Chapter 11

"What do you mean, you stole the money?" Domingo flung himself back against the wall, arms outstretched behind him, looking wildly from side to side, as if he expected the police to arrive at any moment.

Angela leapt out of bed and ran over to him.

"It's all right, Domingo," she cried, throwing her arms around him. "Nobody knows. I found it in my father's chest."

Domingo groaned and began to slide slowly down the wall. Angela tried to hold him up, but gave in and sat beside him as he crumpled into a heap on the floor.

"I know I shouldn't have just taken it." She squeezed her hands together. "I should have told them, but I was so angry with them." Her voice began to rise. "I was so angry with them for leaving me alone with that...that monster. They knew what she was like. They must have known."

Domingo looked up at her in bewilderment.

"Angela," he said, "I cannot make sense of what you are saying. You stole the money from your father?"

"No!" Angela screamed. "He was already dead!"

Domingo sat up and took her gently by the shoulders. "Come and sit down on the bed," he said, "and tell me how you found the money."

Angela gave a little gulp and nodded. Docilely, she followed Domingo back to the bed and sat down.

"It was after my mother died. I cleaned the house from top to bottom. I had to get rid of the smell of her. And when I took the mattress off her bed to burn it, I saw the chest underneath.It was amazing. I had forgotten all about it. And it used to be so important to me. It was all I had of my dad when he was away. I used to keep all the things in it. All the things he brought me when he came home. Wonderful things, Domingo. I will show you."

She made as if to get up off the bed, but Domingo put his hand on her arm.

"Later," he said. "First tell me about the money."

"Yes," said Angela. "Right."

She gulped again.

"Anyway, I dragged it out from under the bed, and it was locked, of course. My mother used to keep the key on a chain around her neck, but I couldn't remember whether she was wearing it when we buried her. As far as I knew, it was the only key. I sat back on my heels, staring at the chest, dying to open it, but not wanting to damage it. There was so much of my childhood in that chest. When I was desperately unhappy, which was most of the time when my father was away, I used to look at the chest and gloat about its contents. All my lovely things hiding in it that she wouldn't let me have.

"Then I got up and searched the room. It would have been a shame to break the chest open if I could find the key.

"It wasn't anywhere obvious. Not in the drawer of the bedside table or the dressing table. Not in the chest of drawers or the bottom of the wardrobe. Not in the green handbag where she kept all the important documents. In the end, I even climbed on a chair to look on top of the wardrobe. And there it was, still on its chain, lying right at the back, out of reach.

"I had to get the ladder from the shop and climb right on top to get it.

"I can't imagine how on earth she managed to get it up there. Maybe she threw it up. She would have done anything to stop me getting it. Bitch!"

Angela pressed the back of her hand against her mouth for a moment. "Sorry, Domingo," she muttered.

"Anyway, I got the key and opened the chest. And there they were. The dolls from Spain and France and Italy, the carvings from Africa, the little necklaces and bracelets. I took everything out, one by one and lined them up against the wall. And I thought of my dad. He had picked every one of those things. He had thought about what I would love. He had chosen them to remind me of him when he was away.

He wasn't to know that my mother locked them up and only let me have them when he was home. He would have imagined me putting them in my room and looking at them every night before I went to sleep and thinking of him.

"He was wonderful, my dad. For every one of those things there was at least one story. He used to sit me on his knee and tell me about Africa and Mexico and Greece and all those places. Especially Spain. He loved Spain, my dad. He said he would take me there, after the war." Angela gave a harsh sob, and hugged herself. "Only he died. He died just before the war ended. And so we never went."

She fell silent, looking straight ahead, not seeing.

Domingo put his arm around her shoulders and drew her close.

"But you said the money was in the chest."

"That's right." Angela gave him a sidelong glance. "I was coming to that. I emptied the chest and I was trying to decide whether to put all the things in my room where I could see them, or put them back in the chest, where they would be secret and I could just bring them out now and again. Keep them special, you know." She gave Domingo a shy little smile.

"And I looked in the chest and noticed something I'd never noticed before. Perhaps I'd never seen the bottom before, because my mother used to get the things out and put them away again. But the bottom of the chest was painted. There was a picture of a lady sitting under a tree and a young man, a shepherd perhaps, kneeling at her feet and offering her a bunch of flowers. The lady was wearing a green dress and a big hat with a feather in it. It looked so real, the feather. I leaned forward to touch it, and I must have pressed something, because suddenly the whole of the bottom of the chest moved and lifted up. And I got my fingers in and pulled it and I saw that the whole of the inside was stuffed with money!

"I just sat there and stared at it for ages. It didn't make sense. It was as if it had appeared magically from nowhere.

"After a while I began to take it out and I counted it. There was three thousand pounds in English money and about a hundred thousand in pesetas.

"Then I put it back and I closed the bottom and I put all the things on top of it and I sat and I thought about how the money might have got there and why it was that my mother never let me or my father go into the chest and why she kept it locked and kept the key around her neck.