The words are written in faded black marker across the taped-down lid. Kate can’t remember the last time she would have looked in here – probably just before she sealed it up, which must have been when they upped and left Harrogate to move to London twenty-odd years ago. The brown masking tape comes away easily, its underside having long lost its stickiness. That unmistakeable mustiness of nostalgia permeates her nostrils as she lifts the lid – the sight of a Polly Pocket diary almost making her cry, as its very existence transports her to a place and time she’s long forgotten. She can hear TLC’s ‘Waterfalls’ playing on the CD player in her bedroom, smell her mum cooking a roast dinner and see herself snivelling into her pillow because Freddie Harris had chucked her. They’d seemed like such desperate times back then, but now, with the benefit of hindsight, it was nothing compared to being a grown-up and all that it entails.
She reaches under the teddy she’d named ‘Bert’, who she’d refused to go to sleep without until Lauren had called her a crybaby. Her eyes pass fondly over the cards that the aforementioned Freddie had written her, as an eleven-year-old, when he’d still been in love with her. She’d like to pore over them, and feel the intensity of that first love, but they’re not what she’s here to look at. She’ll do that another time.
She can see the smaller white box under the oversized quill pen that her father had claimed he’d found in the bowels of his chambers in London.
‘That’ll be from one of the barristers that used to walk the floors in the fifteenth century,’ he’d enthused.
‘I doubt quill pens were even invented then,’ Lauren had haughtily remarked as she passed by.
‘Of course they were,’ said their father, laughing.
‘Well then I bet barristers hadn’t been invented then,’ she’d quipped, ever ready with a cynical comment, especially where their father was concerned. Why had there been so much animosity between them?
Kate carefully lifts the smaller box out and lays it on the carpet, as if psyching herself up to open it. She knows what’s inside it; she just can’t remember the details. She takes a deep breath, not knowing whether she wants to be proved right or wrong as she lifts the lid.
The romper looks just as pink as she remembers it, though she’d forgotten about the white embroidered rabbits that hopped across its chest. She picks up the velvet-soft teddy bear that sits nestled in the corner and instinctively holds it against her cheek. Did he hold the key that would unlock their family’s secret?
She is suddenly struck by a recollection, so vivid that it’s overwhelming. She’s standing on the landing, at the bottom of the loft ladder, listening to her dad huffing and puffing.
‘Have you found them yet?’ she’d called up to him.
‘Nope,’ he’d shouted back, the insulation making him sound as if he was speaking from inside a box. ‘I’m telling you, they’re not up here. Call down to your mother.’
‘Mum!’ Kate had yelled over the bannister. ‘Dad says the Christmas decorations aren’t up there.’
‘Of course they are,’ Rose had said in a sing-song voice, breaking away from the duet she was performing with Bing Crosby in the kitchen. ‘They’re in the back corner; there’s a couple of bags and a few boxes of red and green baubles.’
‘Mum says they’re red and green and in the corner,’ Kate called up the ladder.
‘I’m telling you, they’re not up here,’ he’d said, exasperated.
‘Can I come up?’ asked Kate. ‘To help you look.’
‘Come on then,’ he’d said, appearing at the hatch with an outstretched arm.
She’d balanced on the beams as if her life depended on it, remembering her father’s warning years previously not to go up to the loft without him. ‘If you fall through the lagging you’ll end up in your mother’s lap in the front room,’ he’d said sternly.
Kate was sure that he was spinning her a yarn, but she wasn’t taking any chances as she slowly worked her way over to the corner.
Whilst Harry busied himself with trying to find the decorations, Kate had begun to open a few boxes and peer inquisitively inside. The quill pen had been sat on top of a pile of dusty law books. ‘Can I take this downstairs?’ she’d asked, holding it up.
‘Yes,’ Harry had said absently, without even looking at what she was referring to.