The Toymakers(31)

That was when her eyes landed on the toybox, the dull thing of dovetailed wood that Kaspar had brought on his last visit.

The idea occurred in the very same moment that Emil’s fingers landed on the door. Cathy threw herself across the Wendy House floor, heaved the toybox out and threw open its lid. Then, with one eye on the door, she stepped inside.

The floor was not beneath her, not where it should have been. She held on to the edges and pushed herself over the precipice – and then, at last, she felt it, somewhere below. When she stood, the toybox swallowed her up to her waist. The Wendy House door had started to rattle, but quickly she sank down, curling herself into a ball so that only the tip of her head could be seen. Then, as Emil shouldered his way in, she slammed shut the lid.

In the toybox there was only darkness. She could feel the walls closing in on her, the air growing warm and moist with her own breath. Yet, somehow it was holding her; somehow these four slats of wood had cocooned her in their heart: one pocket universe inside another, just like the child still kicking inside her.

‘I know you’re in here,’ came Emil’s voice, muted by the wood. ‘Kaspar, don’t be such a fool. There isn’t any other way out.’ For the first time, his voice faltered. ‘Kaspar?’

She heard his footsteps prowling the edges of the room, heard him stop at the foot of the bed as if to check nobody was hiding underneath. By now he would have seen the nursery, the rocking horse and crib. By now he would have seen the collection of Emporium adverts lying strewn across the sheets.

The air in here was close; she felt it hardening in the back of her throat.

She was cramming her hand into her mouth, if only to keep herself from coughing, when she heard Emil’s footsteps moving back in the direction of the door. She breathed out – but the relief was short-lived, for no sooner had Emil passed the toybox, than Sirius sent up a familiar howl. She contorted to look upwards, where a tiny sliver of light ran around the toybox lid. Now, it was marred by a patch of shadow: Sirius was looming above it, giving her away.

Emil’s footsteps grew louder as he moved in her direction. Then his hands were on the toybox lid, drawing it up – and, from the incalculable depths below, Cathy peered up into his startled eyes.

‘You,’ he whispered, and fainted clean away.

It took some effort to heave herself out of the toybox. By the time she reached him, Sirius was lapping at his face with its darned-sock tongue, making the most dejected of noises with whatever motors lived in its throat. Cathy knelt beside him, peeled back his eyes. They were still flickering – and, no sooner had she closed them, than they opened again. As if startled for a second time, Emil scrabbled backwards. Cathy darted around to put herself between him and the door.

‘Emil. Please. Listen. It isn’t what you think …’

‘What do I think?’ he breathed, clambering to his feet.

‘You think I’m one of those confidence girls, come to steal secrets. That I’m selling secrets to Hamley’s, or that shop on the Portobello Road …’

‘Well?’

‘Well, look at me, Emil! Just look!’

She had almost shrieked it, for Emil’s eyes were darting into every corner, searching out the secrets he was sure she had ferreted away.

‘Emil, I have nowhere else. We have nowhere else …’

His eyes landed on her belly. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, berating himself by smashing bunched fists into his sides. ‘I didn’t think. I thought you’d go home. Why ever you ran away, I thought you’d go back and have your baby there and … and then I’d forget about you and you wouldn’t be back and—’

‘I couldn’t go home. I just couldn’t.’

‘So you hid here, on the day the snowdrops flowered. You’ve been hiding here ever since.’

It had been on the tip of her tongue to beg him not to blame Kaspar, to tell him none of this was Kaspar’s fault, but somehow Emil seemed to be making the leaps of imagination for her, the story spinning of its own volition.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘No, no, no. Cathy, sit down. Please. Let me … I should never have let you go. I almost didn’t. I was going to tell Mrs Hornung but I knew there had to be a reason you’d kept it a secret and … I’m sorry, Cathy. You believe it, don’t you? Why, if I’d have had the idea, I’d have hidden you here myself …’

He didn’t know what to do, so instead he began pacing in circles, urging her to take the foot of the bed. When she did, he rushed to close the Wendy House door, lest anyone be spying from the paper trees. ‘Mrs Hornung does her rounds. And Kaspar … sometimes Kaspar creeps around here, concocting whatever he’s concocting. You must be careful, Cathy. More careful than you’ve been tonight.’ He stopped his pacing and Sirius, who had been mirroring him at his heel, promptly sat at his feet. ‘How long will it be?’

‘You mean my baby.’

He nodded.

‘Soon,’ she whispered.

‘My mama was alone when I was born. Only her and Kaspar, but he was hardly a year old. Our house wasn’t any bigger than this. Two rooms and a yard house and hens in the hut. And … you did the right thing to stay here, Cathy. You mustn’t do it alone. And I can—’