He carried the plate and carton upstairs, and then paused on the landing, pressing his ear against the door to the attic.
Silence.
But then he wasn’t so sure. He could hear something. Was Jake whispering to someone? If he was, it was so quiet that it was impossible for Francis to make out the words. Impossible even to be sure that it was happening.
Francis listened carefully.
Silence.
Then the whispering sound again.
It raised the hairs on his neck. There was nobody else up there—nobody that Jake could be talking to—and yet Francis suddenly had an irrational fear that there might be. That in bringing this child into his house, he had somehow brought someone or something else with him. Something dangerous.
Maybe he’s talking to Neil.
But that was stupid; Francis didn’t believe in ghosts. As a child, he would sometimes go near the door to his father’s extension and imagine one of the little boys standing on the other side, bright and pale, waiting patiently. There had even been times when he’d thought he could hear breathing through the wood. But none of it had been real. The only ghosts that existed were in your head. They spoke through you, not to you.
He unlocked the door and opened it, then climbed the stairs slowly, not wanting to scare the child. But the whispering sound had stopped, and that annoyed him. He didn’t like the idea that Jake was keeping secrets from him.
In the attic, the boy was sitting on the bed with his hands on his knees, and Francis was at least pleased to see that he had already dressed himself from the selection of clothes he’d provided in the drawers. Although less pleased to note the chest of toys didn’t appear to have been touched. Weren’t they good enough or something? Francis had kept those for a long time, and they meant a lot to him; the boy should have been grateful for the opportunity to play with them. He looked around for the pajamas Jake had been wearing, and saw they were folded neatly in a stack on the bed. That was good. He would need them when it came to returning the boy later.
“Good morning, Jake,” he said brightly. “I see you’ve got dressed already.”
“Good morning. I couldn’t find my school clothes.”
“I thought you could have a day off.”
Jake nodded. “That’s nice. Is my daddy going to be picking me up?”
“Well, that is a complicated question.” Francis walked over to the bed. The boy seemed almost eerily calm. “And one I don’t think you need to worry about for the moment. All you need to know is that you’re safe now.”
“Okay.”
“And that I’m going to look after you.”
“Thank you.”
“Who were you talking to?”
The boy looked confused. “Nobody.”
“Yes, you were. Who was it?”
“Nobody.”
Francis felt a sudden urge to strike the boy in the face as hard as he could.
“We don’t lie in this house, Jake.”
“I’m not lying.” Jake looked off to one side, and for a moment Francis had the odd sense that he was hearing a voice that wasn’t really there. “Maybe I was talking to myself. I’m sorry if I was. Sometimes that happens when I’m thinking about stuff. I get distracted.”
Francis was silent, considering the answer. It made a degree of sense. He sometimes got lost in a dreamworld too. Which meant that Jake was like him, and that was good on one level, because it gave him something to fix.
“We’ll work on that together,” he said. “Here—I brought you some breakfast.”
Jake took the plate and carton and said thank you without being prompted, which was another good thing. Presumably he’d learned some manners from somewhere. But he also looked down at what he was now holding and didn’t begin eating. The mold was still visible, Francis noticed. Clearly it wasn’t good enough for him.
It had been good enough for Francis as a boy.
“Are you not hungry, Jake?”
“Not right now.”
“You have to eat if you’re going to grow up big and strong.” Francis smiled patiently. “What would you like to do afterward?”
Jake was silent for a moment.
“I don’t know. Maybe I’d like to do some drawing.”
“We can do that! I’ll help you with it.”
Jake smiled.
“Thank you.”
But he said Francis’s other name afterward, and Francis went very still. The boy recognized him, of course, but a good home was no place for informality. A child needed discipline. There had to be a clearly delineated hierarchy.
“Sir,” Francis said. “That’s what you’ll call me here.