The Finding of Freddie Perkins Read online

  ‘…for nothing is lost that can not be

  found again if sought.’

  (Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene)

  Written for, and dedicated to, Jilly Bean

  for Christmas 2010 – and for so many reasons.

  Contents

  1 Arriving nowhere slow

  2 Then and now

  3 Granny P speaks

  4 Up and above

  5 Some lovely finds

  6 On the table

  7 Out of the attic and into the house

  8 The silence moves in again

  9 The impossible might just be possible

  10 In writing

  11 Scientific observations

  12 Find and seek

  13 Seeing the full picture

  14 More Fynd studies

  15 Finding and keeping

  About the Author

  1

  Arriving nowhere slow

  It took Freddie Perkins exactly thirty-seven seconds to decide he hated Willow Beck. And another thirteen until he was sure, once and for all, that Granny P was as old, dusty and boring as her house was.

  You might think this hasty or rash, but Freddie had had a lot of time to plan, and to consider what his reaction was going to be. He had formed it during all the endless thinking time he had had over the four months when he was packing up his room. He had perfected it whilst watching other children look at his awesome view over the London sky-scape. And he had confirmed it over and over again during what must surely have been a hundred-hour journey up endless motorways, with the red removal lorry following them and his mostly-silent dad driving next to him – all the way from Westgate Square Gardens to wherever it was in the middle of nowhere they were now.

  * * *

  It had been simply the worst year in history. And Freddie reckoned Dad agreed – even though he didn’t say so.

  It had started with the accident. That bleak January morning when the car was slower than ever to start and the brakes made that nasty squeaking sound that Mum always said was like a chipmunk stuck in a washing machine. It had been a freezing day, where playtime felt like punishment on the frozen playground and lessons seemed to go on forever, and then suddenly Freddie was pulled out of class and he felt joy in a rush at the freedom and then – a sickening despair when he saw the expression on Mr Grimthorpe’s face.

  There had been a phone call, apparently, and Dad was coming to fetch him to explain. At least, that was what Freddie thought he remembered Mr Grimthorpe saying. But it was difficult to recall the exact events through the fog that still seemed to surround his memory of that afternoon, and the weeks that followed. There had been a loud rushing like sea in his ears that started almost as soon as his headmaster started speaking, and did not stop until well after the polite-but-embarrassed conversations over dry sandwiches that stuck in his throat.

  It was then, when he felt able to hear clearly again, that Freddie noticed the silence.

  Mum had gone and in her place was silence.

  But the silence was bigger even than the hole Mum had left behind. It seemed to take Dad’s place too. He was still there, of course. But not as there as the silence was. It was in every room. Every conversation. It was the deafening sound of what wasn’t said; a thunderous roar that shouted, over and over again, Nothing you say will ever make things better now.

  Gradually the silence took over so much of Westgate Square Gardens that the only part of it where there was any air left to breathe was his room. He and Mum had spent hours up there last winter, carefully painting the famous London buildings you could see, if you stood on tiptoe to the right of the window, onto the back wall in mirror image. Though Mum doesn’t need to stand on tiptoe of course, Freddie thought.

  Didn’t need.

  He mentally corrected himself. Again.

  Didn’t need. She was tall. She used to be tall. No, it was no good. It still didn’t sound right.

  After school every night that winter, Mum and Freddie had sat at the kitchen table, chatting and laughing over steaming hot chocolate with sweets as floaters and extra sprinkles. And then they would go upstairs, find another building, and work out how to paint it shape by shape. Domes were semi-circles, and towers combined rectangles and triangles. Freddie’s mum painted beautiful pictures. But better still, she knew just how to help him to see things like she did – shapes, colours and ideas.

  They made up stories together, too. Amazing ones that made you believe the impossible was true. It all seemed so easy with Mum. But now he couldn’t see any of it any more.

  And so he sat in his attic bedroom, where the silence didn’t dare come. And he looked at the wall. And he stood on tiptoe and stared out of the window, straining to see anything else to add to the wall. But there was never anything of course – because they had found everything last winter. And even if there had been something new, he wouldn’t have been able to paint it now anyway. So it was pointless.

  * * *

  Freddie’s dad had stopped coming up to his room so often from quite soon after the accident. When he did come, he seemed to bring the silence with him anyway – so Freddie didn’t much mind that they didn’t play computer games together any more, or shoot hoops over the waste bin, or have tickle fights. It was better to be on his own if it meant the silence stayed away.

  To begin with, they had both tried to be out of the house as much as possible so they could escape it. And during those first few horrible weeks, when everyone thought it would be best if there was no school for him and no work for Dad, they had tried to find their old easy rhythm of chatter at all their favourite Saturday afternoon haunts.

  But it seemed like everywhere they went together, the silence came too. It would sit between them at the cinema, no matter how funny the film had looked from the trailer; or sidle up to them in the queue for ice-cream at Scoops. It would rudely interrupt any excitement at a new exhibition at the Science Museum and it even seemed to muscle in on a kick-around in the park.

  It seemed like it wanted to be there whenever and wherever Freddie and his dad were together. And eventually, if Freddie was honest, he started to be relieved when he sensed it approaching. It had become more familiar to him now than the polite small talk they made, or the sickening breathless feeling that came on him suddenly whenever his dad tried to start a conversation about ‘things that mattered’.

  So Freddie was almost pleased when the normal routine of school and work started again, and he got to stay in his room more, and to shut the door on it all.

  After that, Freddie didn’t know where his dad went to get away from the silence, because he didn’t say, but it was definitely out. And it was definitely alone.

  * * *

  After a few short months that seemed more like an eternity, Dad decided that Westgate Square Gardens was too crowded for them. That was how it felt, anyway.

  Other people said yes, of course they should move, because there was ‘too much space’ – it was such a big house for them to rattle around in, just the two of them.

  And in a way they were right, Freddie supposed. After all, no one was using the studio any more, or the office. And there were no more dinner parties with his mum rushing around stressed beforehand, but then bubbling over with sparkling laughter that drifted up the stairs all evening.

  Freddie knew what Dad meant, though. It was too crowded. There was all the space the silence took up, of course. But Dad said it was the memories that finally squeezed them out of the house.

  Freddie thought it wasn’t memories either, exactly. Instead, it was almost as if Mum needed more space now. Neither of them dared to put away anything she had left out anywhere, or settle down with the TV or a book in a
ny of the rooms where she had done those things.

  So Freddie agreed with his dad. The unspoken truth was acknowledged between them. They couldn’t go on with their lives at Westgate Square Gardens without her. And as they were without her – horribly without her – they would have to leave.

  Or at least Freddie had thought he agreed… until he knew the solution Dad had in mind.

  * * *

  The last weeks at Westgate Square Gardens became the last weeks in London. So there had to be a last week at school; a last day in the playground; and a last play round at Robbie’s house. Then there was a last after-school hang out at Mrs Cook’s next door while Dad worked late in the City for the last time, and a last stroke of her dog Fudge.

  The lasts went on and on – endless lists of them that became so long Freddie simply couldn’t hold them all in his head any more.

  The lasts were bad. But this was worse.

  They were here.

  Miles and miles away from London – nowhere. Literally right in the middle of it. In a totally different country. At Willow Beck. With Granny P, who they never used to see much because she lived so far away, and was too old to make the journey down from Scotland often.

  Granny P who wasn’t at all like Grammie.

  Grammie was chatty and funny and had dimples just like Mum’s. She lived in Brighton, and Mum and Freddie used to catch the train to see her all the time until the worst year in history started.

  Grammie had come to London on that horrible polite Thursday of course, and made all the sandwiches whilst Dad and he just sat there waiting for it to be over.

  Freddie had been to stay in her bright beach house during the Easter holidays and half terms too. Even though it had felt strange without Mum, Grammie had been just the same, and there was no silence in any of her rooms. Each time, Freddie came back desperate to see Dad, imagining somehow that he would now be who he was before the accident. But each time he wasn’t, and so Freddie would find himself wishing he could have stayed with Grammie for longer.

  Granny P was quiet and spoke in such a whisper that she made it even harder for you to understand her strange accent. And she was definitely not funny. She had no dimples – in fact she wasn’t at all the same shape as Grammie, who was like a giant marshmallow, and gave you such fiercely wonderful hugs that you were torn between never wanting them to end and being desperate to get your breath back.

  Granny P was skinny, bony and frail. She looked like she was made of wrinkly, folded paper that would crumble into a thousand tiny pieces if she ever chose to give you more than her customary brief, delicate embrace. She wore old person clothes, too. Flowery dresses, pastel cardigans, and starchy, tweedy suits. Not like Grammie’s flowing, colourful clothes or sparkly, bright jewellery.

  And she had never bounded up to Freddie’s room to play computer games, look at his skyline mural, or shoot hoops, like Mum, Dad and Grammie. Instead she sat quietly on Mum’s favourite paisley chair, drinking tea and talking in her strange quiet tones to Mum – who seemed bizarrely riveted by every word she uttered between her tiny, fairy-like sips.

  And so the thought Freddie had had, or rather the thousands of thoughts he had had over and over again, as they travelled up endless motorways to live with her at Willow Beck, had understandably been: ‘This is unquestionably, undoubtedly, going to be the most perfectly horrible ending possible to the worst year in history.’

  * * *

  In the fifty seconds since Dad had parked their car outside Willow Beck, got out, rung the doorbell, and been greeted by Granny P in her usual fragile way, Freddie had been able to swiftly conclude that all his thorough and careful predictions over the last few months had been right.

  Willow Beck was a large, imposing building, rising up almost as if it had grown itself out of the stones already there around it. The house was grey, and surrounded by equally grey, craggy rocks that were its only company on top of the steep hill it stood on. Freddie quickly counted the windows stacked up the far left hand side of the building through the window of the car where he still sat. There were four… then across, five – one for each gable – and every one was dark and lifeless-looking.

  The door was huge and wooden, and Granny P, standing in the massive chasm left by its opening, looked comically dwarf-like. She was half in shadow because the light from the hall behind her was dim, making almost no impression on the dusky half-light surrounding the house.

  Freddie sighed, swallowed tears in his now expert fashion, and bravely pulled the handle back just as Dad looked towards the car as if to gesture it was time for him to come. Freddie got out, his legs heavy and reluctant on the stone driveway, and walked slowly to the front door. His dad put an arm round him and together they followed Granny P into Willow Beck, the huge oak door slamming shut behind them with depressing finality.

  2

  Then and now

  It seemed like weeks ago, but actually when Freddie counted carefully it was only last Tuesday that they had arrived at Willow Beck.

  Time went slowly here. As slow as the solemn grandfather clock in the gloomy hall whose pendulum seemed to limp as it swung to and fro, to and fro in its monotonous dirge; as slow as Granny P climbing the stairs carefully and creakily one at a time – in fact, sometimes Freddie wasn’t sure whether it was the stairs that were creaking, or Granny P herself.

  Freddie decided to spend this rainy Saturday morning making a list in his head, reciting everything that was different, and horrid, about Willow Beck compared to Westgate Square Gardens – in the old days before the silence, that was.

  His mind drew up two columns of opposites. It was dark, not light; cold, not warm; and full of old, dark things rather than bright colours. The chairs were hard, upright and dark, not all sinky-in-to and cushy like the big squidgy ones in the snug at home. Or like that massive one in Mum and Dad’s room which he used to fall asleep in when he insisted on ‘staying up’ to watch cartoons when he was ill, or lonely, or a bit frightened after a bad dream.

  There was nothing to do here, no friends nearby to see, and nowhere to go. And sometimes, even though he was very rarely frightened in normal circumstances, Freddie had to admit that he found the wind circling the house at night as terrifying as the cry of someone in pain.

  In fact, he had to remind himself that it was just the wind. Night after night, tense and breathless, he would edge along the corridor to Dad’s room and pound on the door. But Dad seemed to fall asleep before he did now, and so Freddie would lie next to him – comforted enough not to be frightened, but still lonely, listening to the wind moan on and on around Willow Beck.

  * * *

  The worst thing about life here was how positively, adamantly, insistently and totally convinced his dad was that Freddie was going to love Willow Beck just as soon as he got used to it. It was like an endless repetition of the same play that they performed every day at some point between half two and seven o’clock that whole first week. Every day it was the same – the only thing that changed was how long Dad would wait before commenting on his ‘moping’.

  He would urge Freddie to ‘just come on’, assure him that he knew how tough it was leaving all his friends and blah blah blah; insist that he was sure Freddie would love it here if he just gave it a chance.

  Dad droned on and on about how he had always wished that Granny and Grandpa P had had this house when he was growing up. And how, when he had come for tea with Great Granny and Grandpa McCormack, who had lived here when he was young, he had spent the whole time wishing he would just be allowed out of the drawing room to explore and explore. And then of course he would start going on about all that space outside. And… blah blah blah.

  Apparently Freddie would ‘see’; he would ‘come around’.

  But Freddie didn’t see and was certain he wouldn’t come around. He had heard this mantra so many times now, right from the first mention of moving to Willow Beck, and he remained completely unconvinced. His dad’s memories and descriptions of the h
ouse, which his parents had inherited from Great-Granny and -Grandpa McC whilst he was at university, didn’t seem to match the house Freddie knew at all.

  His dad painted a picture of mystery, magic and excitement, as if behind every heavy oak door was a whole world of ancient treasure maps, secret passages and false panels.

  But Willow Beck was not one of those houses you read about in stories – there was nothing magical about it. And certainly nothing mysterious, unless you counted why anyone would want to live there in the first place. Or why on earth they would want to collect and keep such a boring, dusty array of dark old wooden furniture and faded ugly knick-knacks.

  And all that space outside that Dad seemed so excited about was grey, wild and cold. Even in July! Besides, what could Freddie possibly do with the space? There was no playground or hoop, and the steep slope of the garden, down seven or eight different levels of hill to the rough, gorsy fields below, was no good for kicking around his football.

  Freddie concluded there were two options: either Willow Beck was totally different then, or something was seriously wrong with his dad’s memory. Perhaps life in Lochside village had simply been so boring that even a trip to Willow Beck had seemed exciting.

  But Freddie didn’t see how that could have been possible, even then. Perhaps Dad was just trying to trick him into liking the house. Perhaps he thought Freddie would stop complaining about living there if he believed it was a house of secrets.

  Well, Freddie was way too smart to fall for that. He wasn’t going to explore the house’s every corner hoping to find hidden passages, secret turrets and magical treasures. He wasn’t that kind of kid.

  Not any more.

  He knew now that none of that stuff was real – least of all at Willow Beck. Freddie wasn’t going to play along with some fairytale scheme to make Dad think he was happy and excited, however silent and sad Dad was these days.

  Freddie didn’t even want to try to hide the fact that he was desperately remembering then: Westgate Square Gardens on any day of the week, with hot chocolate, and painting – and Mum.