By Julie Myerson, FT.com site
Published: Feb 23, 2007
Even to us back then with our wild hearts and even wilder imaginations, it seemed a bit too amazing to be true. But if you looked carefully - if you stood under the spreading cedars on those darkening lawns and stared up at the house - there was no doubt about it. There were two more windows on the outside than on the inside. Absolutely definitely.
We'd walked right round the outside of the house counting all the windows. Then we'd gone inside and run from bedroom to bedroom, landing to landing, checking. And the numbers didn't tally! Which meant there could only be one wonderfully chilling conclusion. Somewhere in that house there was a secret room. A room that no one ever went in. A room that no one wanted anyone to know was there.
At least this was what Tracy encouraged us to believe late on that summer evening - dusk falling fast, bats swooping so low you could swipe at them with a fishing net - when we did our final count.
"Told you! " she said, face hot with triumph.
We stared at her, all of us, six small girls and an even smaller boy, on holiday.
"Hey, maybe they bricked someone up in there, " Tracy suggested, her mouth so close I could catch the pink elastic of bubblegum on her breath.
"Bricked who up? " I wondered. I'd never heard of someone being bricked up. I struggled to picture it. Was it like being stood up?
Tracy rolled her eyes. "A nun of course! "
A nun. Of course. Tracy knew so much stuff we didn't know. Like what a pro was ( "A professional? " I offered. "No, stupid, a prostitute! ") and how to pull your eyelashes out one by one, or throw a dart, or turn a proper cartwheel without letting your legs flop over.
Tracy knew everything. She had Scholl sandals and a Robertson's Gollywog brooch. She was an annual treat. We only ever saw her in August as her parents ran the hotel in the big house in Cornwall where the windows didn't match up. She was older than us - long-haired, long-limbed, brave.
And thick.
Thick?
"As two short planks, " our father said, launching the ash off his cigarella with one finger-flick.
"Why is she? How do you know she is? "
"It's just obvious. " He lit another cigarella off the one he was finishing. He smoked them instead of cigarettes because they were better for you. Everyone knew that everything brown was better for you. Tracy's legs were long and brown from being by the seaside all year long. I wanted legs like that.
But how could someone who knew so much general knowledge (something our father rated highly) be thick? I decided I didn't want to know any more about what he thought about Tracy. We liked her and that was all that mattered. We loved her. Every year we worried she would say she was too old to play with us but every year - after a couple of days of coolly pretending she'd forgotten who we were - she'd suddenly suggest some brilliant game and we'd be off.
We formed a club. An urgent club. We called ourselves The Secret Eight. We made badges. We had a password. Our mission? To solve the mystery of the extra windows and find the secret room! (And release the poor nun, I added to myself.)
In the afternoons when everyone was at the beach and the house throbbed with silence, I said I had a tummy ache and needed to lie down. Then Tracy and I crept around, creaking over carpeted floors, up and down stairs, giggling silently. Once, we came across a maid cleaning the bathroom, singing loudly to herself. Then a man came out of one of the bedrooms and asked us crossly where our parents were. "My parents own this place, " Tracy snapped and that shut him up.
But it was no good. We found nothing. No secret room.
Finally we gave up and lay on the floor of Tracy's attic room eating boiled sweets and talking about boys. Tracy said she had a boyfriend, or was getting one soon anyway. She also had copies of Jackie magazine. I asked her what "bricking up " was.
"You know! " she said. "When they put you in a room and instead of the door they put bricks so you can never get out. "
I flinched. "Would you suffocate? "
"I don't know which would happen first - starving or suffocating. "
I thought about this and shivered.
"But why would they brick up a nun? " I asked her because I suddenly didn't get it at all.
Tracy shrugged. "Why d'you think? Because she wasn't a virgin any more of course. Do you know what a virgin is? "
I nodded and made a mental note to find out.
"Tracy's not thick, " I told my father later over a dinner of corned beef salad and peach melba. "She knows so many things. "
"I wouldn't count on it, " my father said through a mouthful of potato mayonnaise. "She'll be an unmarried mother at the rate she's going. "
The following summer Tracy didn't want to play any more. And when I asked her if she'd found out any more about the secret room she looked at me as if I was mad. The summer after that, they said she was living in Falmouth and waitressing. And many years after that, I heard she got married, got divorced, had a child. Though in what exact order I'm not quite sure.
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