passing through a pearly sky. “I think it will be cold again today,” she said. She was shivering and she didn’t want him to know why.
Hari was explaining to her in his soft voice about the box room. It was awkward to get to, he said, stepping over a bicycle. They really should have one inside the house. He led her toward a broken path that went around the house.
“Only one or two of us have use of it,” he said, ushering her down a short flight of stairs, “to protect people’s things from the miscreant. Unfortunately though, a local chap has made a bit of shambles of it by putting hay and horse food there.”
She’d pictured a proper basement, somewhere secure, but a few seconds later Hari stopped and pointed toward a ramshackle shed, with several tiles missing from its roof that seemed to be loosely attached to the veranda at the back of the house. A dog crept out of the empty spaces underneath the house, its dugs almost touching the ground. When it started to bark, Hari picked up a stone and hurled it in its direction.
“That dog is a tremendous bore,” he said, as both of them splashed through the sloppy red mud. “It belongs to the people next door. Sorry about this.” He looked down at her shoes and ankles, now rimmed with red clay.
The shed, though flimsy in appearance, had large black iron hinges, one of which was hanging off. Hari took a key from a chain that he wore around his waist and unlocked the door. The black gloom inside smelled like the bottom of a pond.
“One moment, please,” said Hari before he closed the door behind them. He put a match to an oil lamp he carried in his other hand. “It’s very dark in here, and there are plenty of furry friends.”
“What?” she said stupidly.
“Rats,” he said, “from the horse food.”
She sneezed several times. When he lifted his lamp she saw in its yellow blur several collapsed bales of straw, held together with rotten string. Weak shafts of light shone through a hole in the roof, and when her eyes had adjusted to the light she saw, on top of the hay, some broken ladders and what looked like a bundle of clothes.
“Follow me, please.” Hari’s lamp was moving past the hay bales and toward the back of the shed, where the ground felt slimy and unreliable underneath her feet. Now she saw some white shapes in the dark, furniture perhaps, and on top of them a jumble of old suitcases.
“Is all this theirs?” she said. “I was told it was one trunk.”
“Please.” He pointed behind the suitcases. “I have put.”
He waited for her to walk past a bundle of fishing rods, and some ancient tennis rackets in their presses. It took awhile for her eyes to adjust again, but when she saw it, she heard herself gasp. The large battered trunk in front of her looked for that moment like a freshly dug-up coffin. It sat on a low deal table, covered in dirt and green mold. On top of it someone—probably Hari, to be kind, to give this moment some sense of ceremony—had laid a fresh marigold flower.
When Hari put his lamp down on top of it, she saw its wooden lid sweating and mossy, almost like a live thing.
Hari stood by her, polite, impassive. She took a deep breath.
“Well, here it is then,” she told him. “It won’t take me long to go through it.”
She could hear her breath whistling in her lungs. She hadn’t expected to feel like a grave robber.
She took the keys out of her pocket. Some twigs and what appeared to be bird droppings protruded from the lock and when she tried the key, it jammed immediately. She pushed again but felt it catch on the rust and grit.
“I’ll need your help, Hari,” she said. “The lock’s stuck.”
There was a faint silvery rustling in the darkness as he stepped forward.
“Rats are a damned nuisance,” he said to her pleasantly. “Please, memsahib, hold the light and I will have a go.”
He tried the key left and right and then again more forcibly.
“Step back, memsahib, please,” he said at last. He took a knife out of a leather sheaf attached to his pocket and inserted it under the lid. With one foot braced on the wall he leaned into the trunk. Both of them yelled as the lid flew open.