CHAPTER 4: THE BOOK
“Athena, I need to talk to you” her mum called from downstairs.
“I haven’t done anything” Athena called back
“It’s about our plans for Christmas”
Athena groaned then threw back her covers; it was 9:00am, why must she be up this early?
“What?” she moaned
“I need you to clear out the basement at some point today, there’s a lot of your dad’s old stuff down there and a lot of it can be recycled. I’ve sorted out some bags, the green ones for recycling, the red one’s for the charity shop and the black one is for rubbish.”
“What about the keeps?”
“Anything to keep can be put into the boxes that are currently down there and then labelled with this black permanent marker pen, got it?”
“Okay, I think so”
“I’ll leave you to it”
Athena got ready then took the bags and the pen to the basement. Clearly no one had been in there for a while because there were tonnes of boxes and they were all covered in thick layers of crispy black dust. A spider scuttled along the floor and Athena had a feeling that he wasn’t the only one that she was going to see.
“Marvellous” she mimicked. She started on the opposite room to the spider as she didn’t fancy being swarmed with eight thick, hairy legs and many beetle black eyes. Picking up a large dusty cardboard box, Athena sneezed as the particles rushed up her nose. She started to unpack the box. The box contained empty bottles of old cleaning products and a few loose receipts. Quickly, Athena emptied the entire contents into the ‘recycle’ bag as they smelt quite revolting. Pushing the box aside, she grabbed a large one from the midst; it was rather light so she wondered what on earth could be in there, whatever it was rustled about as she picked it up. Opening the box flaps, she peered in. It was chocker full of old receipts; full to the brim! Athena plucked one from the top; it was a receipt from boots pharmacy for paracetamol. Another receipt was from topshop. Athena dug her hand into the very bottom of the box; her whole arm engulfed. When her hand reached the bottom, she felt something slimy and squidgy. Athena, being curious, would’ve normally emptied the receipts out, to see what it was, but this time she didn’t want to know. So instead, she emptied all of the receipts into the recycling bag and looked away as she did so.
After many hours of hard labour, there were more boxes left to check. Athena stood up to admire her handy work; she wiped the sweat off her forehead, and then placed her hands on her hips whilst letting out a tremendous sigh. She then set to work on pushing the remaining boxes with things in them to one side. As for the empty boxes, she folded them down and tucked them into a corner. Then, Athena labelled the boxes, some were ‘photographs’ others were ‘xmas decor’. There were even things like ‘ornaments’, ‘paperwork’, ‘bill references’ and many more unexciting things. Once she had labelled them, she heaved them into all into separate corners depending on what kind of things they contained.
Heaving the last box in a tight space under the basement stairs, relief swept over Athena but as she gave the box one last push, she found that it wouldn’t fit. Pushing and pushing with all her might, the box just wouldn’t budge. One more shove would break the box and its contents, so she tugged it back out to find a small-ish cardboard box already lurking there.
“What’s this?” she questioned “I haven’t put any boxes over here, I’m sure of it”. The only logical explanation was that she had been blind and not spotted it before or whoever left this box here, left it for a reason; to hide it. Athena guessed that it was probably some ‘secret’ of her mother’s that was boring and non-exciting. However, that thought didn’t put Athena off, she was as curious as ever and just wanted to make sure...she had to, it would be a crime to leave it unnoticed.
