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‘The Gingerbread House.’
‘The what?’
It’s an effort to speak. My throat’s so dry it hurts. ‘The Gingerbread House. Inside the Memory Wood.’
‘You mean the cottage that burned down?’
‘Yes.’
‘Kyle, I’m going to ask you again. Was Elissa Mirzoyan inside that building when it burned?’
I feel Mama’s eyes on me. I can’t meet them.
Right now, this very minute, there are people out there – people like Elissa’s mum, Elissa’s grandparents – who are hurting. They’re hurting very badly indeed. They’ve been separated from someone they care deeply about, someone they love very much, and they desperately want to know what’s happened to her. I’m hoping you can help them, Kyle. I’m hoping that you and me, working together, can find a way to ease their suffering.
‘Kyle,’ the detective says, more forcefully now. ‘Were you holding Elissa Mirzoyan inside that cellar?’
Looking up, meeting her gaze, I decide I don’t want thiswoman as my wife. I bow my head again, but I can’t shut her out completely.
‘I didn’t call her that,’ I whisper.
IV
For half a minute, nobody speaks. Finally, MacCullagh asks, ‘What did you call her?’
‘Gretel. I called her Gretel. And she called me Hansel.’
‘Hansel and Gretel, the Gingerbread House. Like the fairy tale.’
‘It was her idea. She said we could be brother and sister.’
I rub my nose, dismayed to see a smear of pale snot across my hand. Mama raised me to have good manners. I dread to think what this detective must think of me. ‘I never had a sister,’ I tell her. ‘If I ever did, I’d want one just like her.’
MacCullagh leans forward. ‘How did the fairy tale end?’
‘Not like the book.’
‘Was Gretel in the cellar when the Gingerbread House burned?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Kyle, I realize this is difficult. But you’ve taken a big step. You’ve told us you know Elissa – I mean Gretel – and that helps a lot. What we need now is the rest, and I think you’re brave enough to share it. We owe it to her mum – an explanation as to what happened.’
I close my eyes. I can feel that wall inside my head beginning to crumble. Suddenly, it’s all I can do to brace myself against it. ‘I’m not lying,’ I say. ‘At the end … I really don’t know what I did.’
MacCullagh takes a breath, slowly lets it out. ‘OK,’ shesays. ‘Let’s try something different. Let’s go back in time, you and I.’
Opening my eyes, I ask, ‘You mean like in a time machine?’
‘Exactly like a time machine.’
‘H. G. Wells wrote a story calledThe Time Machine, but it was fiction. Real time machines don’t exist.’
‘This’ll be a time machine inside our minds.’
I tilt my head, trying to see if she’s teasing, but she looks deadly serious.
‘I want you to get into the time machine,’ she says, ‘and take me back to the first time you met Gretel.’