has gone. She frowns. How could it be gone? But her heartbeat slows and the tightness in her throat eases, and she tells Tom to stay on the line as she investigates. She uses the flashlight on her phone to illuminate her path, then finds a cord at the bottom step, which she pulls, flooding the place with light.
“Anything there?” Tom asks on speakerphone.
She looks around. No one is here. Still, she studies the space as though a trace of whoever was here might appear. It’s a smaller room than she expected, and no sign of any external entrance. A solid stone room with no windows or exits of any kind. Dusty spiderwebs everywhere. A sour, chemical smell.
“I’m checking the cupboards, Tom,” she says loudly, to alert Tom and any intruders that she’s doing so. But they reveal nothing, and suddenly she feels stupid. The sound is gone and no one is here. How peculiar.
“Are you sure?” Tom says, worried now. “Those old houses can have hidden doors. Check carefully.”
“I can see an air vent,” she says, glancing at a small square opening high up in a corner. “Perhaps that was the source of the sound.”
“You think so?” Tom asks. “I guess that would explain it.”
Her instincts tell her no, that wasn’t the source of the sound, but they also say she’s no longer in any danger, and so she moves toward the benches to uncover whatever is hidden beneath the old beige tarpaulin, turning her head as she shakes off a fur of dust.
“Tom,” she says with a laugh. “You will never guess what the basement is.”
“A crypt?”
“It’s a darkroom!”
She laughs again, looking over the equipment she’s uncovered. A webby cupboard reveals a set of baths and barrels of chemical fluid. Tweezers, a red light that works, even a box of paper. It has been years since she used a darkroom, but already her mind is flipping through the process, anticipating the magic of witnessing a blank sheet revealing its hidden photograph in the clear fluid, like a secret coming to light.
“See?” Tom says. “I told you the house was meant for us. This is a sign.”
She laughs with relief and hangs up. Then she stands in the space that holds whatever uttered her name, listening with all her senses. Nothing.
It is possible that she was just paranoid. And yet she knows what she heard.
12
this is a sign
NOW
Sophie! Sophie, look!”
I looked down into the shoebox. The baby bird that Gaia had found—Dora, she’d named her—was waddling around and pecking at the tinsel as though it was a ball of worms.
“She’s alive!” Gaia laughed. “And she’s so gorgeous!”
Gorgeous was the very last thing Dora was, but I was relieved and not a little surprised that she hadn’t kicked the bucket. In fact, she was pretty spritely, going at the tinsel with all the gusto of a little raptor. She was still hideous, bless her. Ninety percent beak. Less a bird than a beak with a growth of red skin daubed in black fur, like mold.
“She must be hungry,” Gaia observed. “Shall I get her some of the food we made?”
“Yes,” I said. “Oh, and, Gaia?” I lifted a finger meaningfully to my lips, indicating to her our promise—she wasn’t to tell her father that we were looking after the bird. We’d gone out into the forest to try to find Dora’s nest, but it was a bit like trying to find which tree a pine needle had come from—there were hundreds of nests in the tree branches, like clots. Some abandoned, some with little heads bobbing around, and the risk we ran in putting Dora in a nest that wasn’t hers was giving her to other nestlings to be eaten alive. Not a pleasant fate. So I relented and told Gaia we’d bring Dora into the house and try again the next day. But then it had rained, and Dora seemed to be eating the weird mixture we’d made for her out of egg yolks and mashed-up nuts. She’d ruined the cashmere scarf lining the box by pooing all over it.
I reached in and removed the tinsel. Dora seemed upset by this, cheeping her discontent. “We should get her some twigs,” I told Gaia. “Maybe some leaves. Make her a proper nest.”
“What about her toys?” Gaia said sadly, straightening a toppled PJ Masks figurine.
“The problem with baby birds is that they don’t know how to use a toilet,” I said, sounding very wise. “So Dora will probably continue to poo