The Music Box: Chapter Seventy-Two

Emily’s mother looked at her steadily, putting her hand out to take her own.

“How can it be?”

“It’s a long story, mother and I’m afraid I have put us in terrible danger. He wanted to find you, to have you, and I almost let it happen.”

The fear, the frustration, the exhaustion of everything that had happened since she had left home in pursuit of the music box welled up inside her. Emily broke down into a fit of sobbing, collapsing onto the bed beside her mother and putting her head on her shoulder. She felt her mother flinch and realised why. She may have believed her story, but she would still be appalled at having Crouch so close. Emily wiped her nose and rubbed her eyes and stood up again.

“He’s in there,” she said, pointing at the box. “He is using my body, but now he has disappeared into the box, but I cannot tell you how long we have. We must get rid of the box.”

“But what about you, Emily? We can’t just leave you like this.”

“I know, but I don’t know what to do about that.”

“Begin by telling me everything. No, wait. We must get your father too. Give me a moment to see him first, I have to explain the situation to him, little as I understand it myself. Wait here and I will be back.”

With that Isabelle strode from the room and Emily heard her cross the landing and head straight into her father’s study, something she would never normally do so abruptly. Emily made a point of sitting with her back to the box, studiously avoiding even looking at it. But in the newly silent room, it began. It was barely discernible at first and Emily thought she must be imagining things. But there it was again, that music gently wafting around the room, brightening everything and making her feel entirely at peace.

She smiled dreamily, gently stood and walked over to the box on the dresser. It was pulsing gently, a beautiful glow that spoke to her of the end of pain, the end of suffering and the promise of life back to how it had been before any of this had ever happened.

Extending Crouch’s long, cruel fingers, Emily reached down and lifted its lid.

The Music Box: Chapter Seventy-One

Isabelle reached the landing. Just as she was about to knock on Percy’s closed study door, she heard a muffled sound from Emily’s room. Gently stepping over to the door, she wondered why it had been closed. Slowly pulling it to, she was startled by a hulking shadow passing across the wall. A hand gripped her wrist and pulled her through, her heart threatening to jump from her chest as she caught in the mirror a glimpse of the dark-coated Mr Crouch.

She gasped a large gulp of air and was ready to scream when Crouch put a finger to his lips. He released his cruel grip on her wrist and for some reason she could never work out, Isabelle stayed silent. She saw, in his deep-set eyes, long body, sharp nose and the sleek, jet-black hair peeking from beneath his hat the familiar face she had recalled just moments ago.

“Aloysius”, she whispered.

But Crouch shook his head.

“Stay very still a moment, and please hear me out. I didn’t mean to grab you like that just now, I must have given you a terrible fright, but you scared me so.”

“Why would I listen to you? What are you doing here? And where’s my Emily?”

In the shock of finding Aloysius here, after all this time, and in the personage of a human, not a wolf, Isabelle had been so confused she had momentarily forgotten all about Emily.

But not now. “What have you done with her?” she growled, anger boiling her blood. Tell me now!”

“Please, I shall explain. Emily is safe, she is well; she is near.”

Isabelle glanced around the room to see if her daughter could be seen anywhere. Her eyes passed the sweets she had bought earlier that day, the tray with Percy’s tea on it and reached a small carved box she didn’t recognise. As she reached out to pick it up, Aloysius jumped towards her and wrested it from her grasp.

“Don’t open that,” he exclaimed, snatching it out of her reach. “I’ll explain everything, but please leave that be.”

“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t scream now and get Percy in here,” Isabelle demanded.

“If you want to see Emily again, I strongly recommend you don’t. Please, just listen.”

Aloysius gestured to the end of Emily’s bed and Isabelle tentatively sat, though her body remained coiled, ready to spring. She glanced nervously at the door, wondering if she could make it if she needed to. Aloysius caught her line of thinking and moved further away, towards the window on the far side of the room.

“Let me just say you have nothing to fear. You did – you certainly did – but I assure you that you need worry no longer.”

“And what exactly is your assurance worth? You come here after all this time, and why? There’s something wrong with Emily, something has happened and I just know you’re involved. What are you doing in my home? How did you get here? What is going on? And why are you back, after all this time?”

Emily wondered what it must be like for her mother to be seeing Aloysius after all this time, and here, in her home, like this. But she pushed these thoughts to the side for the time-being and measured her words very carefully.

“As I was saying, Emily is well. You are right, there has been something wrong with her, and this box is a big part of that. I found it just now under this bed. Did you know it was here?”

“I’ve never seen it before in my life. What is it? How did she get it?”

“It’s a music box. It was built by Mr Crouch – Aloysius Crouch – to help him take on the forms of other beings, to lock them inside while he became them.”

“But you’re Aloysius! You’re the one doing these things.”

“I’m not. I know I appear to be, but you have to believe me – you must believe me – I’m not Aloysius Crouch.”

“Then who are you?”

“It’s me, mother. It’s Emily.”

The Music Box: Part V: Chapter Seventy

The moment Emily had seen Crouch swallow the licorice, he vanished from her sight. She made herself wait at least 10 seconds, but still nobody appeared, so she slowly opened the cupboard door. Stepping out into the room, she felt a momentary surge of triumph. She had done it! Crouch must now be back in the music box. But with the floods of relief came a troubling thought. How long could she be sure he would be there?

She was almost certain he would not have any food with him, so there was no simple way out for him that way. But perhaps he knew of other ways to escape. She herself had found at least one other way out with Minerva’s help, through the music, and she knew that Oscar had also passed out through other means. While this passed through her mind, she absentmindedly pocketed the remaining sweets from the dresser.

There still remained one aspect of her plan that Emily had never really worked out. She was still here in Crouch’s body and now had no idea where hers might be. As she considered all this, she examined the room for the music box. She knew it must be here somewhere, but where?

It had not been in the wardrobe, nor could she see it on the dresser. She thought for a moment longer then dropped to her knees, lifting the bedspread and peering beneath. And there it was.

Lifting the music box gently, she carried it over to the dresser and set it down. Here it was, the reason she had got into this mess, the reason her father had nearly died, for she was sure that it was poison she had seen Crouch slip into her father’s teacup, which sat just to the side on the tray, now cold.

Despite everything that had happened, Emily was still drawn to the box. As she ran her finger over its carved edges, she felt a warm, happy feeling pass through her body. Her head emptied of all other thought but for the box and she was on the verge of opening the lid when she heard footsteps at the door. Snapping from her reverie, she glided across the room and hid behind the door.

The moment had arrived and she must now explain all.

The Music Box: Chapter Sixty-Nine

Emily watched in horror as the doorknob stopped turning. Before she even had time to think of what to do she realised she was wrenching open her wardrobe door, folding Crouch’s ungainly frame down to fit in the cramped space and pulling the door closed just as her bedroom door swung open. She put her eye to the keyhole and watched herself cross the rug, carrying something on a tray.

Emily saw Crouch carefully place the tray on the dresser. He seemed to take a few moments to decide what to do next, but she realised he was looking for something. Whatever it was he must have now found, for he was lifting a small glass vial up to the light. Turned side on to the window like this, she saw her own features break out into a smile that made her shudder. Crouch removed a cork from the top of the vial and emptied its contents into the teacup she could now see sitting on the tray.

Emily knew this was her father’s teacup and it took all the will she could muster not to burst out and confront Crouch. She weighed up the possible outcomes of such a sudden surprise move, but decided she should wait just a few moments more. She knew she could not allow Crouch to take that tea to her father, but knew that to appear now would be too dangerous to countenance.

Crouch put the stopper back into the vial, which he now placed back on the dresser. Emily held her breath and willed him to notice the sweets where they still sat. Whether through the force of her wishes or Crouch’s own volition – she was never to know for sure – he must have done exactly that for she saw him lift some of the licorice pieces to his lips and pop them in his mouth.

Vinyl Diaries XXXVI: The Paradise Motel

choose your own way

 i will remain 

 as the ghost in fading pages 

 and the dust between the cracks 

 'Ashes', 

The Paradise Motel 

 I can still recall the exact moment the bulk of my thankfully still nascent music collection was rendered unlistenable evermore. The night after my 18th birthday I caught the train up to Sydney to The Basement to see my first ever (legitimately attended) 18+ show. I was there to see the specialness that is Josh Haden’s Spain, supported by a new Australian band about which I had been hearing more than the occasional excitable murmur, by the name of The Paradise Motel. 

 Drifting out onto the tiny Basement stage, these sartorially splendid Tasmanian/Melbournian boys and girl seemed to my overly vivid imagination to have stepped straight out of a Great Gatsby cocktail party (further starkening the later, unexpected appearance of tracksuit pants during the Spain set). The boys took up their places with their assorted musical toys as Merida Sussex glided up to the microphone, gazed around the hushed, smoke-misted room, and it happened. 

 smiling from the page 

 lied about my age 

 now I’m lost forever in this town 

I wasn't the only one in the hushed room to realise there was something a bit special happening here, quite unlike anything I had encountered in music up to that time. As the set continued, it was a near note-perfect lesson in what I have since come to seek in almost all my music-snooping meanderings – what the band themselves later described as ‘the violence and the silence’. The set continually took us to the verge of a perfect storm, only to each time step back from the brink. 

Instead of the longed for release, I was being wrapped ever more tightly in a cold, coiled menace. Pacing the stage like a wounded wombat, lyric penner and primary songwriter Charles Bickford was the most on edge, guitar slung low, foppish fringe dangling, bumping into his fellow members. But he wasn’t yet being let off his leash, and though a troubled rumble was swelling in the music, it was still being held at bay. The rhythm section was still keeping it all in check at this stage, along with the haunting voice of a gently swaying Merida Sussex, the rockingest librarian that ever there was. 

danger all around 

 pulling me down 

 love for me is never to be found 

 Merida had a knack, never missing from a single show I went on to see, of convincing everyone in the room that she was singing directly to them. Her piercing, eye-locking gaze seemed a challenge, almost, daring you to suggest the songs were coming from anywhere but a place of utter musical integrity. It has always seemed to me a voice strangely free of emotion, yet in its icy detachment it is somehow altogether more convincing in the tales it tells. 

During this particular encounter, the inevitable finally occurred. Everything, of course, had to tumble down. The drums finally let out some chain and nobody let their chance slip. The bass boiled over as the guitars crashed into a metallic, junked heap, while the Hammond – that ridiculous, hulking beast they insisted on dragging from show to show – stoically took one of its absolute beatings, thumped and kicked and thrashed into submission. Standing solitary before all this, barely a hair moving from place, 

Merida carried the whole thing through, the ice queen who could melt any heart. From that moment I was hooked – not on ‘valium’s wishing bone’ as per 'Stones', but in this delicious noir web they so effortlessly weaved. They had moved me without whining at me, destroyed my resistance without numbing my resolve. Caress before catharsis. 

At this stage, 1996, The Paradise Motel had only released a solitary EP, Left Over Life To Kill, with the scattered scraps and remix outing Some Deaths Take Forever soon to follow. I managed to catch a generous handful of shows and their first (and only) two full-length albums over the next two years, following them into tiny caves in Kings Cross, corner pubs in Melbourne and RSL clubs in Wollongong. 

One of the rewarding joys of this happy stalking was that no two shows was remotely alike – compulsive deconstructionists, there was no such thing as a definitive version of a song. What may have been the incidental scraps and scrapings of one show became the lynchpin of the next, the beating heart of one night the shed skin of another. Their line-up would ebb and flow, with the occasional appearance of a string-quartet or brass section adding some lovingly textured layers, or an extra guitarist prompting tingling, scissors-on-strings, electrified terror. But whatever the make-up, there was always a moving, living heart beating beneath Merida’s voice – a bass pulsing like blood through your temples, ­knife-edge metallic guitar jangling, strummed acoustic warmth and that mad old Hammond. 

On the live stage The Paradise Motel was most certainly a collective effort. But behind the scenes, while Matt Aulich cobbled together some memorable string arrangements and always seemed the most proficient musician, one felt Charles was the mad scientist with the vision. And the boy certainly had an ear, turning his deft hand to producing an amazing album by my lovely school friends, those krazy Kiama kids Arrosa. 

Charles helped hone the sublime, aching, fractured artistry of these then teens into a beautiful beast, but the album sadly never saw the light after the always fragile band imploded on the brink of… who knows what? While I hadn’t heard anything quite like it before, The Paradise Motel wasn’t entirely without reference points. The dreamy, reverb-soaked miasma was not a million miles from Underground Lovers. The nattily suited, sideshow drama nodded to a certain incarnation of Nick Cave. Dirty Three, Low and Mazzy Star are all there too - maybe even a hint of Portishead or Lamb - but not in any easily discernible style or sound or obvious conceit. It is there and not there, in the way one may lazily group Faulkner, Steinbeck and Salinger – it’s fair and fruitless at the same time. 

If a band can ever be summed up in a single song, it was, for The Paradise Motel, the two-act 'Men Who Loved Here (Grew Sadder)'. Opening with a jagged, wrenching slice of feedback and gentle if minor acoustic chords, the signs are more than a little ominous. Come the 36 second mark, viciously abrasive guitars slashing in like a rusty scalpel wielded by a deranged doctor slit the whole thing open. Merida’s reassuring view on the matter? the agony will set you free 

There is precious little of their music floating around the webisphere, and I guess it's really not a vision that translates well to a little yootoobish box. But perhaps the closest clip to capturing the quintessence of The Paradise Motel would be bad light. So, it’s a tad melodramatic and no doubt a little ostentatious. But it hit me there, in that spot, that only a select few have tickled since. And that’s perhaps the bittersweet twist in this tale. They ruined so much music for me that I had until then happily, mindlessly enjoyed. 

Perhaps The Paradise Motel struck a lasting chord with me because at the heart of things they were not simply performers but also consummate storytellers; first and foremost as chroniclers of the disappeared. I didn’t realise this straight away, so it was somewhat curious to discover over time that my initial response to the music somehow picked up on this at some level. From those very first moments I had felt this was somehow a musical instantiation of Picnic Rock – both the haunting and haunted Victorian place of myth and mystery, shrouded as it is in mists real and imagined, and the classic Peter Weir film. 

Which finally brings me to the point of this nostalgic little wander down musical memory lane. The Paradise Motel left our shores in the late 1990s to try their luck in the UK and had disintegrated within two years. But now, 10 years on, they are finally about to release their third studio album. This latest musical outing is conceptially inspired by and entirely devoted to the mother of all Australian disappearances, that of Azaria Chamberlain. The unfortunate Azaria, whose purported disappearance-via-dingo remains officially unsolved, would have been 30 this June 11 - the date The Paradise Motel will release Australian Ghost Story. This thematic realm has the band back doing what they do best, delving back into their spiritual home - that of our most haunted country.

While there have been other great Australian bands before, during, and since The Paradise Motel, and allowing that there are the occasional moments that have dated a little more than ideal for a 'timeless' tag, my revisiting of these earlier recordings with fresh ears still leaves me with the softest of soft spots for these marvellous if morbid miscreants.

The museum reopens

Hello world out there.

A little while longer than intended it has been, but the Museum is about to pull off the dust cloths, cast back the curtains and throw open the doors in an attempt to return to its former levels of semi-regular sporadicity.

The curators have been busy behind the scenes and promise to take advantage of finally being in the one place for more than four days, although there is speculation afoot that they may still be dividing their time on imminent postings for that other place of tappings, a reawakening of the stolen-laptop hobbled Hobo Diaries.

Back soon... with a word from Emily B.

the littlest hobos...

Just a little note I should have left earlier:

The Museum is temporarily closed while the curator goes for a little wander, but he will in the meantime be popping up at his home away from home, Hobo Diaries.

The Music Box: Chapter Sixty-Eight

“Can I take Papa up a cup of tea?”

Isabelle turned at the sound of Emily’s voice. She would have preferred to keep an eye on her, but this seemed a perfectly reasonable request and she would have aroused suspicion by refusing.

“Sure darling, let me put one on.”

Isabelle placed the kettle over the fire to boil and pulled down the teapot from the shelf. Lifting two small spoons of tea from the tin in which it was kept, she watched the dried leaves tumble into the pot, hooked together until the water would tear them apart and swirl them around.

Once the tea was made she poured a cup for herself and one for Percy. Emily, who had been hovering close to her mother all this time, took one of the cups and placed it on a tray. Isabelle watched as she walked carefully across the kitchen and through the doorway, listening for her footfall on the stairs.

Letting out a deep sigh, Isabelle realised how tense she had been with Emily watching over her. Rubbing her eyes with the heel of her hands, she realised she could no longer face this alone – the time had come to talk to Percy about what was going on.

“I really should have taken that tea up myself,” she thought, kicking herself for letting Emily – she could not think what else to call her – go. Her mind was spinning too fast to make sense of anything, a barrage of thoughts and images passing by. Then, out of this spinning, blurring mess, a sound emerged. The high pitched laughter of the wolf, emerging from the fire, rang in her ears again, but this time his image aligned with a face long consigned to the faded memories of a former life. It was Aloysius.

Aloysius, who had helped her and Percy escape after the wolves had turned against them. Aloysius, who she now knew had been acting not out of a compassion he would have extended to anybody, but a specific desire to see her safe. Aloysius, who she had long since even ceased thinking about, as she moved on with her new life here by the sea, a life with no place for the fraught power struggles and endless dangers of the forest she had long left behind.

Aloysius, Isabelle realised, had returned to claim what he believed his rightful entitlement.

The Music Box: Chapter Sixty-Seven

Emily paused halfway up the stairs, in a panic of uncertainty. She could hear the sounds of domestic work being undertaken in the kitchen, so knew her mother was busy down there. She had seen her father at his study window only a few minutes earlier, but had trusted he would be there for a while. A moment ago, when she first approached the window, she had caught a glimpse of Crouch as herself just coming into the room.

A moment later and she would have been caught, but Emily felt she had ducked out of sight just before Crouch would have seen her. Peering carefully through the bottom pane, Emily saw herself reaching for a book, examining its cover and wiping traces of dust from the top of the pages. Seemingly happy with the choice, Crouch had turned to the door and left as quickly as he had appeared.

Although unsure as to whether Crouch was going out to the hearth in the kitchen or up to her room, Emily knew she had to risk it. She had shivered with dread as she saw her mother and Crouch return home and knew that something terrible was going to happen if she didn’t act immediately.

As she pushed on the sides of the window, trying to open it as carefully as she could, Emily had cursed the wet weather that had swollen the frame. Hoping for a smooth slide open, she was furious at how much noise the window was making as it refused to let go of the frame. With a surrender that sounded to her like two trains at full steam running into each other, the window finally began shuddering its way up the frame. It still wasn’t wide enough for her massive frame to enter, so she gave it one last heave.

Sure it had been loud enough to alert the entire neighbourhood, Emily swallowed her breath and slid through the window, barely able to get Crouch’s shoulders through. Wriggling over the sill, she has used her hands to guide her body quietly to the floor. She didn’t want to make any more noise than she had to, but sensed leaving the window open was a bad idea. As gently as she could, and pleased to find it more willing to slide than at first, she pulled the window back into place, swinging the latch back to a locked position.

Walking over to the door – cursing under her breath when she crossed the creakiest section of the room, Emily had paused at the doorway. Her breath was coming in short, shallow gasps and she took a moment to try and get it under control.

Pushing open the door, she peered across to the open door to the kitchen. She could hear her mother working away busily and was pleased to see nobody was in sight of the doorway. Stepping slowly out into the hall, she had made her way slowly up the stairs, and it was here she now paused, ears straining to hear any movement from above. All seemed quiet. Wary of being caught out in the open like this, Emily took a deep breath and forced herself to put one foot in front of the other and not stop until she reached her room.

Closing the door behind her, Emily let out her breath and sighed with enormous relief. She still wasn’t sure what she was going to do, but felt she had at least a moment’s respite. With any luck her mother would be keeping Crouch busy in the kitchen, but she knew that would only be for so long. Peering around, she felt an uncanny sense of calm from these familiar surroundings. How long had it been since she had been here, safe in her little girl’s room? She realised that not only had she lost all sense of time – was it a day, a week, a lifetime? – but that she was seeing her room with new eyes, feeling suddenly too old for these lace trimmings, picture books and stuffed animals.

Her gaze had been scanning slowly around the room and now rested on her dresser, taking in the bag of lollies she knew must have come from Mr Pollock’s lolly shop – one of her favourite places in the world. Stepping closer her attention was captured by the mirror. She was mortified to be looking in and seeing Crouch look back, but forced herself to scrutinise her features more closely. She saw how old Crouch looked in the light that gently fell through the window, how his smooth skin was such a deeply pale, bloodless tone, as though he was a wax caricature of a creepy man.

His cruel lips were twisted into a tight sneer and his sharp nose seemed almost to have been sharpened as one might an arrow tip. His expansive brow sat under the rim of the hat, an ivory scar running down from the hairline to his jet black left eyebrow. She reached a finger up to trace its line, wondering who Crouch might have crossed too pick up such a souvenir. Looking now into his eyes, she was repulsed yet intrigued by their hollow depths, black tunnels that seemed to catch and swallow all passing light, letting nothing escape.

A scraping sound startled Emily out of her hypnotic swim in these inky pools. Percy must simply have been pushing his chair back in the study across the landing, but it reminded her she couldn’t afford to waste any more time. Her hand had idly found its way back into her coat pocket and Emily drew out the little blue bag with the liquorice that had come from her time in the music box.

Untwisting it, the task made quite difficult with her fingers now trembling quite badly, Emily drew out the pieces of liquorice within. Opening the lolly bag on the dresser, she drew out the pieces in there and popped them into her mouth, replacing them with those from the bag. Replacing the empty bag in her pocket, Emily turned to leave.

As she reached for the handle of her bedroom door, the knob began slowly to turn.

The Music Box: Chapter Sixty-Six

Helping Emily remove her coat, Isabelle saw how soaked her daughter had become from their dash home through the rain.

“You can take those sweets up to your room for later Emily – I want you in some new clothes as quickly as you can, then back down here before the fire so you can dry out.”

Clutching her bag of lollies from Mr Pollock’s seemingly endless selection, Emily headed silently up the stairs towards her room. Isabelle took off her own coat and decided the rest of her clothes had been adequately protected from the rain, so headed into the kitchen to begin her preparations for the evening meal.

While the outing had fallen short of what she had hoped, Emily did at least seem a little happier than she had been. She had seemed less excited to have been in Mr Pollock’s store than Isabelle had expected, but had seemed quite grateful to have been allowed to choose a bigger bag of sweets than usual.

Stoking the still glowing embers of the earlier fire, Isabelle was again whisked back to that experience under the tree – the strange little man, the laughing wolf, the fear that ran through her veins like the freezing river that had tumbled her along. It had all felt so real, so much more vivid a part of her memory than any dream ever could.

She knew it must have something to do with Emily, the way she had been behaving. ‘She’s not been herself at all’, murmured Isabelle, and she was so shocked at what a voice in the back of her mind then said that she fell into the nearest seat, catching her breath in her chest.

“It’s not Emily,” the voice had offered.

That was it. No explanation, no introduction, gone as soon as it had come. But it was crystal clear and so simply put that Isabelle was struck to the very heart of her knowing.

“It’s not Emily.” But how could that be? Of course it was Emily. Yet, somehow, her heart of hearts knew it was not. Her senses were deceiving her, everything she knew had somehow been turned on its head, yet there was such a strong sense of, what was it, relief? As though this impossible thought, once uttered, suddenly made sense of everything – explained Emily’s strange behaviour, her own sense of unease, the strange encounter and its cryptic message.

Putting aside the grotesque impossibility of such a revelation, Isabelle tried to think how it could be so, and what it could mean. She concentrated on when her feelings of uneasiness had begun. Ever since Emily had been late home from her visit to her young friend’s, Tabitha Tibbits, Isabelle had been uneasy. It’s true that being quite so late was out of character for Emily, but it must have been something more than that. Since then, Isabelle realised, she had been entirely out of sorts. She hadn’t slept properly, her nerves were more delicate than she was used to, and Emily had simply not seemed herself.

It’s not Emily. It was so simple, so straightforward, so – she realised – obvious. It still didn’t make sense, but that wasn’t enough to bring any further doubt. Now that she had made up her mind, Isabelle felt an incredible weight drop away. This burden had been oppressing her for days and now sloughed off, a snake relieved to have shed its too small skin.

Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, Isabelle considered the situation. Upstairs, in one room, was her husband, Percy Button, no doubt lost in his writing and oblivious to the entire situation. In another room, somebody who to all intents and purposes appeared to be her daughter, her beloved Emily, but was not.

And here, in the kitchen, the fire before her crackling in its newly awaken state, the orange shadows flickering against her closed eyelids, Isabelle sat, helpless in the face of her revelation.

“Are you okay?”

Isabelle jumped at the sound of Emily’s voice, her eyes flying open to find her barely three feet away.

“I, I was just a little tired from our outing,” Isabelle stammered. “I was just enjoying some of the warmth in here – it was so cold out there.”

Isabelle put on a smile, not wanting to show any signs of concern she would have to explain any further. Her mind was ticking over too quickly, but never settling on anything that pointed to what her next step should be.

“Why don’t you grab a book and spend some time in here Emily, keep your mother company while I do some chores?”

“Sounds lovely, I’ll just go grab something.”

Emily was soon back and Isabelle watched as she took a seat, opening the leather-bound book on her knees. The sound of the water with which she had filled a pot coming to a boil brought her attention back to her duties. She went about her ordinary business of the day, distracted by the Emily issue but also keen to avoid the impression that anything was amiss.

After a few minutes this way Isabelle’s ears – sharpened by the tenseness of her mind, heard a scraping sound. Her eyes darted over to Emily, but she hadn’t appeared to hear anything. The sound had come from the front room - ordinarily she would have gone in to check, to see if it was Percy wanting something or simply her imagination, but this time something was holding her back.

There it was again – the sound of wood scraping against wood. This time Emily looked up.

“It must be your father after a book,” Isabelle said. “We’ll leave him to it, when he’s this hard at work there’s no point distracting him, he’ll hardly take in anything we might even say!”

Emily smiled and returned to her book. Isabelle’s heart began to thump as she heard the creak she knew came from the floor of the front room when anybody walked near the window. Worried Emily might take any more interest, she made sure she made plenty of noise of her own, jumbling around cutlery and rattling a stack of plates.

As the stairs creaked, then stopped, creaked, then stopped, Isabelle’s pulse thumped in her ears. She felt a hot flush hit her neck and face and the sickening burst of adrenaline flood her tensed body.

If she had misjudged, she had made a terrible mistake.