Page 52 of Rock Paper Scissors
She stared at the white rabbits that seemed to cover every surface. The wallpaper was covered in a shimmery pattern of them, the roman blinds were stitched with a leaping variety, there were matching big ears and bobtails sewn onto the window seat cushions, there was even a rabbit in one of the stained-glass windows.
Then she noticed the cage in the corner of the room. Big enoughto hold a small child.Thatwas something she’d never seen before, and it wasn’t empty.
“You have a rabbit for a pet?” Robin asked, staring at the creature.
“More of a companion really. I’m rather fond of white rabbits.”
“I noticed,” she replied, taking in the room again. “Does it have a name?”
He smiled. “Shedoes. I called her Robin.”
Robin didn’t know what to make of that. “Why?”
His smile faded. “She reminded me of you.”
Henry shuffled over to the chair at his desk and sat down.
“I don’t know how much time we have, so best not to waste it. I’d like to show you where my will is kept. Everything is arranged, I just need someone to push the button so to speak, when the time comes. There are plans written down for what I would like to happen to me. I want to be cremated, but everything you need to know is in the folder. I’m halfway through my latest novel, I won’t be able to finish it now. My agent will look after almost everything book-shaped when the time comes. But there might be some decisions about my literary estate that I would prefer…” He looked at her, his big blue eyes pleading as though waiting for Robin to say something. When she didn’t, he seemed to give in, gently picking up his weary thoughts almost from where he had left them. “You must do whatever you think is right. That’s all any of us can do in the end. I promise I tried to. There are a couple of other email addresses you should probably have—people who need to know that I’m dead before they read it in the newspapers—why don’t I scribble them down now while I remember.”
Robin watched as he took a laptop from the desk drawer. Henry’s face stretched into something resembling a smile when he saw the expression on hers, the plentiful lines and creases on his skin doubling in number.
“I know, I know. Everyone thinks I don’t understand how to use modern technology, but I’m old, not senile. I quite like that they thinkI’m so ancient that I write the novels with a feather quill and a pot of ink, but this little laptop saves me a lot of time. It’s much easier to edit for starters. I use the typewriter for the final version to send to my agent—to maintain the illusion of the person they think that I am—but I use a computer for all other drafts. I draw the line at mobile phones though—those things cause cancer, you mark my words.”
He typed the password into the laptop using just his index finger, and very slowly, so she saw what it was without really meaning to: Robin. The knowledge that he used her name for his passwords as well as his pet made her feel an overwhelming sense of bewilderment and guilt. She didn’t know what to say so—once again—said nothing. He opened up his email account using the same password, and it made her want to cry. She knew him well enough to know that he wanted to live—and write—forever. But all the money in the world cannot buy more time.
“Probably stuff and nonsense, it normally is,” Henry said, turning his attention to some unopened post on the desk. He took a silver letter opener, which looked heavy in his frail hand, and sliced between the folds of the top envelope. His fingers shook a little as he removed what was inside: a letter from his agent. Robin read it over his shoulder, and saw how the old man beamed when he learned that his latest novel was aNew York Timesbestseller.
“Isn’t that something?” he said, looking much more like his old self, the one she remembered. “I didn’t know when I was writing it, but that was the last book I’ll ever publish. It means the world to me that my readers liked it.”
“Well, their opinions always mattered most,” Robin said, and his face crumpled. “I mean, congratulations,” she added, because what else could she say to a dying man? She looked at the laptop again. “Your agent still writes you letters and sends them in the post?”
“Yes.”
“He doesn’t know that you have email?”
Henry smiled. “There are a lot of things my agent doesn’t know about me.”
An unspoken conversation took place between them, a rare moment of understanding. Then they reset themselves and it was gone.
“There is some champagne in the crypt,” he said. “Go and get us a bottle, will you? Have one drink with me to celebrate my last bestseller? Then I promise I’ll tell you everything else you need to know. I locked the trapdoor—even I get the heebie-jeebies sometimes.”
“But all those stories about bodies being found in the crypt, and witches, and ghosts…youmade all that up to keep people away from here.”
He grinned. “Yes, all just a figment of my dark and twisted imagination. But it worked, didn’t it! The only thing the builders found down in the crypt when we restored the place, was damp. I like peace and quiet and privacy. I don’t want people bothering me, but sometimes I scare myself. I spent so many years inside those stories, that the world I made up felt more real to me than the one I lived in.” His blue eyes watered, and Robin could tell that his mind had wandered somewhere far away. But then he blinked and was back. “The key for the padlock on the trapdoor is in one of the kitchen drawers… I forget which.”
Robin hesitated, but then did as he asked. The first thing she saw when she walked into the larder was the giant freezer, then she noticed all the tools lined up on the wall, including all the woodwork chisels and stone masonry tools neatly arranged according to size. The axe frightened her just as much then as it always had. For years, Henry had enjoyed carving things out of wood and stone, he said it was a bit like carving fiction from real life. It just required patience, imagination, and a steady hand. Every summer, he would chop down an old tree that was blocking his view of the loch with that axe, then carefully carve an animal sculpture into the remaining stump. Owls and rabbits were his favorites. All with spooky, oversized eyes, a bit like his own.
The trapdoor really was locked, and it took her forever to find the key. The smell of damp as she walked down the stone stepsreminded her of so many things that she would rather have forgotten. But there were no ghosts in the crypt—at least not that variety and not that day—only alcohol. By the time she returned to the study holding a dusty champagne bottle, she was surprised to find Henry still staring at the fragile clipping of theNew York Timesbestseller list. His agent had circled his book in red. It was number one.
Robin poured two glasses and held one out for the old man to take, but he didn’t. When she looked a bit closer, she could see that he wasn’t moving and his blue eyes hadn’t blinked for some time. She felt for a pulse but there wasn’t one. On the desk, she noticed some items that hadn’t been there before: an empty bottle of pills, a list of instructions, and a will. She drank the glass of champagne that was in her hand. Not in celebration, but because she required alcohol. At least he died happy.
Robin buried Henry that night, scared that someone might see if she waited for the sun to come up. She wrapped his body in an old bedsheet along with some of his favorite books, then dragged him out of the chapel. In his will, he had asked to be cremated, but having a cemetery right outside, and a shovel, had proved to be very convenient. Albeit hard work. There were other instructions Robin chose to ignore, too. Like telling anyone at all that Henry had died. The following morning, she ordered a very nice-looking headstone online using Henry’s bank account details, and when it arrived, she engraved it herself using Henry’s tools. He had a staggering amount of money—more than she’d imagined—but Robin never spent a penny of it on herself. Despite it being clear in his will that the author had left her a considerable sum. The only time she ever used his bank card again, was to buy props for the visitors, because that was forthem, not her. Two days after Henry died, she sacked his cleaner, knowing that nobody else ever came to visit the recluse. Even the Blackwater Inn had closed down years earlier, thanks to Henry. He would be as alone in death as he chose to be in life.
When Robin found Henry’s work in progress on his laptop, she read it out of curiosity more than anything else. It was anothertypically dark and twisty Henry Winter novel. She hadn’t realized that she was holding her breath during a particularly frightening scene, until the rabbit made an unexpected sound in its cage and made her jump. Robin didn’t like her namesake being locked up. She carried the enormous white rabbit outside the chapel, and when it didn’t run away, she closed the doors behind it, hoping that she would never see it again. But it didn’t budge. When she carried it farther away, closer to the long grass and the loch, it just came back, sitting outside those huge gothic doors as though waiting to be let in. She didn’t understand back then, but not everyone wants to be set free.
BRONZE
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