I take out an armful of clothes and dump them on the floor. I’m just trying to detangle a ball of beards and wigs when I spot a Quality Street tin buried at the bottom of the box.
I pull it out and feel the weight of it in my hands. It’s round and dented, and has a picture of a soldier and a lady on the front, and when I shake it I can hear something rattling around inside. I sit down and prise at the lid until it opens with a shower of rusty flakes. All that’s inside is a foil chocolate wrapper and a large folded piece of paper. The piece of paper has the word ‘SECRIT!’ written on the front in my own handwriting.
I stare at the thick, yellowing piece of paper, holding my breath as I wonder what I once thought was so secret. Carefully I unfold it and spread it out across the attic floor. It’s a hand-drawn map, covered in tiny pictures and carefully written labels, something Rose and I must have made years ago.
The map is of a wobbly land almost cut in half by a river. One side of this land is as colourful as a cartoon with emerald-green trees and bright blue lakes. The other half has hardly any colour at all. It’s filled with blackened mountains, jagged grey cliffs and forests of stick-like trees. Written along the top of the map, again in my spiky handwriting, is one word: ROAR.
‘Roar . . .’ The word sounds so familiar when I say it out loud.
My eyes follow the zigzag waves one of us has drawn across the sea, and suddenly I remember the way those waves crashed against the cliffs and how there were so many of them the sea seemed to churn and boil. Just when I’m thinking that this map must have been inspired by some place Mum and Dad took us on holiday, I remember something else: me and Rose bursting into this attic and shouting, ‘Let’s play Roar!’
I smile. Roar isn’t a real place. It’s a game that Rose and I used to play, one that was so good, we drew a map of it.
As I gaze at the map the game comes creeping back to me. I see mountain ranges stretched between the folds of the paper and a curving coastline dotted with coves and cliffs. There’s a cluster of jelly-shaped islands labelled Archie Playgo, a castle rising out of the sea, and three dragons soaring through the sky. Butterflies, or maybe fairies, are dotted everywhere and sly-looking unicorns peer from between trees. I can’t actually remember sitting next to Rose and drawing these things, but still my mind tingles with recognition and something else. Something I can’t quite put my finger on.
Rose’s footsteps pull me back to the attic.
‘What’s that?’ she says, kneeling next to me.
‘It’s a map we drew of Roar.’
She frowns. ‘What’s Roar?’
‘That game we used to play. You must remember!’
‘Not really . . . We played loads of games up here.’
‘But Roar was our favourite. There were wizards and mermaids and we’d fight and have adventures. We played it loads!’
Rose looks at me with wide, amused eyes. ‘If you say so, Arthur.’
I point at the blackened castle rising out of the sea. It’s labelled The Crow’s Nest. ‘That’s where the baddie lived, and look –’ I tap a black circle – ‘that’s my ninja-wizard’s cave. There he is!’ A smiling face peeks out of the cave, a pointed hat sitting on his head. ‘I’m sure you had a friend too . . .’
Rose searches the jelly-shaped islands until she spots something: a girl’s head poking out of the sea. She has blue hair drifting around her and the word ‘Mitch’ written by the tip of her silver tail. ‘Mitch . . .’ says Rose, frowning. Then she smiles. ‘She was a mermaid-witch!’
‘With a bad temper –’
‘And webbed fingers and a magic tail!’
Sun streams through the window and outside the birds sing. Just for a moment, it’s like it was when we were little, when we used to finish each other’s sentences and make stuff up faster than we could think it.
Together, we stare at the map. Suddenly Rose shakes her head and jumps to her feet. She grabs a bulging bin bag and drags it towards the door. ‘Hurry up, Arthur,’ she calls over her shoulder, ‘or we’ll never get our den.’
When I hear the bag thumping down the stairs I turn back to the map. I can’t resist.
My eyes wander over pathways and streams and mountain passes, and I start to lose myself in this strange place we invented. Then something catches my eye – a flicker of movement, a flash of light – and I find myself staring at the Crow’s Nest. I see something that I missed before. A face is looking out of a window. The face is pale with round eyes and a crooked stitched mouth. It’s a scarecrow, a boy, and I can just make out two wings sprouting from his back.
‘Crowky,’ I say, the name coming easily to my lips. I stare at his black button eyes and his smile seems to stretch.
‘I’d almost forgotten about you,’ I whisper.
After lunch Rose disappears to our room, and Grandad comes up to the attic to check on our progress.
‘Carrying all the stuff down the stairs is taking ages,’ I complain, staggering under a pile of magazines. ‘We need a quicker way.’
Grandad looks out of the attic window. ‘Maybe you could use this.’
I join him and I see that the garden is directly below us. ‘I suppose we could lower everything down on a rope . . .’
‘Or maybe,’ Grandad says, grabbing a handful of my magazines, ‘you could chuck it all out!’ And before I can say, no, that’s a ridiculous idea, he’s hurled the magazines out of the window. They flutter through the air and land all over the grass. He turns to me with a gleam in his eye. ‘Your turn, Arthur!’
‘Isn’t it a bit dangerous?’
‘Not if we only do the small stuff. And no glass or metal, right?’
‘Right,’ I agree, nodding seriously. Then, with a yell, I hurl out the rest of the magazines making Grandad laugh with glee.
Then we get down to the serious business of throwing the contents of the attic out of the window. We go into a bit of a frenzy, whooping and yelling as bags burst open mid-air and boxes explode on the patio.
Eventually, and predictably, Rose comes up to ruin our fun.
‘Grandad, your pants are hanging in a tree!’ she cries. ‘Why have you even kept them?’
‘I was saving them to use as dusters,’ he explains, then, possibly because Rose looks so disgusted, he shuffles off to collect them, coughing all the way down the stairs.
‘Inhaler!’ Rose and I call after him. Then Rose flops down on the sofa, pulls a piano keyboard on to her lap and starts randomly pressing the keys.
‘Do you want to chuck some stuff out?’ I ask, hauling a bag towards the window. ‘This one’s
