Eleanor reappeared, putting one foot on the bottom stair and resting both hands on her knee. She peered up at him. ‘Aren’t you coming down, Jake?’
William appeared next to Eleanor. ‘Shall I come and get you?’
‘No.’ Jake said quickly taking a step forward, feeling mortified at the thought of being carried down the stairs like a baby. He wanted to be brave in front of Eleanor.
Jake hesitated on the second step and looked back at the open door into the hallway.
‘What is it?’ William called up.
‘It’s just …’ Jake looked back at William. ‘Can I go and get Marcus?’
‘No,’ William said firmly.
Jake took one step at a time, holding tightly onto the banister rail, never taking his eyes off Eleanor. She stayed where she was at the bottom of the stairs, swaying her leg and cocking her head from left to right, watching his slow descent. When he got to the last step, she lifted her hand from her knee and held it out. Jake took it and stepped off the stairs. She smiled at him sweetly. They walked hand in hand to the workbench where William was standing with both hands holding the bottom of a brilliant white sheet that covered some strange object.
Chapter 35
Jake stood holding both ends of the dustsheet, which was now almost black, thick with years of accumulated dust. He remembered William throwing off the dustsheet with a flurry, in the same way he recalled his mother throwing a clean sheet in the air and letting it gently settle like a feather onto the bed.
Jake tensed his arms, then threw them both up high in the air. Almost immediately he was hit by a fit of coughing and sneezing as the thick black dust whipped off the sheet and surrounded him.
He dropped the sheet instantly and furiously waved the air with his hands, trying to dissipate the dust. His eyes watered. He backed away until his shins hit the bottom stair. Fumbling for a tissue in his jacket pocket, he sat on the stairs, blew his nose and wiped his eyes.
Stuffing the tissue back in his pocket, Jake leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin in the palm of his hands. He sat motionless, staring straight ahead at the object now uncovered on the workbench. From this vantage point, his eyes travelled along a bright hallway, through rooms busy with furniture, up the wide curved stairwell, in and out of strikingly decorated rooms – all this in miniature.
He sat for some considerable time, taking in the intricate detail of the custom-made doll’s house on the workbench. It still gleamed and sparkled and looked as wondrous as the day he had first set eyes on it.
‘Exactly how long has it been?’ he murmured. He remembered that Christmas in particular because it was the first year he hadn’t believed in Santa. He reckoned that maybe it was something everyone remembered if they’d been fortunate enough to have kind-hearted parents who had allowed them to believe in the first place.
‘How old was I?’ he got up from the step and walked over to the doll’s house. ‘Nine?’ He bent down and peered into the second-floor bedrooms. ‘Ten?’ He bent down further, peering into the rooms. He picked up a tiny chair. ‘I was almost eleven, so Eleanor must have been five.’ He turned it over in his hand, careful not to snap the matchstick-thin legs. Then he carefully put it back it in the dining room.
He felt it was important somehow to place the events in time. He remembered now. She’d spent hours drawing a doll’s house of her own design – how could he have forgotten?
Jake’s vision blurred. He blinked and felt a faint tickle as tears ran delicately onto his cheeks. ‘Damn dust,’ he said as he wiped his face dry with the sleeve of his jacket.
Jake picked up the dustsheet from the floor and carefully draped it back over the doll’s house, tucking it under the base as best he could as the memory of that day re-surfaced once more …
‘You know, I heard Santa’s elves down here, night after night, hammering and sawing. They certainly had their work cut out for them this year, Eleanor.’ William smiled at his daughter.
Eleanor tentatively held out a podgy finger and touched the doll’s house as if she couldn’t quite believe her eyes.
Jake watched in awe. ‘Santa’s elves worked in this house?’ A part of him still wanted to believe, still wanted to stay in that magical place for just a bit longer.
‘That’s right, son.’
It made him feel good when William called himson, even though he knew he wasn’t really William’s son. They were fostering him after his parents died, which William explained meant that he could live with them as part of the family.
‘It was too big for Santa to bring on his sleigh, otherwise he would have had to leave everyone else’s presents behind at the North Pole,’ explained William. ‘We wouldn’t want that – would we?’
Jake shook his head vehemently, looking at Eleanor, who was doing the same. He suddenly realised why Marcus had been left out. It was because he would just spoil things. And besides, he wasn’t really sure that he believed Marcus about there being no Santa. Just because he was a year older than Jake, it didn’t mean he was right all the time, did it?
‘What say us fellas,’ he patted Jake on the back, ‘carry it upstairs to Eleanor’s bedroom?’
‘Yes sir,’ Jake said excitedly.
Marcus was standing at the living room door, watching, as Eleanor appeared in the hallway. His eyes went wide as William and Jake emerged from the cellar with the doll’s house. ‘See! I told you that Santa used my drawing – he said so in my letter,’ Eleanor said triumphantly. She stuck her tongue out at Marcus before racing down the hallway to the stairs.
Jake smiled at the memory. Before Santa, with the help of his elves, had made her that huge doll’s house right there in the cellar of The Lake House, she’d always asked for furniture or little figurines for her old doll’s house. She loved delicatelyarranging furniture and playing families. There was a time that she decided she wanted to do a bit more than just play with her doll’s house. She’d put on her dungarees – the ones she didn’t mind getting paint and glue on when she used her arts and crafts materials to draw and paint. She’d tied up her mass of brown hair as best her little chubby fingers could and then she had set to work.
