January (7 page)

Next I checked his chest of drawers but once again, found nothing. There was no sign of the envelope anywhere.

What could he have done with it? I wondered. What if he still had it with him and this whole sneaking-in thing had been a waste of time?

I had to keep moving. All that was left to search were his two bedside drawers. One was piled with history books, with some medical bill
sitting on top. The drawer beneath revealed only handkerchiefs, a half-used box of cigars and a travel guide. I looked over at the other bedside drawer. My last hope. Once I’d checked that, I’d be out of there.

GET OUT NOW!

Was Boges joking?

Surely Rafe and Mum would still be at the solicitor’s?

I ran along the hallway and looked out the window.

Rafe was walking up the driveway!

Immobilised, I stood still, my mind frantically trying to work out what to do. If I bolted, I might just have made it down and out the back doors before he’d make it upstairs. But if I did that, I’d never know what might lie in the unsearched drawer.

I ran back down the hall to Rafe’s bedroom. I had to find out.

I fell to my knees and wrenched the drawer open. And there it was! The envelope
was
addressed to me—with the name of the hospice in the top left-hand corner.

I quickly snatched it up. I needed to run, but I stopped, immobilised again, staring at what I
had found lying underneath the envelope. I’d never seen one so close before. Carefully, I lifted it out, mesmerised by its blue-black steeliness. It was so much heavier than I’d imagined. The weight of it, and the four-digit serial number punched in its left side, made me pretty damn sure that it was no replica.

What would Rafe need this for?

Get a move on, I told myself, and turned back to the envelope, noticing that it had already been opened. It looked thinner than when I’d seen it before. Inside, as I suspected, was the letter from the neurologist. But no drawings.

There was a noise downstairs.

Rafe was already in the house!

I stuffed the letter back into the envelope. I hoped Rafe’d stay in the living room so I could sneak out the front door.

I strained to listen to his footsteps so that I could tell where he was and what he might be doing. But then I heard his heavy limp coming up the stairs.

Desperately I looked around. There was no way I could get out. If I ran down the hall, I’d collide with him at the top of the stairs. I had to hide. I shoved the envelope back in the drawer and closed it. The only place that offered some cover for me was the narrow area between the
wall and the other side of the bed. I hurtled over and dropped to the floor, trying to squeeze myself under the bed. It was too low and there was no way I was going to fit, so I just lay there flat on the floor, pressed close to the dusty carpet, praying that if he came into his bedroom, he wouldn’t see me …

I held my breath and tried to calm my
pounding
heart. Louder and louder his footsteps sounded until I knew he was in the room. Then, through the narrow gap between the base of the bed and the carpet, I saw his black shoe and the bandage on his other foot. I tried to make myself even smaller and flatter. What was he doing?

A tickle of dust in my nose made me twitch. I couldn’t afford to sneeze. Not now. I pressed my lips together, too scared to breathe. And what I’d seen in Rafe’s bedside drawer a moment ago made my anxiety burn so much stronger.

Uncle Rafe seemed to just stand there. He was taking something from the bedside table. I hoped it wasn’t my envelope.

I watched the black shoe and the bandaged foot turn away as Rafe walked across the carpet towards the door. As he vanished through it, I heard something small fall on the bed. He’d thrown something back in the room.

The footsteps descended the staircase.

I realised I’d been holding my breath and exhaled in relief.

I waited until I heard the front door open and close again. Slowly I crawled out.

There was a key on the bed. It had a black tag and looked like the key to a front door. It was familiar but I couldn’t remember why. I picked it up and put it in my pocket, then turned back to check the bedside drawer again.

The bill that had been sitting on top of the history books was gone. It must have been what Rafe had come back for. I opened the drawer again, expecting to find the envelope gone, too, but it was still there. It was then that I noticed something else was missing …

‘Why didn’t you stop him? He nearly found me in there!’ I dragged Boges out from the corner of the garden. He’d been hiding behind a bushy tree.

‘He was walking up the path before I even noticed him! You said he’d be gone for ages! What was he doing back here anyway?’

‘Must have forgotten a couple of things. Picked them up and went out again. He dropped this.’ I held up the key.

‘What does it open?’

‘Not sure.’

‘Well, he’s gone now,’ said Boges. ‘Heading towards the city again. You look like crap. Did you find the envelope?’

‘I found it. Addressed to me. The letter from Dad’s doctor is in there, but the drawings are missing. You won’t believe what else I found in there …’

I took a deep breath.

‘My uncle has a gun.’

Boges blinked at me. ‘A gun! Why? What would he have a gun for?’

‘I don’t know, but he took it with him. I’m telling you, you can’t trust that guy. I’m going back inside. Can you wait here for me?’

I went straight back to the bedroom, and this time I took the letter from the envelope and hurried downstairs to the photocopier.

We first met Dr Edmundson when Dad was flown back from Ireland and admitted to the neurological clinic. Later, when they moved Dad to the hospice, Dr Edmundson visited him daily, still hoping to unravel the mystery and diagnose the deadly virus.

A nurse? Was it Jennifer Smith?

I looked up from the letter, recalling how the doctor had explained things to us last year.

‘Tom can still call on abstract concepts—or ideas that in his mind are related to what he wants to convey—even if we don’t know what the connections are,’ he’d said. ‘He’s lost the usual ways—speaking and writing—and we don’t quite know why this is. Your dad isn’t going crazy. He’s using whatever brain connectors the virus has left him, and it’s like a code that we can’t always understand. Just yesterday, when Tom wanted a book, he drew his reading glasses. It’s like he can’t come directly to what he wants, but he can draw something related to what he’s trying to say—something at least one or two steps removed from the actual object.’

I had to find those drawings and work out what they meant. I pulled out the key that I’d picked up from the bed and stared at it. I knew I’d seen it somewhere before.

My sense that Dad needed to tell me
something
in those last few weeks, returned in full force. In the days before he died, with Mum and Gabbi sitting close by, softly talking to him and holding his hand, I would sometimes climb right up and onto the bed and lie beside him, my head on his chest, listening to his heart beating. In
those moments, I had the strongest sense that he was trying to tell me something; trying to tap it out. Something urgent. A warning.

The words on the page blurred as tears began to fill my eyes. But I had to hold back—I had a job to do.

I replaced the letter in its envelope and hurried upstairs, putting it back where I found it. I stared again at the space where the gun had been.

What would Rafe have done with the drawings? And what did he need the gun for? Did he need protection, or did somebody else?