The Kids Who Lived In a Hole Read online

  Marcus finished his second cookie and wiped his hands on his shirt before picking up the black phone and turning it over in his hand. It certainly wasn’t an iPhone. Way smaller and lighter with awkward curves and a design that a child probably came up with. If any of his fellow students at school back home had come into class with this they would have been mercilessly bullied.

  “Thanks,” he managed.

  “Can I have the black one?” asked Zoe. Marcus swapped with her with a shrug.

  “So, in terms of jet lag, it’s a good idea if you try and stay awake as long as possible. Make it to dinner time tonight at 7 pm, then you can eat and afterwards go up to your rooms and sleep and you will almost have reset your body clock. If you sleep between now and then there’s a good chance you’ll be zonked and have a week of naps and sleeping during the day. So, if you can, keep awake. I’ll show you where the kitchen is so you can help yourself to food and the cookies, and we can use one of the pools if you like. I like a swim in the morning. Sets you up for the day. Let’s show you to your rooms.”

  Uncle Reggie led the way back out to the Grand Hall. One of the many doors leading off it turned out to reveal a narrower hallway. Towards the end of this hallway one of the doors had been taken off its hinges, leaving a portal to the most amazing aromas Marcus had ever experienced. They trooped in and Marcus and Zoe looked around open-mouthed. It was a kitchen and dining room, with a pair of French doors opening out onto a perfectly manicured lawn. The muted olive-green Aga oven dominated the kitchen section of the room, multiple rings and doors making it look to Marcus like a mutant merging of three or four normal-sized ovens. Hanging above the oven was a selection of brass cooking implements and beside them an array of pots and pans of varying hues ranging from soot black to a gleaming bronze. Shelves of plates crammed the wall space between the stove and the sink, and the space between the fridge and stove was taken with shelves of spices, jars and a variety of plastic containers. Bustling behind the kitchen bench that separated the two parts of the room was Francine, levering a loaf tin out of one side of the oven to plonk it onto the bench. The delicious smell of freshly baked bread was added to the chaotic pre-existing background smells.

  “Francine, I was just telling the kids that they can help themselves to anything in the kitchen. They’re fighting jet lag so I figured eating might be one way of keeping them awake. Is anything off-limits?”

  “Well, we’ve only the one paying mouth to feed, so there’s plenty to go around. If they help themselves to the fridge in the kitchen, that should be fine,” she said, indicating the fridge in the corner of the room.

  “You’ve got more than one fridge?” asked Zoe.

  Francine smiled broadly, and beckoned them to follow her. Back across the narrow hall they trooped. Through the door facing the gap to the kitchen they went into another kitchen with even more cupboards and bench space. A pair of double fridges sat against one wall, but Francine was already leading them out of the room and through a door beyond into what turned out to be the laundry. A door in the laundry revealed a larder stacked with shelves holding all sorts of bags, boxes and drums.

  “I’m not sure when the apocalypse is coming, but we’re well-stocked to wait it out,” she said with her ready grin. “One fridge in the kitchen, two large ones in the Butler’s Pantry and all this in the larder. With what we grow in the vegetable garden and greenhouses here, the eggs from the farm and the fish from the fishery, our food costs are surprisingly low. Oh, and every now and again William will bag a rabbit.”

  “Oh no, not a bunny!” squealed Zoe.

  “Yeah, sometimes William will bag one and then as sure as eggs are eggs, we’ll get a group of vegetarians through who won’t touch it,” said Uncle Reggie. “We eat well those nights! So, anything in the kitchen is fair game, but anything in the pantry or larder you’ll have to check with Francine.”

  They headed back to the narrow hall and beside the Butler’s Pantry was a doorway that led to a different set of stairs. Less grand than the staircase in the Reception Hall, they nevertheless shared the same dark wood and apricot runner. These stairs needed electric lights as there was very limited windowlight. Lamps on L-shaped brackets were attached to the walls with lampshades to soften the light. They headed up the stairs, pausing on the landing on the first floor. Aunty Meredith pointed up the stairs where they continued upwards.

  “Six more bedrooms and three bathrooms up there, but your bedrooms are through here.”

  They opened the door to the first floor and turned right. Three doors led off the corridor in front of them. Behind them, more doors lined the landing. The doors in front of them turned out to have numbers —a 6 and a 7, with the letter B on the third door. They opened room 6 first.

  It was huge—easily half again as big as Marcus’ room back home. It was almost square, with a large window looking out of over the lawns. Everything in the room was blue—the walls, the curtains, the couch covering and bedspread. All different shades and patterns. Definitely a boy’s room, Marcus decided. Apart from the bed and couch there was a wooden dresser and a desk at the window with a giant round mirror on it. A few generic pictures hung in ornate frames on the walls. Marcus walked over to the desk and looked down to the lawns below. From this vantage point he could see that the space in front of the house wasn’t featureless. There was a formal garden laid out immediately in front of the house with a circular fountain in the centre. A wide paved path led down to the fountain and then beyond. It stopped at the edge of the lawns and through the trees beyond he could just make out a lake. In the distance, there was pasture and on the horizon, trees. He realised from the map they’d seen in the library that as far as the eye could see was part of the estate.

  “Is this one bigger than number 7?” asked Zoe.

  “I think that it is” answered Aunty Meredith, frowning slightly.

  “Bags this one then!” claimed Zoe.

  Marcus shrugged and went to see where he’d be staying. Opening the door to number 7, the first thing he noticed was that William had left both of their suitcases there. The second thing he noticed was that this room was both longer and narrower than number 6, so it was hard to see if it was that much smaller. Maybe only just, he decided. The decor was exactly like that in number 6, and he suspected that the pictures on the wall were exactly the same too. He wondered if his uncle had bought a job lot from some factory that churned out knock off prints of watercolour classics. He looked out of the window. It was a little smaller than Zoe’s but fundamentally provided the same view. He turned to his right. Surely, being the end room, there should have been windows on two sides of the room? Apparently not. His room at least did have a built-in closet, rather than a dresser. He took Zoe’s bag out and into her room where she was finishing regaling Uncle Reggie and Aunt Meredith with one of her rambling stories that tended to just sort of peter out.

  “Here’s your bag,” he announced to the room, placing it on the ground near the bed. Smiling in gratitude for Marcus having interrupted Zoe’s story, Uncle Reggie moved towards the door.

  “Grab your togs and I’ll show you where the pools are,” he said. “We’ll wait for you back in the kitchen. If you wanted to freshen up, the bathroom is…”

  “The one with the B on the door,” finished Marcus, smiling.

  Uncle Reggie nodded and he and Aunt Meredith headed back downstairs.

  “Do you need toilet?” he asked Zoe.

  “I’m not a baby,” she frowned, miffed at his choice of words. In all honesty he did baby her, a habit formed by having to look after her a lot and her being five years his junior but looking and acting a lot younger than her ten years.

  “Fine. Do you need to use the toilet?” he elaborated.

  She paused. “Yeah, I do. I’ll meet you downstairs,” she said, already heading towards the bathroom door.

  “OK, but don’t forget your togs,” he reminded her, already heading back to his room to get his own
swimming costume from his suitcase. He didn’t know how long she’d be, so thought he’d go the long way back downstairs and check out the rest of the floor to get his bearings. After digging out his togs, he paused at his door. Should he lock it? The key was in the lock, a thick wooden tag swinging from the loop and a giant 7 burned into the dark stained wood on both sides. What's the chance of the plastic surgery patient being a thief, he thought. Unlikely, unless she was a thief getting plastic surgery to change her appearance because she was on the run. And even then, what would she be able to get from the clothing and toiletries of a fifteen-year-old boy, er, man, from the other side of the world? Realising he was letting the jet lag get to him, Marcus decided to err on the side of caution and locked the door, putting the key in his jeans pocket and started walking down the corridor.

  Going past the door to the stairs, he dawdled, soaking up time. Another B on the left, then 5 on the right directly opposite another B on the left. One last B on the left before the left-hand side of the hallway disappeared into the void overlooking the main staircase. Opposite the staircase were 4 and then 3 and the corridor ended just after the stairway landing with 1 and 2. The large windows in the reception hall did a good job illuminating the hallway at this end of the house, showing the same generic watercolour paintings and the occasional oval mirror on the walls.

  He headed down the master stairs, noting how they didn’t go up any further, only servicing the ground and first floor. He guessed that the staircase closer to his room was the only one that did go up to the top floor and, even though these stairs were much better lit and wider than his, he actually preferred his ones as they went straight from his room to the kitchen. Reaching the bottom, he poked his head into the other rooms which opened off the reception hall. Each had an open door, so he figured it was alright.

  Three doors led off to the south, two to the east and the hallway to the kitchen to the west. The main entrance door was behind him to the north. The middle of the three southward-facing doors led into the Library where Uncle Reggie had shown them the map, so Marcus poked his head into the doorway between the library and the hallway to the kitchen.

  It was a formal dining room, featuring a long table set for six. On one of the lengthwise walls was a huge oil landscape surrounded by a thick golden frame, and opposite that was a fireplace recessed into the wall. At the far end was a window facing the gardens, the curtains pulled back, allowing substantial light to flood the room. A substantial chandelier hung from one of the dark cross beams in the ceiling.

  On the other side of the library from the dining room was the Garden Room. Marcus noticed that just above the door jamb was a wooden plaque with the name of the room. “Handy,” he muttered as he looked into the Garden Room. This was also a long and narrow room, but whereas the dining room had only a small window overlooking the lawns and fountain, the Garden Room had floor to ceiling windows which really did allow a great view of the gardens. The furniture here was almost beachy, with wicker chairs around a coffee table and even a pair of sun loungers. A myriad of plants made the glass windows seem like a temporary and flimsy barrier between the inside and outside.

  Carrying on his counter-clockwise route, Marcus entered the Drawing Room. He figured this must have been renovated at some point in the not too distant past as the ceilings did not feature the dark wood beams and white ceiling boards of the rest of the house, instead being painted plain white. They did have fancy swirling parts at the edges of the ceiling where it joined the walls. The room was filled with numerous comfortable looking couches, each with a reading lamp nearby, angled to shine on whatever was being read on the couch. A grand piano was at the far end of the room, and a grandfather clock stood against one of the walls next to the eastward facing window. Illuminating the room were two sets of windows, the ones on the right looked south, clearly showing the fountain and garden in that direction. The other looked out to the east and he could make out a pool house and a kidney-shaped pool, beyond which was a tennis court. The room was completed by a fireplace on the north wall.

  The final room beckoned, and Marcus completed the circuit by entering the Sitting Room. This room was bathed in darkness as the curtains were pulled across the windows on both the north and east sides. It looked like a fireplace was on the south wall, but there was no flame. A couch in the middle of the room faced it and although the room was too dark to really detect colours, Marcus got the impression that the walls of the room and the couch were both the same shade of custard yellow.

  “Oh, hello,” came a female voice.

  Marcus started, realising someone was sitting in the dark. She was slim, wearing a dressing gown and heavily bandaged around the head. She had a ukulele in her hands and was sitting in an armchair in the corner. Marcus had no idea how tall she was, but her voice was rich and vibrant.

  “Oh! Sorry to interrupt! I was just looking around,” he managed, and quickly made his way back to the kitchen. By the time he got there Zoe had made her way back down with togs in hand and Uncle Reggie and Aunt Meredith led them to the far end of the narrow hallway and outside. Marcus didn’t think to mention meeting the bandaged patient in the Sitting Room.

  The path outside separated the raised vegetable beds on the left from the glasshouses on the right, and the walls of the glasshouses weren’t too high to prevent Marcus and Zoe looking inside at an impressive arrangement of trees and shrubbery.

  “What’s Francine growing at the moment?” asked Uncle Reggie, pausing to peer through the glass.

  Aunty Meredith was a little shorter so stood on tippy toes. “I think she mentioned that she can get avocados to grow in there and there's also some mangos and pineapple. I don’t think the bananas are growing too well, but there's always some oranges and mandarins. I think they call those clementines here.”

  Marcus looked at the assorted lush greenery in the raised beds on the opposite side of the path and wondered if anyone could distinguish between the different types of greenery from just what was growing above ground. He certainly couldn’t.

  Just beyond the glasshouses they came across the entrance to the swimming pool and Uncle Reggie pointed out where they could get changed and where the gym was. The pool itself was enormous, with a vaulted ceiling and a pair of pipes running the length of the ceiling. Against the wall on the side opposite the entrance was a garden of sorts, several cactus plants and spiky-leaved ferns growing in pots in a row, some of them reaching up above the level of the ceiling and making the austere interior a little more friendly.

  “Through there is the entrance to the Equestrian Centre,” pointed Uncle Reggie, Zoe swinging around with laser-like focus. “I’ll have a chat with her this afternoon and see if she’ll let you ride. She might want you to help out with the horses though, in exchange. Would that be ok?”

  Marcus thought Zoe might have a stroke. She managed a nod, grinning maniacally.

  “OK, so that's the indoor pool, but we’ve also got an outdoor pool. Come this way!” He led the way back past the gardens towards the house. Instead of taking them back inside, he took them through the formal garden with the fountain and around past the whole southern-facing part of the house to the pool house and the kidney-shaped pool that Marcus had seen from his explorations. Aunty Meredith ducked back into the house as they passed the door to the kitchen and rejoined them soon after with a pair of laptops under her arm.

  Uncle Reggie pointed out the pool house. “So, you can get changed in there and there are also some tennis racquets and tennis balls for the tennis courts if you want to have a knock around. I warn you; I will not take mercy on you if we play tennis! If we get hungry, the phone on the wall has a direct connection to the kitchen, and the water isn’t too cold when the sun’s out like this. Any time after about October it gets a little too cold for my liking, but I usually use the indoor pool anyway because it's just a little bit longer so you swim further.”

  “Are you or Aunty Meredith going to swim with us?”


  “I’m afraid we both have a bit of work to do but we’ll be just here on the loungers. I know that Francine will need a hand with dinner and…”

  “And the hor…” started Zoe

  “And I need to find out about the horses,” agreed Uncle Reggie. “So plenty to do!”

  They’d managed to fight through jet lag by staying up all day, playing in the pool first before getting dressed and trying out the tennis court. They’d taken Uncle Reggie’s warning to heart and decided to just play tennis between themselves instead of involving the adults. There was a significant difference in skill between Marcus and Zoe which had led to a brief but spirited change in game from a variant of tennis to a variant of dodgeball. Afterwards they’d been quite worn out and had made their way back up to the house for some lunch.

  They didn’t have to raid the fridge after all, as Francine was waiting with plates of ploughman’s lunches—the fresh bread they’d seen her taking out of the oven, topped with slices of cheese, ham and a slathering of relish. After lunch, Uncle Reggie and Aunt Meredith had headed back to their cottage to do some work and so Zoe and Marcus watched a movie in the Drawing Room, Francine providing truffle oil popcorn. After the movie Francine had kept them busy helping make dinner and before they knew it Uncle Reggie and Aunt Meredith had returned from their cottage and they all reconvened in the library. Between the four of them they decided that they’d take a day trip into London the next day, giving ample opportunity to revisit in case they missed anything the first time. They listed all of the things that they wanted to see, and Uncle Reggie worked out the route between all of them. The only thing they wouldn’t be able to do was check out the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, the ceremony occurring well after they planned to pass by that location. Aunt Meredith promised that they’d be able to go back on a different day to see it. She also had some good news about the horse riding, telling Zoe that if she was keen on riding, the lady who ran the Equestrian Centre would be happy to swap rides for help mucking out the stables and general dogsbody work. Marcus didn’t say anything but he wondered if that arrangement would fall foul of any child labour laws. Zoe looked happy at the arrangement, and Marcus supposed that if she came back from the first day unhappy, then she wouldn’t have to go back. It wasn’t like she was going up the chimneys or down the mines. The thought of Zoe covered in soot from either activity struck him as funny and he let out a snort. They all looked at him and to distract them he got to his feet.