There is a long pause on the line, a crackle of static as if he’s transferring the phone from one ear to the other.
“No,” he says finally. “I didn’t put those wardrobes in.”
I can’t help but feel a little deflated. If I could find out when the work had been done, when the hidden door had been blocked off and forgotten about, it would at least give me a starting point to work back from.
“So, they were already there?” I say. “When you and your parents moved in?”
“That’s not what I said. I saidIdidn’t do it—I had them done by a guy, a specialist, a joiner or whatever.”
I take a breath. It’s a fraction of progress at least, an inch forward.
“Who was the joiner?”
“Seriously, mate? Not a scooby. This was donkey’s years ago.”
“Fair enough.” I keep my voice light. “So, what year would it have been?”
“God, feels like forever.” He sighs with irritation. “Mum and Dad bought the house in… summer 2002? Yeah, it was the World Cup, I remember trying to get the TV working in time towatch us get knocked out by Brazil in the quarter-finals, all of us perched on camping chairs in the lounge. Bloody David Seaman cost us that game, he was absolute garbage. Brazil were down to ten men and we still couldn’t beat them.”
I can’t remember the game at all but it’s clearly stuck in his memory.
“So… the joiner?”
“Yeah, so, he must have come in pretty soon after that because Mum wanted loads of storage for all her old clothes, all her old costumes from when she was doing am-dram. The old lady they bought the house off was a widow and she’d died suddenly; the place was in a right state when we moved in.”
“Don’t suppose you remember her name, do you?”
“What?”
“The owner of the house before your family?”
He blows out a breath. “Blimey. This is like bloodyColumbo.”
“Sorry, I’m just trying to fill in some blanks in the history of the place.”
There is more silence on the line, punctuated by the sound of hard footsteps on an echoing floor.
“You know what?” he says. “Idoremember. It was one of those weird things but she had the same name as in that TV show. Makepeace. Like, fromDempsey & Makepeace?”
“Might have been a bit before my time.”
“Elizabeth, that was it. Elizabeth Makepeace. A right mouthful.”
“And she was a widow,” I say. “Did she live alone?”
“There was a… grandson, or maybe a nephew as well? Or it might have been a godson. Never met the feller.” There is a babble of young voices at his end and his end of the line is muffled for a moment before he returns to the call. “Look, Alan—”
“Adam.”
“Adam, what is this actually all about? You didn’t really track me down to the Costa del Sol for a chat about wardrobes, did you?”
I hesitate, not sure whether to reveal the real reason for my call, whether to share what I’ve found with a total stranger. But curiosity wins out.
“There’s an extra room.”
“A what?”
“An extra room, hidden behind a false wall. A concealed door that leads into a small annex, looks like it’s been undisturbed for a long time. For years. I’m trying to find out why it’s there, how long it’s been untouched.”
