Gravenhunger

1.
ELVIRA'S LETTER

“No way!” said Phoenix, glaring at his father across the kitchen table. “I'm not going. Not for the whole of the summer holidays. And not with
Rose
!”

Dr Wainwright sighed. He put down his knife and fork and leaned back in his chair.

“What's wrong with Rose? She was nice enough to you at the funeral, wasn't she?”

Phoenix dropped his gaze.

“Of course she was nice to me at the funeral,” he muttered. “Everyone was. But that doesn't mean I want to go on holiday with her! Six weeks, Dad! With a girl I hardly know! What on earth were you thinking?”

“I was partly thinking of your cousin, actually,” said Dr Wainwright.

He ran his fingers through his greying hair.

“Rose has just come back from four years abroad. I don't suppose she's made many friends at her new school yet, so I thought she might like to come on holiday with us.”

Phoenix scowled.

“But why couldn't I have asked one of my mates from school? Jake or Sam, maybe?” He pushed his plate to one side. “And what's with all this going away business, anyway? We never go on holiday. Never. Why change things now? And why spring it on me at the last minute?”

His father raised his eyebrows. “Because I knew you'd kick up one almighty great fuss,” he said. “Exactly like you're doing now.”

Phoenix flushed and fumbled in his pocket for a piece of chewing gum.

“Look,” his father went on. “You're right, we never go on holiday. You know Mum couldn't stand being away from home. But – well, things are different now. And I thought a proper break would do us good.” He glanced at his son's pale face. “Goodness knows we could do with one after the year we've had.”

There was a long silence.

“So what's this place like, anyway?” said Phoenix at last. “What did you say it was called again?”

“Gravenhunger Manor. It's on the south coast. A couple of miles outside the village of Gravenhunger.”

Phoenix rolled his eyes.

“Honestly, Dad. First holiday we've ever been on and you go and choose some old place by the sea I've never even heard of. Why couldn't we have gone abroad? Why couldn't we have gone somewhere
interesting
?”

“You know we can't afford that sort of holiday,” replied his father. “Especially since the university cut back on my teaching hours. Things aren't easy at the moment, Phoenix. Besides, I think you'll like where we're going. Gravenhunger Manor must have been very grand in its day. The house is huge and so are the grounds. There's a big garden at the back and a pine forest surrounding the whole thing, and a river beyond the trees. It's got something about it. Something unusual. Something different.”

“Yeah?” said Phoenix. “And how would you know that?” He frowned suddenly. “You've been there before, haven't you?”

Dr Wainwright shifted in his seat. He opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again.

Phoenix folded his arms, his eyes now fixed upon his father.

“Come on, Dad. There's something you're not telling me, isn't there?”

His father cleared his throat. “There
is
something I need to tell you about Gravenhunger Manor. But…”

“But what?”

“It's a bit tricky, that's all. I was going to leave it till we were on our way down there tomorrow. I thought the journey would give us a chance for a good long chat before Rose arrives.”

“Can't you tell me now?”

“The last thing I want to do is stir things up for you, Phoenix…”

“Dad! Stop treating me like a little kid! I'm nearly thirteen, in case you'd forgotten.”

Dr Wainwright rested his elbows on the table and met his son's gaze.

“All right,” he said. “You win. I'll tell you what all this is about.”

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

“This place we're going to,” he said, “this house in the middle of nowhere. It – it belonged to your mother. Gravenhunger Manor belonged to her.”

“To
Mum
?”

Phoenix gaped at his father.

“But she never said anything. She never even mentioned it.”

“No, not to you – and not to me either.”

“You're saying you didn't know anything about it?”

Dr Wainwright replaced his glasses and shook his head. “Nothing at all,” he said. “Not until the solicitor's papers landed on my desk back in February. It was just as much a surprise to me then as it is to you now.”

“But
why
didn't she say anything? Did she leave you some sort of an explanation?”

His father glanced away. He picked up his fork and began to push his unfinished food around the plate.

“Not really,” he said. “All I know is that Gravenhunger Manor was bought by your mother's parents many years ago. It seems they lived there for a short time when your mum was a child. For whatever reason the house was never sold when they moved on – so when your grandparents died, it was passed down to your mother.”

“And now it's yours?”

“That's right. Which is why I thought it'd be a good idea to go down there this summer and take a proper look at it.”

“But I still don't understand,” said Phoenix. “Why would Mum keep something like that secret?”

Dr Wainwright got up from the table. “I'm afraid it's all a bit of a mystery,” he said, gathering up the plates and carrying them over to the worktop. “But I expect she had her reasons.”

He stood there for a moment, his back to his son. “Your mother was quite a complicated person, you know.”

“And what's that supposed to mean?” demanded Phoenix.

His father turned round to face him. “Don't get me wrong,” he said. “She was a wonderful mother and she loved you with all her heart. But she was a woman of secrets. She always held herself back. Not so much from you, perhaps. But certainly from me.”

A shadow passed across his face.

“Just think about how long she kept her illness from us both. She knew how to keep things quiet. And it looks like it was the same with this house. If she had some reason not to tell us about it, then we just have to respect that. I'm not about to start raking things up. There's no point. We have to look forward now, you and I. Find a way to start again.”

Phoenix looked away.

A woman of secrets
. It was weird hearing Dad talk about Mum like that. It didn't seem right.

He pictured the little silver angel, zipped inside his blazer pocket upstairs.

That had been a sort of secret too, now he came to think about it. But at least it was one Mum had chosen to share with him.

She had given him the angel the day before she
died. He'd never seen it before, but it clearly meant the world to her. She'd put it into his hands, her dark eyes searching his face, and asked him to keep it safe.

And so he had taken it, fighting back the tears and trying not to look too hard at the grey face on the pillow before him. Since that day he had carried it with him everywhere, knowing neither how nor why it soothed him, knowing only that it was his special link with her, and that he couldn't be without it. It wasn't exactly cool to own an angel, but he was never going to let it go.

Phoenix picked up the chewing-gum wrapper from the table and started to tear it into minute shreds.

“So anyway, you've been down there, have you?” he muttered. “To this Gravenhunger Manor?”

“Just the once,” replied his father. “A week or so after I received the news from the solicitor. I thought I should check it out. See what kind of state it was in. After all, it hasn't been lived in for thirty years.”

He came back over to the table and sat down.

“When your mother's family left there, a trust fund was set up to look after it. It paid for a local woman to come in once in a while and keep things ticking over. But the fund dried up a year or so ago, and the lady from the village was getting too old to look after it anyway, so by the time I visited, no one had actually set foot in the place for over a year.”

“And what was it like?” asked Phoenix.

His father shrugged.

“Huge entrance hall, masses of rooms, lots of garden – quite the stately home…”

“No, Dad, what was it
really
like?”

Dr Wainwright sighed. “To be honest it was pretty dismal. It poured with rain the whole time I was there, which didn't exactly help. I only stayed a few hours. Just long enough to have a bit of a tidy and board up a couple of broken windows.”

He looked at Phoenix, his expression brightening.

“But it was February when I went down, remember. Not exactly the time to bring out the best in anywhere. I'm sure it'll feel completely different now. It's summer, after all. And we're in for a heatwave, by all accounts. I thought we could take the bikes down with us. If you use mine, I'm sure Rose can manage with yours.”

The sound of the telephone made them both jump.

Phoenix stayed at the table while his father crossed to the hallway to answer it.

A couple of minutes later he was back.

“That was Mrs Hopwood. She's going to keep an eye on our house while we're away and I need to drop the spare keys round.”

He picked up his jacket and slung it over his shoulder.

“I won't be long. Why don't you go upstairs and make a start on your packing? I'd like to get off as early as possible tomorrow morning. Beat the worst of the holiday traffic.”

Phoenix said nothing. He waited until the front door latch had clicked back into place, then got to his feet and slumped out of the kitchen.

In the hallway he stopped.

The door to his father's study stood slightly ajar.

He hesitated.

The last time he'd gone in there he'd landed himself in big trouble. He'd been hunting for a school trip consent form which had needed signing, and had accidentally moved some papers around on the desk. Not exactly a crime punishable by death. But Dad had gone ballistic. Told him he'd messed up the order of his precious scientific documents.

Phoenix sighed at the memory.

Quite what his father meant by order he had no idea. Every square inch of his desk was covered in folders and books and tiny scraps of paper. How Dad knew where to find anything was completely beyond him.

Even so, he'd learned his lesson. He'd set about teaching himself how to forge his father's signature on school letters and vowed never to set foot in the study again.

Now, though, he wasn't so sure he could keep that promise.

Dad hadn't been entirely honest with him back there in the kitchen, he could have sworn it. All that shifting around, the messing about with his food, the failure to meet his eye.

When he'd asked whether Mum had left some kind of explanation for keeping this house of hers secret, he hadn't really given a straight answer, had he? What if he was being sparing with the truth? What if he knew more than he was letting on? And if so, might there be something lying around that might just help him understand all this? Something it was his
right
to know about?

Phoenix pursed his lips.

He glanced out of the hallway window to where his father was being ushered into the next-door neighbour's house…

…and then he pushed open the study door.

From between the half-pulled curtains a shaft of sunlight shone into the study, illuminating a long cone of floating dust particles.

Phoenix stared around him. It was a warm-looking room, strewn with rugs in reds and blues and creams and full of the musty smell of old books.

Down one wall was a row of bookshelves, sagging under the weight of their contents, and at the far end, just to one side of the window, stood his father's war-zone of a desk.

It had been Dad's bolthole ever since Phoenix could remember. Even as a little boy, on his way to find his mother in the kitchen, he had taken care to lighten his step as he had passed by, aware of the important scientific work being done inside.