It only begged the question why someone had collected such expensive showpieces when he’d clearly had no intention of ever showing them off. They were cheek by jowl in an old neglected house that needed more than a lick of paint on the outside and a great deal of it inside as well.
From the unfaded splendour of the furniture she could only assume the blinds at the windows had nearly always been kept down. She couldn’t help thinking what sort of life Jake must have had as a young child in this mausoleum-like house. She couldn’t imagine her little son lasting even a full minute without touching or breaking something valuable. She looked at a Prattware cat and wondered if Jake had ever broken anything in the boisterousness of youth. Lachlan had recently accidentally toppled over a vase at Howard’s house and Marguerite Caule had torn strips off him, reducing him to tears even though the vase hadn’t even been so much as chipped.
She gave an inward shudder and left the room.
The closed door of what used to be Jake’s bedroom was three doors away down the hall. She looked at it for a long moment, wondering what secrets he kept locked there. She walked slowly towards the door, each of her footsteps making the floorboards creak as if they were warning her not to go any further. Jake had forbidden her to go in, telling her he kept it locked at all times, but she wouldn’t be human or indeed even female if she didn’t try the handle just the once…
It opened without a sound.
She stared at the open space before her for at least half a minute until the overwhelming temptation finally sent her feet forward, one after the other, until she was inside, the door as her hand left it, shifting soundlessly to a half-open position behind her.
It wasn’t as dark as the rest of the rooms in the house. The blinds were not pulled all the way down and, although the sky outside was cloudy, enough light still came through for her to see the narrow single bed along one wall. Compared to the rest of the furniture in the house, Jake’s bedroom was furnished roughly, almost cheaply. There was nothing of any significant value, that she could see. The wardrobe was little more than a chipboard affair and the chest of drawers not much better. There was a single mirror on the wall above the chest of drawers but it was cracked and crooked as if someone had bumped against it heavily but not bothered to straighten it again.
The bed was lumpy and looked uncomfortable, the ugly brown chenille spread bald in spots. The walls looked pockmarked, bits of poster glue still visible, although there was not a poster or photograph in sight. Again she thought of her childhood home with the walls covered with loving happy memories. Jake’s childhood house was stripped of any such sentimentality. She had asked him once when they lived together to show her a photo of himself as a child but he’d told her he hadn’t bothered bringing any overseas with him. She had accepted his answer as reasonable and had thought nothing more about it. But now, in the aching emptiness of this room, she couldn’t help wondering if anyone had ever taken one of him and cherished it the way her parents cherished the ones they had collected over the years.
There were no loving memories in this house.
The thought slipped into her head and once it took hold she couldn’t erase it. The painful truth of it seemed to be seeping towards her, like a nasty stain that had been hidden for a long time but was now finally coming through the cracked paint on the walls to taint her with its dark shameful secret.
Jake had been abused by his father.
Her stomach clenched in anguish as the puzzle began to fall into sickening place. It all made sense now. No wonder he was getting rid of everything to do with his father. And no wonder he had never wanted children of his own.
Oh, Jake! Why didn’t you tell me?
She looked again at the askew mirror on the wall and her stomach gave another painful lurch. Was that blood smeared in one corner?
Her eyes fell away from its mottled secrets and went to the chest of drawers beneath it. Almost of its own volition, her hand began to reach for the first drawer. She knew it was contravening Jake’s rule but she had to find out what she could about his background. It was like a compulsion, an addiction she just had to feed, if only for the one time.
The drawer slid uneasily from its tracks as if it too was advising her against prying as the floorboards had seemed to do earlier, the scrape of rough-edged timber sounding like fingernails being dragged down the length of a chalk board.
She suppressed a tiny shiver and looked down at the odd socks tumbled in a heap, no two seemed to match or were even tucked together in the hope of being considered a pair. There was a bundle of underwear that looked faded and worn and a few unironed handkerchiefs not even folded.