There was no response.
Jake carefully hung the picture back on the wall and walked to the stairs, glancing into the lounge on the left and the den on the right. There was no sign of him. He bounded halfway up the stairs, calling out his name several times.
There was still no answer.
Jake walked slowly up the rest of the stairs and peered around the thick spindle at the top of the stairs. All the bedroom doors were closed, just as he had left them that morning during his search for the non-existent squatters. Jake didn’t bother walking up the next flight of stairs; he saw no reason why Marcus would have gone up to the bedrooms on the second floor.
Jake scratched his head and meandered down the stairs. At the bottom, he turned left and headed to the kitchen. He flung open the door, expecting Marcus to be there. Jake stood in the doorway, perplexed. He had searched everywhere else; if Marcuswas in the house, there was nowhere left to …
That was when he noticed that the door to the cellar was slightly ajar. Jake hadn’t bothered to open the fuse box and switch the electricity back on when he had gone down there. He suddenly had a nasty vision of Marcus lying at the bottom of the cellar steps in a crumpled heap.
Jake grabbed for the door and was momentarily blinded by the bright bare bulb dangling a couple of inches from his face. Several rapid blinks later, he was able to see clearly down the cellar steps, all the way to the bottom. Marcus had not taken a tumble.
‘Marcus – you down there?’ Of course he had to be. Who else would have switched the electricity on?
‘Jake, Jake – you’ve got to come down here and take a look at this.’
Jake was relieved to hear his voice. Because of the events back in London – because of Marcus’s unpredictability, his penchant for disappearing at a moment’s notice and turning up in a bad state, in places he really should not be frequenting – Jake was getting used to Marcus scaring the crap out of him.
‘I’ve seen it already.’ Jake knew what Marcus had found down there. ‘I came down here this morning.’ He didn’t feel that inclined to take another look. Jake waited at the top of the stairs.
‘Oh shit!’ Marcus voice again.
‘What is it?’ Jake walked down the stairs and stopped halfway. With one hand resting on Marcus’s metal sign, he leaned down so his head cleared the ceiling. The dust sheet was off the doll’s house again. Marcus stood beside it, concentrating on something in his hand. There was a look of dismay on his face.
Jake took his hand off the sign and walked down the remaining steps, pretty sure what was up. Marcus turned to Jake, holding out a miniature chair upright in the palm of his hand, like the one Jake had picked up earlier. Except that thisone had a broken leg. And that, Jake remembered, was exactly the reason as kids Marcus was hardly ever allowed to go near Eleanor’s doll’s house – he was always so clumsy.
Marcus said, ‘I nearly fell down those stairs. I banged my head on the way down and almost lost my balance.’ He carefully placed the chair back in the doll’s house. ‘Why didn’t you turn the damn electricity on while you were down here?’ He tried to stand the chair upright on three legs. ‘Did you want me to break my neck?’
Now that, thought Jake wickedly,might not have been a bad idea. ‘What are you doing down here anyway?’ Jake retorted.
Marcus shrugged and absently reached inside the doll’s house for another piece of furniture.
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ warned Jake.
Marcus withdrew his hand, empty.
‘A bull in a china shop,’ Jake commented.
Marcus gave Jake a sideways glance before bending down and resting his forearms on the dusty workbench. He peered into the tiny rooms.
Jake walked around to the other side and crouched down. He peered through the miniature living room at Marcus. ‘We need to talk.’
Marcus looked across the miniature room at Jake. ‘About what?’
Jake hesitated.
Marcus shifted. Now all Jake could see was Marcus’s blue cotton shirt as a backdrop to the living room.
‘It’s pretty impressive, don’t you think?’ said Marcus. ‘My little sister was quite the designer,’ he said with a hint of sadness and regret. ‘I wish I’d appreciated that more when she was—’ he stopped abruptly.
Jake raised himself up and peered at Marcus through a miniature bedroom. ‘What I wanted to tell you …’
Marcus shifted again. ‘Bloody hell! How weird is that?’
Jake darted his head to the next bedroom, taking a cursory glance inside. He looked at Marcus and shrugged. ‘What?’
‘You don’t see it?’ Marcus said incredulously.
