The Father's House (22 page)

It seemed unlikely that they would come under Bank or Car. She took out the Housekeeping file. There were sections on gas, electricity, groceries, clothes and school, but again, no mention of her or Paul. She put the first two files back in the cupboard in the same order as they had been before.

The BWD file didn't look very promising, but she took it out and put it on the desk. Suddenly she felt the hair rise on the back of her neck, and she had an uncomfortable feeling that someone was watching her. Her heart started thumping. She looked round the room but, apart from Paul, who was busy tracing a bird pattern on the carpet with his finger, there was no-one else to be seen.

The hole in the ceiling was black and gaping but she could see nothing there. She peered out through the window. Her old friend, the lime tree, seemed sinister in the dusk. She closed the curtains.

David's warning about imminent danger was shouting loudly inside her head – but she couldn't leave yet. She had to find her name! Telling herself to stop imagining things she switched on the lights, went over to draw the curtains on the opposite window and returned to the desk.

An index in the BWD file set out categories, Births – Wives – Disposals. At the sight of ‘Disposals' Lucy's skin prickled. There were nine entries. Seven were wives described as ‘mistakes' or ‘non-convertible' or ‘incapacitated'. Two were children:
Stephen, mother Mary, aged four years, poor physical and mental health; Susan, mother Jane, aged eighteen months, blood disorder
.

Lucy was shaking as she shut the file. She sat down for a moment in an armchair near the desk and shut her eyes. Paul tapped her on the knee. She lifted her head and tried to smile, and remembered that she was still looking for who she was.

Stupid! She should have gone to the ‘Births' section first. It contained a list of fifteen names under the headings, Child, Mother, Date of Birth, Weight, set out in chronological order. Lucy's eyes swept over the page. Two up from the bottom of the list was:
Paul, mother Belinda, formerly known as Maria
. She checked the date of birth – three, nearly four years ago! Stars danced in front of her eyes, and she took deep breaths. ‘Formerly known as'. That meant ‘used to be known as'.

Lucy held her breath. She ran her finger up the page, and there she was!
Lucy, mother Maria
… Her heart pounded. She shut her eyes in case she was imagining things, and opened them again. There was the writing on the page! Maria, it said. She checked the date – fourteen years and nine months. Her legs turned to jelly and she dropped heavily down onto the father's leather office chair. It must be a mistake. She closed the file and had to force herself to open it up and check again. Supposing it wasn't there? But it was. And then the most amazing, beautiful, and exhilarating truth dawned on her – Paul was her brother. She had someone. He was hers.

Outside the house the automatic gates opened quietly. A large car purred up the drive and the gates closed behind it. Two men leaped out and a third was waiting for them by the lobby door. One of them immediately started to work on the lock, but the door wouldn't open. He swore under his breath. “The old lady's bolted it from the inside. Someone's tipped her off.”

The front door too was bolted, and the back door was locked.

“Get the ram,” barked the leader.

They lifted the ram out of the boot of the car. A man ran his hand over the lobby door. “The bolts will be just about here,” he said.

Upstairs, Lucy called Paul to come and look. “That says who you are,” she said excitedly, pointing at his name on the page. “You had a mother called Maria, and so did I. That means I'm your sister and you're my brother.”

Paul stared. He could read his own name.

“Where is she?”

“She's somewhere.” At least she hadn't been listed under Disposals. “We'll see if we can find her. Look! This is called the ‘Wives' section. It says Maria has ‘hair – dark brown, eyes – green, medium height'. You've got green eyes.”

“So have you.”

Lucy took out the Commune file again. “Perhaps this will tell us where she is.” They looked through the Mothers and the Aunts sections, but there was no mention of a Maria, nor was there in the Household file. There was nothing to say where she was or what had happened to her.

They would just have to keep looking. Clutching the BWD file to her, Lucy started moving round the room again looking for anything that might contain files or notebooks. There was a small lamp on a table next to the fireplace. She pressed a switch in the wall and immediately switched it off again in panic as rustling sounds filled the room.

The children grabbed hold of each other in terror.

“Ghosties!” whispered Paul.

They crouched behind a giant armchair and held each other tight. Two faces peered cautiously through the hole in the ceiling in the middle of the room, and a woman whispered, “It sounded like children.”

“I'm going down,” whispered someone else.

“You'll never get through that space!”

There was shuffling and scraping, and gentle thumps of falling plaster. Lucy and Paul peeped round the side of the armchair. Two legs emerged through the hole in the ceiling. Lucy clapped her hand over Paul's mouth before he could start screaming. The legs were followed by a body, and then a head with a mass of red hair. Two arms extended up into the hole and, one at a time, let go.

Claudia landed on the wet carpet. She jumped to her feet, rubbed her behind, and looked around. Paul gave a semi-smothered hiccup. Claudia tiptoed cautiously towards the armchair and looked behind it. Two pairs of green eyes looked fearfully up at her. For a second she said nothing. Then she burst out laughing.

“Two leprechauns!” she said. “Who are you?”

The children stood up slowly. Before they or she had a chance to say anything more there was a battering and smashing noise down in the lobby, and the rough sound of men's voices. It was followed by a clattering and swearing on the stairs as someone fell over the vacuum cleaner, and a loud crash as it was hurled over the banisters.

David's warning! Lucy was galvanised into action. She grabbed Paul and dragged him to the wall. Heaving him up onto a chair and onto the sideboard, she opened the dumb waiter, shoved him inside, and closed it. She quickly pressed a button and hoped it was the right one for the kitchen. The dumb waiter purred upwards to the floor above.

The desk pressed up against the curtains and left no room to hide. Lucy dashed across to the window opposite. The curtains there were big and heavy and velvet, and she disappeared into them. Claudia was standing stock still in the middle of the room when two men burst in.

“It's the redhead!” shouted one triumphantly. “The luck of the Devil!”

Claudia backed away and then sidestepped and darted forward towards the open door. As she did so a third man entered. The three of them grabbed her and threw her to the floor. One pulled a legnth of cord out of his pocket and quickly tied up her hands and feet, and then they dragged her out of the room.

On the way out one man turned to look back. “Holy Mag! There's been a flood!” he shouted.

“Never mind that now. Just get her out of here. Quick!”

Lucy could hear the thumps as they dragged Claudia's body down the stairs, bumping against each step one at a time. Then there was silence. David had been right. She should have taken Paul and left the house. Now it was too late. She didn't dare move.

Upstairs Maria had thrown the rug back over the hole in the floor as soon as she heard the men below. Lying with her ear pressed to the rug, she listened in horror as Claudia was taken away. She heard the man say, “Holy Mag! There's been a flood,” and the dismissive response, and the distant thumping sound as Claudia was dragged down the stairs. In the ensuing silence the blue front door of her parents' house swam before her eyes and closed over their sorrowful faces. Then she heard a clicking sound and a small scared voice whispered, “Lucy?”

Maria jumped to her feet. The door of the dumb waiter had been pushed open slightly and a frightened little face peeped round it. She pulled Paul out gently and he started to cry.

“Hush,” said Maria softly. “They'll hear us.”

“I want Aunt Sarah,” whimpered Paul. “I want Lucy.”

The room was quiet except for the sound of someone breathing and a soft footfall over the carpet. There was a smell of cigarettes. Lucy held her breath and clenched her jaw to stop her teeth from chattering. The smell of cigarettes was coming nearer. Her legs started trembling uncontrollably, and suddenly the side of the curtain twitched and a hand shot in and grabbed her by the hair.

She nearly fainted, first with fright and then with relief. Her mouth was so dry she could hardly speak.

“Oh, Thomas!” Her voice was just a squeak. “Thank goodness it's you!” She threw her arms around his middle.

He grabbed her angrily by the shoulders.

“I told you not to poke your nose in things!” He shook her till her head rattled. “I've been watching you, you snooping, interfering little brat. You'd have been alright if you'd kept away. You've had it now!”

She was too shocked to move. This couldn't be Thomas! She had made a terrible mistake. It was a monster who looked like him. The blood drained from her face and her eyes were wide with fright. He caught hold of the back of her jumper and shoved her in front of him, down the stairs across the lobby, through the kitchen, and into the hall.

“You're not Thomas.” Lucy's voice was a strangled choke. “The Magnifico is watching you.”

“You little idiot! There's no such thing as the Magnifico. They're living in luxury and fooling the lot of you.”

With one hand Thomas opened the door to the cellar, and with the other he threw her down the stairs.

“Get in there till I decide what to do with you. I've got more important things to think about while I'm here.” He slammed the door after her and turned the key.

For a few moments Lucy lay dazed. Then, feeling around with her hand, she found the bottom step and pulled herself upright. Her brain felt numb. She rubbed her head. There was no nasty sticky feeling so she knew she wasn't bleeding. Her left shoulder and hip hurt but she hardly noticed the pain.

The true pain was inside her.

Thomas, the only person she'd really and truly trusted (other than Aunt Sarah of course), the man she'd once thought she'd like to marry – a traitor! She'd never trust anyone again except Paul. Even at this horrible moment there was a flash of joy as she remembered she had a brother. But somehow she had to get to Aunt Sarah to warn her. With a shaking arm she reached down and felt under the step for the plastic bag. It was still there, and the candle and matches were dry. Her fingers scarcely had the strength to hold a match let alone strike it, and she had to close her eyes and breathe deeply into the mouldy air for a moment. She had just managed to light the candle and was about to struggle to her feet when she heard feet and voices in the hall above her.

“The old lady's dead in her bed,” said someone.

“Good. At least she's out of the way.” Thomas's new voice, no longer kind and gentle, penetrated harshly through the cellar door. “Where's the boy?”

“Don't know.”

“Well he's not a problem like the girl. He can't speak much.”

For a moment Lucy wondered who the old lady was. Then she indignantly realised they meant Aunt Sarah. She wasn't old, just tired. Perhaps she was pretending to be dead so they wouldn't bother her. Holding the candle carefully upright in her left hand and feeling the wall with her right, she stumbled across the cellar.

Her escape apparatus was exactly as she had left it months ago. The strip of underlay was still there, and the crate, and the box on top of it. The underlay was wet and clammy under her knees. She pushed herself up and, giving the cover of the coal hole a good shove, she caught hold of the rim and looked over the edge. Outside it was not quite dark, but dark enough to blur a skimpy little figure as it emerged from the coal hole, flitted down the path, out through the gate, and across the road to the bushes by the pond.

Peering round the dense branches of a heavy rhododendron, Lucy could see that the high double gate to the left of the house was closed, but there was light and activity in the driveway. She darted back across the road and peeped through the diamond-shaped holes just above the crossbar.

It was as though she had seen it all before, only backwards. A splendid Mercedes with blacked-out windows stood in the drive facing the garage. The right-hand rear passenger door was wide open, and two men were emerging from the lobby dragging a wriggling, trussed up, red-headed bundle between them.

Claudia was struggling with all her strength and objecting as forcefully as she could, grunting into a gag which had been shoved into her mouth and halfway up her face.