manner and his deed seeps into people’s consciousness.
You should never judge a book by its cover, her father used to say, and it was a rule she tried to live by, revelling in the pleasant surprises that it often bestowed. But what happens when it’s the other way around? What happens when you’re taken in by a wolf in sheep’s clothing?
Kate rings the doorbell of her parents’ home, not knowing if she wants her mother to be there or not. There’s no answer, so she lets herself in and calls out, just in case. There’s a stillness to the house that is only achieved when it’s empty.
She takes the stairs two at a time, taking care to step over the creaky floorboard on the landing – it’s a force of habit. She goes into her parents’ bedroom and heads straight for the wardrobe door, sliding it silently across. She moves the bag that’s standing in front of where she’d found the hat box. She knows, before she can even see, that the box is no longer there.
She frantically searches for it at the back of her mother’s shoe racks and delves behind her stacked jumpers. It’s got to be here somewhere.
Having exhausted the cupboards, Kate pulls on the handles of the dressing table, knowing that it’s nigh on impossible for the box to fit into its shallow drawers. She searches under the bed, before heading to the airing cupboard on the landing, wondering why her mother would find it necessary to move it. She reaches behind the neat piles of towels and runs her hands all around the pipework of the dark cupboard, burning her fingers on the hot water inlet.
‘Shit,’ she says aloud, though she’s not sure whether it’s because it hurt or because she’s frustrated.
The pole hook for the loft hatch stands in the corner and she snatches a glance at the square door in the ceiling of the landing. Could it be? Would her mother have gone to the trouble of putting the box up there? And if so, why?
As she slides the ladder down, she remembers how her father had told her many a bedtime story about the loft monster, who everyone feared, yet when they were asleep, he’d come down in the dead of night to make their family’s life easier. Kate would give her dad a sceptical sideways glance until the night she’d gone to bed without doing her history project.
‘It’s too late to do it now,’ her father had said as he’d tucked his distraught daughter in.
‘But I’m going to get a respect task,’ Kate had cried, unable to understand how she could have forgotten it. ‘My name will go in the report book.’
‘Well, maybe it’ll teach you to be more organized in future,’ he’d said.
The next morning, she’d gone down to breakfast to find the most intricate castle, made entirely out of recycled cardboard, sitting on the kitchen table. Foil-covered toilet roll holders had crenels cut into them for turrets and a string-operated drawbridge had been created out of a cereal box.
‘Where did this come from?’ Kate had asked, with tears of happiness rolling down her cheeks.
Her father had shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. ‘I have no idea,’ he’d said, flicking his broadsheet newspaper out in front of him. ‘Must have been the loft monster.’
Kate smiles as she climbs the ladder, amazed that she’d fallen for it for so long, but it seems that if it came from her father’s mouth, she believed it. The irony weighs heavy on her shoulders.
The rudimentary light casts an ominous glow over the eaves, as Kate carefully makes her way across the beams, bending down low to get into the far corner, where everything seems to be stored. Her back aches as she flashes her phone light into the dark, the need to stand up to full height overwhelming. She can see the hat box sitting on top of a larger box and she edges her way towards it.
‘Hello?’ comes her mother’s voice from somewhere beyond the hatch.
Kate’s head bangs on a beam in panic.
‘Hello, who’s there?’
Kate considers not answering, but contemplating her position, she doubts a stand-off would work in her favour.
‘Mum, it’s me,’ she calls out.
‘Kate? What on earth are you doing up there?’
She needs to think quickly. She looks at the box under her arm and a carrier bag of tinsel on the floor, wondering whether emptying the letters into a bag would be less conspicuous.
‘I’m . . . erm, I’m just looking for