He nods. “I know I sound crazy and I know you won’t be able to believe me, not yet. But I . . . In a few nights we’ll go to Everwhere and then I’ll be able to show you.”
I look at him. I don’t believe what he’s saying. But, strangely, I see that he does. My joy, my relief, evaporates. Leo loves me, yes. But he’s also, quite clearly, delusional.
“Okay.” I take a deep breath. “Right, well, I’ll take that under consideration,” I say. “So, is that everything? Any more revelations? If so, please tell me now—it’s like ripping off a plaster, best done all in one go.”
I catch Leo’s eyes just before he glances away.
“No, that’s all,” he says, then gives me a weak smile. “I promise.”
And that’s when I’m suddenly certain that he’s been telling the truth—at least his truth—about all this, because right now I know that he’s lying.
8:39 p.m.—Scarlet
Scarlet has stumbled through the day, blackening crumpets and scalding coffee, giving customers too much change or too little, asking questions then instantly forgetting the answers. She’s functioned, but she’s been crumbling, her thoughts always returning to the fire. The shock of this belated memory has even replaced her fears over the flood. It’s exhausting, working around the damage, cleaning the dust and debris that collect during the day, but when, at last, she’s tucked her grandmother in, Scarlet doesn’t want to go to bed herself. She wants to sleep but doesn’t want to dream.
So she returns to the kitchen, flicks on the kettle, and roots about in the biscuit tins for a midnight feast. The café kitchen always provides comfort, even in its current state—so long as she doesn’t look up. It’s warm and womblike, filled with sweet smells, even if nothing’s baking, as if the walls have soaked up the scent of every cinnamon bun, every cake, baked over the past fifty years.
Tearing a bite out of a cinnamon bun, Scarlet tidies the counter while waiting for the water to boil. A clutch of letters slides out from behind a chopping board where she’d stuffed it earlier. Today’s post. She shuffles through the bills. She opens a letter from the insurance company informing her—though it’s already done so by email—that the surveyor will arrive to assess the property on the twenty-fourth of October at 10:30 a.m. Tomorrow. Scarlet’s still thinking how she’ll keep her grandmother safely upstairs during this visit, when she sees a handwritten letter, her name and address in inky script swirling across the envelope.
Reaching for a breadknife, she slices it open and pulls out a single page. It is not a letter; there is no “Dear,” no “Sincerely,” only a title. Scarlet scans the sentences. It’s a story.
Red Riding Hood
Once upon a time there was a girl who always dressed in red. Every day, no matter the weather, she wore a blood-red cloak her mother had made. In summer she’d sweat, but she didn’t care. She often sweated in winter too, since she was always hot, as if fire flowed through her veins instead of blood.
Little Red Riding Hood, as the townsfolk called her, was a timid girl. But when she wore her cloak, she felt brave. When she wore it to school, the other children didn’t tease her. When she wore it to the bakers, she was offered the best price for bread. When she wore it to bed, it kept nightmares at bay.
One day Red’s grandmother fell ill. Red’s mother made a pot of chicken soup and asked Red to take it to her grandmother’s cottage in the woods. Now Red feared the woods since it was the home of a terrible wolf who’d eaten many a stray child and a few huntsmen too. But Red’s mother, who feared nothing, assured her daughter that if she stayed on the path, she’d be safe.
The woods were full of shadows and strange sounds. Red held the soup and clutched the folds of her cloak until, at last, she had her grandmother’s cottage in sight. She started to run towards it, splashing the soup and accidentally straying from the path.
“Where are you going, little girl?”
Red turned to see the wolf. She stared—at his fangs, white in the moonlight; at his dripping tongue—transfixed. The wolf leapt. Red ran. Mercifully, she escaped, but her cloak was torn to shreds.
Red’s mother insisted that she visit her grandmother again the following day.
“No,” Red said. “I can’t go through the woods without my cloak.”