PART I
You never get used to it. Not really. It hangs over your head, always waiting, a debt that’s never been settled. The knowledge that it’s waiting somewhere to trip you up—and that you need to be ready in case the past comes knocking. Hoping that day will never come. Knowing what will have to happen if it does.
1
SUNDAY
It’s toward the end of moving-in day that I find it.
A day full of lifting and carrying and making cups of tea for the removal team, of going up and down the broad staircase a hundred times, of unloading boxes, building bedframes, and giving the children small jobs to keep them occupied. A nonstop day bringing this old house back to life.
It still doesn’t quite feel real, even as Jess and I are debating where to start with the decorating. None of the rooms have seen fresh paint or new carpet for decades. Afixer-upper, the estate agent had said with a hopeful smile. But we had fallen in love with the place on the first viewing, had both known it was something special, this rambling Victorian house with its high ceilings and tall windows, its soaring chimney stacks and half-timbered gables, the date in delicate raised stonework over the big front door:1889. Six bedrooms, three bathrooms, two reception rooms, a cellar, a pantry, a den—there was so muchspace.
We knew it needed a lot of work; that was one of the reasons we’d been able to afford a house in this part of the city. The Park, first named for the old deer park next to the castle, maintained for the king’s hunt—now an enclave of grand nineteenth-century houses and wide-spaced streets, a tree-lined oasis of walled gardens and leafy calm right in the heart of Nottingham.
By late afternoon, I’m clearing left-behind rubbish from the second floor. My legs are heavy, my back starting to ache after going down two flights of stairs carrying stacks of old newspapers, an ancient rollaway bed that had been left on the landing, a broken bookcase, boxes of tiles, and bin bags of musty clothes. In the smallest of the top-floor attic rooms, where the air is stale with neglect, the carcass of an old fitted wardrobe hangs off the wall. Its chipboard shelves are splintered, one door is jammed shut, and the other has fallen off its runner completely. Nails and screws protrude from the broken frame, ready to catch small hands. The whole thing looks like it might collapse at any moment, and it doesn’t take me long to pry it away from the wall with a crowbar, flattening the nails and breaking the whole wardrobe apart, stacking the broken wood in the corner.
Every room in this house seems to have some quirk or curiosity that we hadn’t anticipated.
And this room is no exception.
Because the wall behind the fitted wardrobe is not painted plaster, or wallpaper, or brick. Instead, it’s paneled in dark wood like the hallway on the ground floor. Panels of walnut or teak stretch floor to ceiling across the width of the room. It’s a big improvement on the fitted wardrobe, a shame to have hidden away this handsome facade behind something so ugly. The whole thing is seven panels high and a dozen or so wide. The workmanship is very fine, each piece seamlessly fitting into the next, the only blemishes a handful of holes where the wardrobe had been attached.
I run my hand over a panel, the grain of the wood smooth under my palm. Standing back to admire it, I snap a quick picture on my phone to show Jess what I’ve discovered. The late afternoonsun coming through the skylight makes the wood almost glow, like burnished bronze, as if carved from a single piece of—
I look again at the picture, then back at the paneling. Comparing the high-definition image with the reality in front of me.
The way the sun catches it in the photo, at just the right angle, I can see the workmanship is notquiteperfect. Not all the way along. Perhaps there’s been some movement over time, the house shifting its old bones slightly in the years since this wall was added. In the phone image, there is a very fine vertical line running between two panels at the far end of the wall.
But with the naked eye, I still can’t make it out. I run my hand up and down the right side of the wall, between two of the panels. I don’t see it. Ifeelit. My fingertips brush an almost invisible join, a seam in the wood. I run my hand up higher, then down to the floor. Up again, across, down.
Not just a seam.
It’s the outline of a door.
Perhaps there was old pipework behind here, the wood paneling a smart solution to disguise it, with discreet access if there was ever a problem. Or perhaps a little extra attic space beneath the eaves of the sloping roof.
There doesn’t seem to be any kind of keyhole, or lock, or latch, or anything that will open or close it. I spend a minute feeling all the way around the seam again but there is nothing at all to give any leverage, to pull or push or turn. No button or handle.
In frustration, I place my palm flat against the middle panel and push.
With a reluctantclick, the door opens toward me. Just half an inch. I pause for a second, taking a breath, then pull it open all the way on silent hinges.
Over the threshold, there is total, perfect darkness. The air is musty and stale, a blunt spoiled smell of old bricks and slow decay that has not been breathed in a long, long time. My heart beating a little faster, I take the phone from my pocket and flick the torch on, white light throwing leaping shadows over an armchair, a side table, a dresser pushed up against the wall, all of it thick with dust and cobwebs.
It isn’t just a panel to hide ugly pipework.
It isn’t extra storage space either.
It’s a whole new room, hidden behind the wall.
2
Iknewsomething about this top bedroom wasn’t quite right.
The dimensions seemed a little too small; the wall didn’t quite match the one in the bedroom next to it. This hidden space is small and cramped like a hide, a priest hole—but the house was nowhere near old enough for that. According to the stonework over the front door, it was built in 1889 and I knew it had been extended at least twice since. On my phone, I pull up the floor plan from the estate agents’ website and zoom into the top floor layout, checking the dimensions of this bedroom—ten feet by twelve, give or take a few inches. That looks about right to me. No indication of more space to the side, of a hidden annex that must have been built into the fabric of this place so long ago that people forgot it was even there. An extra four feet of width that had been turned into something else.
Ducking my head, I step through the door.
