The Land of Roar. Jenny McLachlan
to its mouth. ‘Sorry, Prosecco? You think Rose’s perfume smells like cat poo after it’s been in the sun? OK, I’ll pass it on.’
Now it’s Rose’s turn. She rams her ear against his mouth. ‘Uh-huh, yep, got it.’ She looks up. ‘What Prosecco actually said was that it’s you who smells like cat poo after it’s been in the sun. You got it wrong because, unlike me, you don’t speak fluent Moonlight Stallion.’
Moonlight Stallion. Ha! I knew Rose was still into Prosecco! He used to pop up in loads of our games and I’m sure she was always sitting on him when we played Roar.
Roar. In a flash it’s back, and an image darts into my mind of Rose sitting high on Prosecco, bossing me around and translating his insults for me.
Prosecco rocks forwards and again I feel like he’s looking at me. I tug him towards the window by his tail, suddenly desperate to get away from his sparkly staring eyeballs. ‘He still wants to fly,’ I say. ‘He said so.’
Rose’s hands grab the tail. ‘I’d let go of that if I were you.’
‘Why?’
Her voice drops to a dramatic whisper. ‘Because since you last saw Prosecco his tail has become poisonous and every single strand stings like a bee. The pain is intense, Arthur, and it will shoot through you like a thousand needles burrowing into your skin!’
‘So? You’re holding the tail too!’
She shoves her face close to mine, eyes shining, and whispers, ‘The poison only affects BOYS!’
A chuckle makes us look up. Grandad is standing in the doorway with a cup of coffee. ‘It’s so wonderful to see you two playing again. Nothing could make me happier.’
‘We’re not playing, Grandad.’ Rose lets go of Prosecco’s tail. ‘We’re fighting. Big difference.’
‘Sounded a bit like playing to me,’ he says, then he sits on the sofa, props his feet on a suitcase and says, ‘Well, get on with it. This attic won’t clear itself out.’
It’s fun having Grandad in the attic. He plays tunes on the keyboard and seems excited by everything we find.
Grandad and Nani grew up in Mauritius, and when I discover something I think came from there I show it to him: an empty bottle of Labourdonnais rum, one of Nani’s old saris, a tin that once contained Bois Cheri tea.
‘I can smell home,’ says Grandad, sticking his nose in the tin and breathing deeply.
All this nostalgia makes Grandad move on to singing sea shanties in French, and Rose and I fall quiet as his deep voice fills the room. We’ve only visited Mauritius once, when we were little, and I can hardly remember it. I can hardly remember Nani either. She died when we were three. Rose and I start to put anything that might have belonged to Nani on the sofa next to Grandad. He glances down at the beads and scarves and boxes, but he doesn’t stop singing until Rose pulls a half-deflated dinghy into the middle of the room.
It’s not the dinghy that interests him, but something hidden behind it.
He disappears into the shadows of the eaves and comes back dragging a camp bed. ‘Remember this old thing?’ he asks.
I catch my breath. It’s an ancient camp bed, one of those ones on wheels that folds in the middle, like a table-tennis table. It has a mouldy-looking orange mattress, rusty springs and a plastic headboard . . . It’s rubbish, but just looking at it makes my heart beat fast because Rose and I loved playing with it. We kept it closed, and the folded mattress made a damp, dark tunnel which we would dare each other to crawl through. I can clearly remember the spine-tingling feeling I got when I pushed my head inside and forced myself to go into the darkness.
‘Arthur weed in that,’ says Rose.
‘I did not! I spilled a Fruit Shoot in there.’
‘Whatever,’ she says with an infuriating smile.
Grandad runs his hand through the dust on the headboard. ‘Well, one of you definitely did something to it. Look at this!’
I see some words are scratched into the plastic headboard.
‘“Enter here for the Land of Roar”,’ I read, although what it actually says is,
I slip my hand in my pocket and touch the corner of the map.
‘What’s the Land of Roar?’ asks Grandad.
‘Just some game we used to play,’ says Rose.
Suddenly I know exactly why we scratched those words on to the headboard. ‘This was how we got there,’ I say. ‘We’d crawl into the bed, shout, “Hear me roar”, and when we came out the other side we’d be in Roar!’
Rose groans. ‘We’d be in the attic, Arthur.’
‘I know,’ I say quickly. ‘I mean, it’s how the game always began.’
Grandad pats the bed. ‘Well, how about it, twins? Fancy crawling through the bed and having one last adventure in Roar?’
Rose looks at him in horror. ‘Grandad, we haven’t played games like that for years. Plus I’m not going anywhere near that stinky old wee mattress.’ She gives the bed a shake. ‘It’s heavy. Do you want me to help you get it downstairs so we can dump it at the tip?’
‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘We’re saving the big stuff for the end. Right, Grandad?’
He nods. ‘But I have seen one big thing we can get rid of.’ He picks up the dinghy and carries it towards the window. ‘Let’s see how far this baby can fly!’
He forces it halfway out then gives it a massive shove. Rose and I get to the window just in time to see the dinghy float over the garden wall and land on the Baileys’ conservatory.
‘Oh dear,’ says Grandad. ‘I suppose I’d better get it back.’
‘I’ll go,’ cries Rose, dashing out of the attic.
Soon I see Rose run outside, climb on the wheelie bin and scramble into next door’s garden. Mazen is on her trampoline; she acknowledges Rose’s presence by shrieking, ‘What are you wearing?’ then doing a backflip.
‘Well, Arthur?’ Grandad is watching me. ‘Are you up for taking one last trip to Roar?’
Honestly? I’d give anything to play Roar with Rose again. Just me and her, and a load of dragons and unicorns and no thoughts of starting secondary school. But it’s impossible. I’m too old and I couldn’t do it without her. The rush of excitement that I felt when I saw the bed has gone and in its place is a heavy lump of disappointment. ‘No thanks, Grandad. Rose is right. We don’t play games like that any more.’
Outside, we can hear Rose and Mazen talking, then the squeak of trampoline springs.
‘Who said anything about playing a game?’ Grandad grins then turns away. ‘Come on. I saw a bag of tennis balls earlier. Let’s see if we can chuck them as far as Mazen’s trampoline.’
By the end of the day the attic is empty.
Well, almost. The camp bed is sitting in the middle of the room, watched over by Prosecco, but everything else has gone: the dressing-up clothes, the plastic weapons, the Playmobil, the cuddly toys. Even the Quality Street tin