illuminated by a single, flickering bulb. Then I see it: an old shoebox in the far corner.
The ceiling is low, and I crawl on my hands and knees, trying to protect my face from the dirt and spiders lurking in the gloom. It’s cold up here, and my hands are shaking when I remove the lid from the box. When I see what is inside, I feel physically sick.
I climb back down the attic steps, with the shoebox tucked under my arm, then turn off the light. A cocktail of fear and relief stirs inside me; I’m afraid of what this could mean, but also relieved that the police didn’t find it. I put the box in the bottom of the wardrobe, sliding it next to others that contain things they should, instead of things they shouldn’t. Then I practically fall into bed without getting undressed. I just need to lie down for a little while, or I’ll never get through a day of filming tomorrow. I close my eyes and I see Ben’s face; I don’t need a photo for that. It feels as if the us I thought we were is being demolished, lie by lie, leaving little more than the rubble of a marriage behind.
I’m starting to think I didn’t know my husband at all.
Twelve
Essex, 1987
“Time to wake up now,” says Maggie.
I wasn’t sleeping.
The sky outside the car window has turned from blue to black.
“Come on, don’t dawdle, out you get.” She folds down the front seat so that I can climb out. Her hand scrunches itself into a cross shape, just like my daddy’s hands do.
I stand on the side of the street, blinking into the darkness, looking up at the strange-looking line of shops I’ve never seen before. Then Maggie takes my hand and pulls me towards a large black door. I have to run to keep up. She walks just as fast at night as she did during the day.
“Where are—”
“Shh!” She flattens out the hand that was scrunched up and covers my mouth with it. Her fingers smell of bubble bath. “It’s late and we don’t want to be waking the neighbors. No more talking until we’re inside.” Her hand is covering my nose as well as my mouth and it is hard to breathe, but she doesn’t take it away until I nod to show that I understand. “Fingers on lips,” she whispers, and so I do what she says, copying the way she holds her finger to her own lips, doing my best to look just like her.
She takes a giant set of keys out of her bag; there must be at least a hundred of them, or maybe just ten. They are all different shapes and sizes, jingling and jangling and making far more noise than I did when I opened my mouth just now. She slots a key into the lock and opens the door.
I’m not sure what I was expecting to see, but it wasn’t this.
It’s just a staircase. A really long one. It goes so high that I can’t even see what is at the top, as though the stairs might lead right up to the moon and the stars in the sky. I want to ask Maggie whether I could catch a star if I climb all the steps, but my finger is still on my lips, so I can’t. The stairs are made of wood, which has been painted white along the side bits, but left bare in the middle. Just inside the door we’ve walked through is another door on the left. It’s made of metal and Maggie sees me looking at it.
“You don’t ever go through this door unless I say it is okay. Do you understand?” I nod, suddenly desperate to see what is on the other side. “Go on then, up you go.” She pushes me in front of her and closes the outside door behind us.
I start to climb. The steps are quite big for my little legs so it takes me a while, but when I slow down, she pokes her fingers in my back to tell me to hurry up. Adults are always doing that, saying things with their hands or eyes instead of their mouths. There is no rail, so I put my hand on the wall. It’s covered in tiles that look and feel the same as the corks that come out of my daddy’s wine. My brother used to thread them with cotton to make