Page 42 of Mirrors of the Past

‘I think he will not!’ said Arthur. ‘I think he will agree with me!’

Laurie looked around quickly and stuffed the papers into a hole in the chimney breast. He’d deal with them later — he couldn’t take the chance that the boys’ sharp eyes would see the papers unfolding tauntingly in the fireplace. It had happened before and they’d teased him mercilessly about a poem he’d been trying to write . . .

Just as he withdrew his hand, his door burst open and the boys tumbled in.

‘Laurie! Laurie! Can we just ask . . .’

Ryan caught his breath and woke up from some sort of daydream he’d been experiencing. Good grief! What the hell was he doing in this room? The last thing he remembered was standing in the hallway and thinking there was something up here he needed to retrieve . . .

He looked around him and half recognised the room. It certainly wasn’t the ballroom he’d intended to visit when he’d returned after his chat with Tegan — it was definitely a bedroom. But, in his memories, there was a desk by the window, a four-poster bed against the wall and a large wardrobe there, and the dressing room was right through that door there — which was shortly, it seemed, to become an ensuite. Because he was actually in a room that was, seemingly, getting turned into a guest room. He knew that Pencradoc Arts Centre ran artists’ retreats and he could only assume this was one of the soon-to-be-released new phase of retreat rooms.

He turned and looked at the fireplace. That was, as yet, untouched by renovation. But looking at the tools next to it, it was next on the list to be refurbished. Sympathetically, he was sure — but there was a bucket and a bag of ready-mix concrete there, and he knew that any loose bricks or holes in the chimney breast would be well and truly sealed up very soon . . .

It was almost as if someone was urging him to look, to check the place he thought he’d seen in that weird daydream.

He wondered if there was, by some incredible chance, something there . . .

‘Okay. I might be crazy, but I’m going to look,’ he muttered. One of his favourite Mission tracks was knocking at the back of his mind, the one where they sang about other days and times and places.

If it was good enough for the Mission, it was good enough for him.

He took a deep breath and, his heart thumping, leaned into the fireplace. He closed his eyes and reached in, feeling around as if he knew exactly where his fingertips needed to search.

He opened his eyes in surprise as he found the opening and he reached deep inside. Whatever was there would have been pretty safe from over a century of leaping flames, especially if it was pushed right to the back.

A thought came into his head. I didn’t care if it went up in flames. In fact, I wanted it to! Sorry it hasn’t, really.

Ryan tried to ignore the voice and pushed his fingertips further into the rectangular gap. Sure enough, they touched the corner of a piece of paper, and he closed his fingers around it, gently easing it out of its hiding place.

As he brought the piece of paper into the daylight, he saw that it was actually two or three sheets, folded up. Carefully, he unfolded them, hoping at the same time that nobody would burst into the room when he was here.

As he cast his eyes over the neat, cursive writing, he could hardly believe what he was reading. It was an account of a ball in Mayfair, but it had several different endings and was written as a piece of fiction.

But all the endings had one thing in common: the author made sure that, each time, he kissed the heroine and declared how much he loved her.

The heroine’s name was Viola.

The author’s name, however, was unknown.