After breakfast, Sally disappeared upstairs with a few slices of orange to feed to the moth that had appeared in her room last night.  She’d spent the whole meal asking Rube and Jeanette what moths ate and how to treat their injuries, and neither of them had had the heart to tell her that moths only had a life expectancy of about a fortnight.   Rube waited a minute or two, listening out for a sudden cry of grief upstairs.  When she didn’t hear one, she assumed that the moth was OK for now, and went for a walk out front.

Uncle Colwyn still wasn’t here.

Rube climbed down off the veranda and looked out at the gardens at the foot of the hill.  Those little white walls really were everywhere, forming twisting paths that seemed to begin and end at random.  She wondered who’d designed it that way in the first place, and what their reasoning behind it had been.  Maybe there was a pattern she hadn’t seen yet.

There was a noise behind her, and Rube turned round to see Jeanette on the front steps.  “Sally’s still upstairs,” she said, putting her hands on her hips, “So, tell me what you’re not telling her.”

Rube’s first instinct was to say something like, What do you mean?, but that would probably just have made Jeanette angry.  Rube knew exactly what she meant, and they both knew it.

“Come on,” said Rube, gesturing to the path in front of them, “Let’s go for a walk.”

Jeanette got the hint, and followed Rube a little way down the hill.  It was funny- you ended up following the routes picked out by those little white walls whether you meant to or not.  After a minute or two, Rube said, “Mum’s been getting phone calls from Dad again.”

“Ah,” said Jeanette, “I thought it would be something like that.”

Just breathing made Rube feel as if she was lifting a huge weight.  “I don’t know what he said, but I’m pretty sure she was crying one night last week.  I came downstairs to get some paracetamol, and her eyes were all pink.”

Jeanette frowned.  “But she knows he’s all talk, right?  Remember when he kept threatening to go to court and get custody of all of us?  But then when I say I might actually want to move in with him for a bit, suddenly he disappears for six months and never mentions it again.”

“He’s not always just talk,” said Rube, remembering the time he’d got drunk and stood outside their house for two hours, yelling things, until Mum had had to call the police.  “Besides, talk can be upsetting enough on its own.  You know- sticks and stones.”

“I’m pretty sure that means the exact opposite of…”  Jeanette broke off and looked around.  “Have we gone over to the opposite side of the hill?  I don’t recognise any of this.”

Rube shrugged.  She couldn’t tell one part of the gardens from another yet.  They were gorgeous, she would never deny that, but they weren’t her top priority at the moment.

They walked on a little further.  “How scared is she?” asked Jeanette.

Rube sighed.  “Scared enough to send us away.  Not scared enough to come with us.”

“Well, she had work.”

“I know.  But if…”

And then they saw the staircase.  It came into view as they turned a corner, long and white and stretching up into the clouds.

“What the hell is that?” asked Jeanette, squinting ahead.

“I don’t know,” said Rube.  It was about twenty yards ahead of them, blocking off the path, as if it was the next logical step for anyone who had followed it this far.  As far as Rube could see, it didn’t lead to anything- it was angled away from the hill, not towards it.  They hadn’t seen anything like this from the house.  But how could they have missed it?  It was taller than anything else around.

Jeanette ran ahead, reached the bottom of the staircase, and circled it.  “There’s nothing supporting it!” she called back.

“What do you mean?” asked Rube, running to catch her up.

“You can see right under it!  Look!”  She led Rube to the side of the staircase.  When Jeanette touched it, Rube saw that each step was about twice the height of her hand- and that was all there was.  Underneath, it was just a white, diagonal line leading up as far as they could see.

“We shouldn’t try and climb it,” Rube heard herself say, “It’s probably not very stable.”

“‘Not very stable’?!  It’s physically impossible!”

“There must be a kind of trick to it…  Some kind of balancing trick…  If we put our weight on it, it’ll collapse.”

Jeanette rested her elbows on the fourth step, and- without warning, because she was apparently out to scare Rube to death today- hoisted herself off her feet, using it like a chin-up bar.

“Don’t do that!” screamed Rube.

Jeanette let herself down.  “It looks pretty solid to me.”

Rube was getting a headache.  There had to be a trick here.  An optical illusion, maybe.  “I’m going back to fetch Sally,” she said, because it seemed like the only sensible thing to do, “She needs to see this.”

To Be Continued.