured. “I’m tired after the school term, that’s all. In any case, it’s too hot to talk about anything right now.”

He closed his eyes again and turned away.

It wasn’t that he blamed Dad for keeping quiet about the letter. After all, he must have been feeling pretty mixed-up about the whole thing himself. It was just that what he had read was completely doing his head in, and the last thing he wanted to do was talk about it.

He had lain awake for hours last night, going over and over his mother’s mysterious words in his mind.

…something happened there … something so terrible that we left only a few weeks after we arrived … it was every bit my fault … I will never forgive myself, neither in this life nor in the life to come
.

What on earth was this terrible thing that had caused the family to leave Gravenhunger Manor in such a hurry? And why hadn’t she felt able to share whatever it was with him and Dad?

When sleep had come at last, he had been swept up into a wild tangle of dreams, where image after image of his mother had flashed before him. Images of her reading to him when he was a small child; images of her face the day she had told them she was ill; images of her right at the very end.

He had woken drenched in sweat, his stomach churning, waiting for dawn to rescue him from the suffocating darkness.

Phoenix shifted in his seat, relaxing a little as he felt the silver angel nudge against his leg from inside his jeans pocket.

One thing was certain. He was going to use every second of his time at Gravenhunger Manor to find out what had happened there all those years ago. Exactly how he would go about it he didn’t yet know, but he wouldn’t rest until he had uncovered the truth.

Beside him, his father’s voice roused him from his thoughts.

“Nearly there now,” he was saying. “I caught a glimpse of the sea just then. It’s such a wonderfully clear day.”

He checked the clock.

“There should be just enough time to open up the house and get the bags in before I need to collect Rose from her train.”

Phoenix groaned to himself.

If only Dad hadn’t invited his cousin to stay with them. Having her around was going to make finding things out a million times more difficult.

He glanced outside as the car slowed to a halt beside a narrow track leading off through a forest of pines. A pair of rusty entrance gates, long since fallen from their hinges, lay in the undergrowth, half covered in drifts of pine needles.

He screwed up his eyes in an effort to read the signpost that stood at the side of the road. But where words had once been, only the ghost of letters remained – and he could only guess at what must lie at the end of the track that snaked its way through the forest and out of sight.

Rose stepped off the train into the stream of passengers heading towards the main station concourse.

She was practically dying of heat.

The onboard trolley service had run out of drinks halfway through the journey and then the air conditioning had broken down in her carriage,
sending the temperature rocketing, along with everybody’s tempers.

But she was here at last, and with half an hour to spare before her connection left for the coast, at least now she could get a drink and find somewhere to cool off.

It seemed like only yesterday since the journey back from Dad’s last posting abroad, and here she was on the move again, after less than a month of getting used to life at home, all set to spend the entire holidays in some weird old house by the sea with her cousin and uncle.

Even now she could hardly believe she had let her parents talk her into it.

Still, it wasn’t as if she’d had any better offers. They weren’t going away as a family this summer, and although she was beginning to make friends at her new school, no one was about to invite her to go on holiday with them, were they? In any case, Mum reckoned her cousin was lonely and needed a bit of company. He’d certainly looked pretty terrible at the funeral, his face all pinched and tight, his eyes ringed with dark circles. She’d tried talking to him after the service, but he’d barely said a word – just bent his head and stabbed at the frosty January ground with his shoe. In the end she’d given up and gone off to talk to somebody else.

Rose dumped her rucksack outside the newsagent’s. She pushed a stray red curl from her face, then reached into one of the side pockets for her purse.

Phoenix, her cousin was called – after his mother’s maiden name, apparently.

Fancy giving your kid a name like that. What on earth had Uncle Joel and Aunt Elvira been thinking?

She sighed.

It had been years since she had seen her aunt, yet she remembered her quite clearly. A tall, slim woman with eyes so dark they were nearly black, her raven hair cropped like a boy’s. Half Italian, Mum said. Apparently Uncle Joel had fallen for her at first sight.

Something had stopped her from being truly beautiful though: the too-deep creases in her forehead, perhaps – or the sad look in her eyes. It was as if someone had come along and sucked the fun out of her.

Rose shuddered. Just the thought of losing one of her parents was too much to bear. Poor Phoenix. She would do everything she possibly could to cheer him up.

Hitching her rucksack back on to one shoulder, she stepped inside the newsagent’s.

She took a bottle of water from the cooler and made her way towards the counter, cursing under her breath as the corner of her rucksack caught against a
shelf of maps and guidebooks, knocking a pale blue booklet to the floor.

A Guide to Gravenhunger
, she read, bending to pick up the little volume. There was a photo of a busy harbour on the front cover, and on the back a shot of what was almost certainly the high street, all brightly coloured shops and stripy awnings.

Glancing at the booklet, she considered for a moment, then tucked it under her arm and joined the queue at the counter.

It was probably only a collection of dry old facts, not worth the paper it was written on, but she would buy it anyway.

It would help pass the time for the rest of the journey.

The car rattled over the ruts and potholes, scattering rabbits in every direction.

Everywhere was thick with brambles, their spiky tendrils reaching across the track as if trying to knit together the two sides of the forest. But for the occasional snatch of sky, it seemed they had been swallowed up in a never-ending tunnel of deep and shadowy green.

Now they were veering off to the right and something else was coming into view.

Phoenix gasped.

How could she have kept a place like this a secret
?

It was huge. Four storeys of dark grey stone glowering down at them through a multitude of mullioned windows. Ivy trailed from the rooftops and over the gigantic front door there hung an ancient hurricane lamp, its glass casing cracked and blackened.

He shivered as a gust of wind blew in through the car window and caught the hairs on the back of his neck.

The sun had disappeared behind a dense bank of cloud – and above the towering chimneys of Gravenhunger Manor a thin grey rain was falling.

If any more daytrippers tried to squeeze on to the train, Rose reckoned it would never move out of the station.

Gravenhunger was obviously a very popular seaside resort, and she didn’t need to read her guidebook to prove it.

Her own carriage was full of families mainly: pink-faced women clutching even pinker-faced babies on their knees while their husbands bribed older children with sweets and crisps. There were teenagers too, blowing bubble gum and listening to music and texting on their mobiles.

She could imagine them all now, spilling out into the hot July sunshine at the other end of the line, in search of sun and sand and sea and freedom.

At least the air conditioning was working on this train. And at least she had a seat, even if it did happen to be next to an old man in a tweed cap who seemed intent on peering over her shoulder at her guidebook.

She couldn’t help feeling just the tiniest bit proud of herself. OK, so she’d done long train journeys alone before, but she’d never had to change from one train to another.

Mum had been in two minds as to whether to let her do it at all, but Dad had talked her into it, reasoning that their daughter was more than up to the challenge and that it would be a character-building experience.

That was Dad all over. Always eager to drag her and Mum off on some crazy adventure or other. Sometimes she wished he’d just ease off a bit.

From outside the carriage the guard blew his whistle and the train jolted into action.

Beside her, the old man lurched forward in his seat, then subsided into a raucous fit of coughing.

Rose edged towards the window, trying not to breathe in the heavy fumes of whisky and tobacco that were now wafting her way.