Skeleton Key

invitation.
    He was standing on the veranda of the house her parents had rented, a house that would have been ugly anywhere else in the world but which seemed perfectly suited to its position on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Cornish coast. It was old-fashioned, square, part brick, part white-painted wood. It had five bedrooms, three staircases and too many doors. Its garden was more dead than alive, blasted by salt and sea spray. The house was called Brook‟s Leap, although nobody knew who Brook was, why he had leapt, or even if he had survived. Alex had been there for three days. He had been invited to stay the week.
    There was a movement behind him. A door had opened and Sabina Pleasure stepped out, wrapped in a thick towelling robe, carrying two glasses. It was warm outside. Although it had been raining when Alex arrived—it nearly always seemed to be raining in Cornwall—the weather had cleared and this was suddenly a summer‟s night. Sabina had left him outside while she went in to have a bath. Her hair was still wet. The robe fell loosely down to her bare feet.
    Alex thought she looked much older than her fifteen years.
    “I brought you a Coke,” she said.
    “Thanks.”
    The veranda was wide, with a low balcony, a swing chair and a table. Sabina set the glasses down then sat down herself. Alex joined her. The wooden frame of the swing chair creaked and they swung together, looking out at the view. For a long time neither of them said anything.
    Then, suddenly…
    “Why don‟t you tell me the truth?” Sabina asked.
    “What d‟you mean?”
    “I was just thinking about Wimbledon. Why did you leave straight after the quarter finals? You were there one minute. Court Number One! And then—”
    “I told you,” Alex cut in, feeling uncomfortable. “I wasn‟t well.”
    “That‟s not what I heard. There was a rumour that you were involved in some sort of fight. And that‟s another thing. I‟ve noticed you in your swimming shorts. I‟ve never seen anyone with so many cuts and bruises.”
    “I‟m bullied at school.”
    “I don‟t think so. I‟ve got a friend who goes to Brookland. She says you‟re never there. You keep disappearing. You were away twice last term and the day you got back, half the school burned down.”
    Alex leaned forward and picked up his Coke, rolling the cold glass between his hands. An aeroplane was crossing the sky, tiny in the great darkness, its lights blinking on and off.
    “All right, Sab,” he said. “I‟m not really a schoolboy. I‟m a spy, a teenage James Bond. I have to take time off from school to save the world. I‟ve done it twice so far. The first time was here in Cornwall. The second time was in France. What else do you want to know?”
    Sabina smiled. “All right, Alex. Ask a stupid question…” She drew her legs up, snuggling into the warmth of the towelling robe. “But there is something different about you. You‟re like no boy I‟ve ever met.”
    “Kids?” Sabina‟s mother was calling out from the kitchen. “Shouldn‟t you be thinking about bed?”
    It was ten o‟clock. The two of them would be getting up at five to catch the surf.
    “Five minutes!” Sabina called back.
    “I‟m counting.”
    Sabina sighed. “Mothers!”
    But Alex had never known his mother.
    Twenty minutes later, getting into bed, he thought about Sabina Pleasure and her parents; her father a slightly bookish man with long grey hair and spectacles, her mother round and cheerful, more like Sabina herself. There were only the three of them. Maybe that was what made them so close. They lived in west London and rented this house for four weeks every summer.
    He turned off the light and lay back in the darkness. His room, set high up in the roof of the house, had only one small window and he could see the moon, glowing white, as perfectly round as a one penny piece. From the moment he had arrived, they‟d treated him as if they‟d known him all his life. Every family has its own routine and Alex had been surprised how quickly he had fallen in with theirs, joining them on long walks along the cliffs, helping with the shopping and the cooking, or simply sharing the silence—reading and watching the sea.
    Why couldn‟t he have had a family like this? Alex felt an old, familiar sadness creep up on him.
    His parents had died before he was even a few weeks old. The uncle who had brought him up and who had taught him so much had still been, in many ways, a stranger to