‘Hi,’ Adam says, quiet. ‘It’s ok, you can let me go.’
He feels Leaf’s indecision. He wants to believe Adam. His arms loosen.
Adam turns. He looks at the beautiful face and his heart does thattap tap tapit always does, even now.
‘I wanted to tell you,’ Leaf says. ‘I want to share everything with you – I didn’t know how.’
‘I understand,’ Adam says. He looks around the room. ‘It’s impressive.’
‘If they do want to live,’ Leaf says, ‘the Foundation helps them. The ones who want to live do what I did. They work and get clean and make a life. But so many of them want to die. That’s why they were on the street in the first place. They were trying to kill themselves as fast as possible. In the end, does it really matter whether it’s me or an overdose?’
‘I don’t know.’ Adam tries to keep his face still, as still as Leaf’s. Inside, his brain spins.
‘I love you, Adam. I never wanted my fingers to itch with you.’
‘I have never felt such love for another person as I did for you,’ Adam says.
‘Good.’ Leaf’s sigh of relief takes up his whole body. ‘I don’t enjoy it,’ he says. ‘Please believe that.’
Adam smiles. ‘It will be ok,’ he tells Leaf.
‘Will it?’
‘Yes.’ Adam nods. ‘We love each other.’ If he makes a mistake, he will become a photograph on the wall.
Leaf starts to speak and then stops. His face twists. ‘You said “did”.’
‘What?’ All of Adam’s skin comes alive.
‘Before. You said, “I have never felt such love for another person as Ididfor you.”’ Adam sees it now, in the eyes – the thing that looks out from behind Leaf’s face.
Leaf moves like a spider, fast and sudden. He takes aim at Adamwith his tiny gleaming knife. Adam stumbles, grabs at something mounted on the wall. It’s pale and graceful and slender. Even as he reaches for it he thinks,what a strange place to put a handle. It comes free easily from the brackets that held it.
Adam sees that he holds bone. It is an adult human femur, bleached and polished to the sheen of ivory. He grips it in his fist, staring for a moment. Then Adam throws the bone at Leaf’s head.
Adam runs out of the passage, past the jukebox, along the passages and ways of Nowhere, through the high-ceilinged rooms, up into the library. He slides a hand along the bookshelves, sweeping a couple of books into his arms. When he reachesDecline and Fall of the Roman Empirehe reaches behind. His fingers find the lighter fluid and firelighters he left here earlier. He had to be sure, he told himself as he did it, he had to prove it. But Adam realises that he had already been sure.
Adam’s fingers graspPride and Prejudice. The staircase door opens without a sound – he had been so proud of that, the utter silence of its passage.
Adam slips into the staircase. The door closes and he flicks the security lock, which means no one can get in through this door.
Adam leans against the secret walls he built, panting. He thinks about Christie and the baby. He cannot lie down and do nothing. He has to try – even if he fails and Christie and his child never know, he has to. What are fathers for – except to try?
Leaf is powerful. Officer Lloyd knows what he is, everyone who works here must know too. No one will do anything against Leaf Winham. The police will not charge him, courts will not convict him.
But if it is all laid bare, if people see the pictures of those young men and boys, see that terrible wall, that room – maybe there is a chance. Adam knows that as a plan, it’s not great. The house will burn. Leaf might die. Adam could die too. But he doesn’t want to live in a world where Leaf walks free.
‘Ok,’ he whispers to himself. Everyone knows that there is one thing that always brings help.
Fire.
Adam tears pages from the books he grabbed from the shelves and makes a pile of kindling. He layers the firelighters carefully through it all, making sure it will take. The staircase should function almost like a chimney. He never treated the wood to make it fireproof. That’s not like him. Why didn’t he? The spell, Adam thinks, bitter. But his mind was trying to tell him. It was always working underneath.
Adam lights a match and throws it onto the pyre. The bright yellow flame starts small, a cautious tongue licking. Then it rears higher and higher, hungry for it all.
Adam ducks out of the staircase, closing the bookshelf door quickly behind him. Smoke seeps through the gap at the bottom. Adam can very faintly hear the crackle as the staircase draws up the flame. It’s working just like he hoped.
He doesn’t know where Leaf is. Maybe it doesn’t matter now. But his skin ripples on his flesh anyway.
