HE TOOK the children’s stairs in two leaps and tore up the mattress on Tip’s bed. Flattened under it was his old army knapsack, Tip’s now. He grabbed it and dashed down and outside, pounded across the bridge and up between the borders, seeing the first lights he’d ever seen at Eden except in the kitchen, light on the porch spattering through the c****s of the downstairs shutters, the front door open.
“Here, Daddy!”
Tip was calling from the parlour to the left. A single drop bulb in the centre of the chandelier was spraying the lovely room with rainbow drops of crystal light. There was a door open beside the fireplace across the room, beyond it dust-covered steps leading down into the closed hyphen, a single-room brick floored passage that connected the main house with the vine-sealed win
