probably not even in there, love.’
‘Judging by how much other junk you’ve kept hold of, I don’t see why not,’ Lucy countered. ‘And I’m sure I remember it being at the back somewhere.’
‘Will you tell her?’ Christine said, turning to the man standing next to her.
Adam stood with his arms folded and his tall, lean frame silhouetted against the cold light of a crisp winter’s morning. When he spoke, the warmth of his words appeared as vaporous swirls above the halo of his dirty blond hair. ‘Your mum has a point. I should be the one in there.’
‘Firstly,’ Lucy said, ‘I know what I’m looking for, and secondly, you’re terrified of spiders.’ She had stopped forcing her way through the junk to face her husband. Sweeping back a coil of copper hair, her emerald-green eyes flashed in defiance and she told herself she would stand her ground even if Adam insisted. To her relief, he didn’t.
‘I tried,’ he said to Christine with a shrug.
Wrapping her Afghan shawl tightly around her shoulders, Christine muttered something under her breath that was unrepeatable. She appeared tiny next to Adam’s six-foot frame, but Lucy’s mum was stronger than she looked. She had brought up her daughter single-handedly since Lucy was eight years old and although the last twenty years hadn’t been easy, what should have broken them had made them stronger and they made a good partnership. They were best friends when they wanted to be, and mother and daughter when it was needed. At that precise moment, Christine’s maternal instincts had kicked in and she wanted to protect her only child.
‘I’ll be careful,’ Lucy called out.
Taking another step into the past, she sized up the gap between an old bedstead and a dressing table. Where once she might have slipped her slender figure through with ease, now she paused to stroke a hand over the slight but firm rise of her belly; her mum wasn’t alone in having a child to protect. Raising herself on to tiptoes, Lucy stretched her long legs so that her bump skimmed the surface of the dresser as she passed.
‘Don’t go wedging yourself in or we’ll never get you out,’ Christine called, before adding, ‘Tell her, Adam.’
‘Don’t forget you’re fat,’ he said, laughing all the more when Lucy scowled.
Christine swiped at her son-in-law. ‘You can’t call a pregnant woman fat, not ever,’ she said, her smile softening the hard stare she was giving him over the rim of her spectacles.
Her mum’s glasses were her only nod to older age. Her spikey dark locks showed no sign of the grey her hairdresser artfully disguised, and her skin glowed from a strict beauty regime. Lucy hoped she would look as good in her fifties, but she had inherited her pale complexion and ginger genes from her dad, so there was no knowing how she would age.
Wiping the dust from her white shirt, Lucy attempted to work out her next move while fearing it was time to admit defeat. Even if she did manage to find what she was looking for, there was no way she would be able to reclaim it without emptying the entire garage. Her mum and dad had moved into their semi-detached house in Liverpool when they had married some thirty years ago, and that was probably the last time anyone had seen the back wall.
Wilfully ignoring her doubts and doubters, Lucy continued on her quest. As she squeezed past a pink metallic bicycle with torn and tattered tassels hanging from its handlebars, it began to move and she put out her hand to stop it from rolling. From the shadows, the orange reflector on the rear wheel shone out like a beacon, drawing her back in time.
She could see her dad kneeling in front of the upturned bike repairing a puncture. He had turned the pedal with his hand so fast that the wheel had become a blur and the reflector transformed into a glowing orange circle. Lucy recalled how her stomach had lurched when the spokes had turned so fast that it looked as if the wheel had magically changed direction. The memory alone made her queasy and threatened to resurrect the morning sickness she hadn’t quite left behind in her first trimester.
‘Can you see anything?’ Adam called.
Lucy had gone as far back as she could reach without taking unnecessary risks. ‘Not yet,’ she said as she peered into the gloom, searching for the faintest suggestion of white painted spindles. It was there somewhere and she wouldn’t leave until she had settled her mind.
‘Seriously, Lucy,’ Adam said. ‘Your mum’s right. It probably isn’t there and if you go any deeper, you don’t know what’s going to fall on top of you. Come out. You’re scaring us.’
‘I’ll be careful,’ she said, not daring to look back. ‘Please, give me one more minute.’
As Lucy swiped at ancient cobwebs covered in dust, a particularly heavy clump clung to her fingers. Shaking it free, she glimpsed the carcass of a giant spider caught by its own web and let out a yelp.
‘Fetch her out, Adam,’ Christine ordered, panic rising in her voice.
There was the creak of furniture being moved and when Lucy turned, she found Adam standing on the other side of the dresser. He had buttoned up his checked shirt to protect his T-shirt and could probably squeeze through the gap at a push but the sight of the dead spider dangling from Lucy’s index finger stopped him in his tracks.
‘Not funny,’ he said.
At thirty-six, Adam was eight years older, but in that moment, he could so easily have been a sulky younger brother. She could still win this argument.
‘Don’t come any nearer,’ she warned.
‘I know why you’re doing this,’ he said, without returning the smile she offered. ‘If you say it’s there, I believe you. And truthfully, do we really want a battered old cot that would probably fail every modern-day health and safety test?’
‘It’s not any old cot, it’s my cot and I’m twenty-eight not fifty-eight. They had health and safety in the nineties too.’
Shaking the dead spider free, Lucy took one last look at the remaining junk. There were boxes piled on top of each other in a leaning tower of decayed cardboard. If Adam were to challenge her, she could describe the contents of each one. They contained her dad’s life, from the manila files kept from the advertising business he ran with his brother, to his sketchpads, his worn-out slippers, and his second-best suit. His best suit had been burnt along with his remains and the picture an eight-year-old Lucy had drawn of him teaching the angels to paint as he had once taught her.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Adam said. ‘None of this matters.’
Lucy pulled her gaze from the boxes and was about to retrace her steps when something caught her eye. ‘There it is, look!’
The cot had been dismantled and she could see only the two side sections. The wooden spindles were spaced a couple of inches apart and, as Adam had predicted, the wood was splintered and the paint chipped. It wasn’t much of a family heirloom and although her dad had been a gifted artist, the rabbits and squirrels she recalled on the headboard were factory transfers. Her mum was pretty sure they had bought it from Argos.
When Lucy turned, Adam had his lips pursed tightly. She knew what he was thinking and although she wanted to feel vindicated, what she actually felt was foolish. ‘OK, you’re right. I don’t want our baby in some out-of-date deathtrap, and I certainly don’t want to get buried beneath an
