“Pay them double.”
“Yes, sir.”
Henderson drives us up to the door.
The hall smells of fresh plaster and sawdust and, faintly, of the lemon polish Brumilde has used on the floors for thirty years. Whatever has happened, the floors have remembered themselves.
The ordnance lead is at the foot of the stairs. Tall, fifties, grey at the temples.
“Mr Ravenscroft.”
“Thank you for coming so quickly. I appreciate it.”
“Of course, sir. Ground floor is clear. Cellar clear. Boot room and kitchen wing clear. We have just started on the first floor and we'll be in the east wing within the hour. Sir, with respect, I'd rather you waited at the gate until we have signed off.”
“I understand. I'd like to come up anyway.”
“It is not best practice.”
“I know. I'd be grateful for the company on the way through.”
He does not give me a longer argument than that, because he is a professional and he has read the file and he knows what is in the room I am asking him to take me to.
“This way, Mr Ravenscroft.”
The blast pattern is visible in the wall halfway up the staircase, a faint grey shadow under the new paint, where the plaster is settling at a different rate to the older work. By next week it will be invisible. Today I can see it.
I run my hand along the banister. The wood is the same wood. I pull my hand away.
We turn onto the landing. Our bedroom door is the second on the left, closed, the corner of the four-poster visible under a dust sheet through the crack.
I stop at the nursery doorway. The ordnance lead stops a pace behind me.
“In your own time, sir.”
The wall is patched. That is the first thing, patched and primed and waiting for paint, the size of a small car, smooth grey plaster sitting in the room like a held breath.
The carpet has been replaced where the blood was.
The cot is gone. The mobile, the rocking chair Ivy used to feed him in, the wicker basket of his soft animals, the little lamp Brumilde turned on at dusk, all of it gone. Destroyed. The blast took everything that was in the room.
I stand in the doorway and I let it sit on me. I let myself see Brumilde the way she was when they pulled her out, the dust inher hair, the wrong angle of her arm, her hand still open. I let myself see Alex's small face, the cut, the surprise of him crying because he was alive and angry. I let myself see Ivy on the floor of the corridor with her own blood in her eye and her arms reaching for her son.
“Behind the wall?”
“Done. Twice.”
“Floorboards.”
“Lifted and replaced. There was nothing under them.”
“Skirting.”
“Scoped. Clean.”
“Window frame.”
“Clean.”
