The Family Game(46)

We’ll need to pass the open stairwell again to get there. I look back at the blackened void between us and then, in the corridor beyond, a flashlight beam swings through the darkness and I see Olivia peek around the doorframe. Catching us in her beam, she quickly clicks the light off, but I am already blinded by its afterglow. Vision spangled, it takes me a moment to readjust, and when I do I see she has crawled to the edge of the landing wall on her side. Behind her, little Tristan shuffles into view, timid and silent.

I catch Olivia’s attention and indicate we should both cross the landing at the same time. She thinks a moment and then nods. We double our chances of not getting caught that way. If there’s something waiting in the stairwell, he can’t catch us all.

I hitch Billy higher on my hip and signal Olivia to go on three. But we don’t reach three when a shrill and bloodcurdlingly real scream rips through the house from downstairs. It sounds like Milo. I tell myself it’s fine, Lila is with him, but for the first time since the game started, I think of Robert’s tape. Of the girl on Robert’s tape.

Olivia breaks cover, yanking Tristan along behind her as she pelts past the stairs towards us. Reflexively we burst from our hiding spot, barrelling forward across the landing too.

We pass Olivia and Tristan mid-landing and plough on in our respective directions, plunging back into the darkness of opposite sides. In the safety of the dark corridor, I look back in time to wonder what Olivia’s plan is, but a gentle tug on my hair refocuses me.

‘Up,’ Billy whispers, his mouth close to my ear, his breath warm on my skin.

‘Up,’ I agree, as I move us onwards into the darkness.

We round a bend in the corridor and I clink on our flashlight for the first time. The beautifully restored interior wood panelling of Fiona and Oliver’s house bursts into view as we creep around another bend and a thin staircase appears ahead. In spite of everything, as we stride towards it, I can’t help but wonder how many staircases this place has and what something like this might be worth in the current climate.

But the hot warmth of urine spreading across my hip from Billy’s trousers snaps me to reality.

‘You okay?’ I ask him, concerned. ‘You scared?’

My anger at the Holbecks, and in particular at Fiona, resurfaces. Why would she put her child through this? Why would any of them make me do this? And why on earth didn’t Edward tell me what this was really like?

‘Yeah, scared, but mainly soda,’ Billy replies with a judicious shake of the head. ‘Should have gone before.’ He looks circumspect, then adds, ‘Sorry, Harry-ept.’

He’s scared but dealing with it incredibly well. ‘That’s okay, sweetie. We’ll sort it out later. You’re doing a great job.’ I smile for his benefit, in spite of the fact that his family have put me in a totally inappropriate position and my whole left side is soaked in hot piss.

I hoick Billy a little higher on my hip, try not to think of all the damage I could be doing to the growing foetus inside me, and shine my torch up into the dark stairwell above us.

It’s just a game, Harry. An incredibly weird one, granted, but just a game. The baby will be fine. Billy will be fine. Whoever that was screaming downstairs will be fine. And Robert did not kill Samantha Belson because I am meeting her in three days.

When we reach the next landing, Billy nods up again, the staircase narrowing, closing in around us as we reach the top of the house.

A pink door comes into view above, cracked paint and a lift latch, something ominous about it making me slow as we approach.

The door swings open with a creak and I can feel the sheer size of the space beyond it; it’s cavernous. The whole top floor of this house must be open-plan. I sweep my torch beam into the murk; odd things catch in the light’s path: the edges of a circus tent at one end of the room, a full-size horse frozen mid-gallop, its body accurately rendered except for the bright red plastic of its saddle and reins. At one end of the room a small network of road markings covers the floor, littered with child-sized cars and bikes, a street in miniature, and beyond it in the far distance I make out the backs of eight teddy bears in a picnic circle of more. It’s a playroom. The whole top floor of Fiona’s brownstone is a massive, creepy playroom.

‘Is there anyone up here?’ I call carefully into the darkness. Billy presses a finger to my lips.

‘Sshh,’ he whispers with a shake of his head.

The wind chimes jangle from somewhere in the darkness and, nerves frazzled, I jump, my shoulder bumping on a light switch in the stair wall that clinks on and bathes the penthouse playroom in bright light.

The lights work here. Without a second thought I dash into the playroom and shut the pink door firmly behind us, blocking the light’s path down the stairwell.

I scan the brightly coloured room, its proportions ludicrous, larger than our whole apartment put together. The sound of a scream from many floors below springs me into action. I plop Billy down onto the floor and I head over to a large bookcase filled with crates of toys and speedily remove them all. I then slowly drag the bookcase across the carpet to block the doorway, reinserting the toy crates one by one to reinforce our barrier.

Pink door blocked, I flop down onto the carpet completely exhausted. ‘Come ’ere,’ I huff to Billy, my arms outstretched, and he totters over, wet pants sagging. ‘We should be safe in here.’

He collapses into my arms too. ‘Yep,’ he says simply, then looks up. ‘Where’s Mumma?’