They stopped at a building just before the castle and Cal hurried his charges inside, out of the rain.
‘World of Illusions?’ Daisy asked, sticking her head back outside to check the sign.
‘What’s a Camera Obscura?’ Ryan frowned as he sounded out the word on the leaflets by the door.
‘Let’s head in and find out.’
In his head Cal had imagined introducing the kids to all the different mirror tricks and plasma balls, the mind-bending illusions, and explaining how they worked. The kids would hang off his every word as he made magic real or demonstrated something properly cool.
As it was, the minute they had their tickets and were through the doors Daisy and Ryan both raced off in different directions, leaving him staring after them dumbly.
He shook his head and prepared to yell.
They’re just overexcited.
Great. Now he was hearing Heather’s voice in his head.
Ryan raced past him again, so Cal grabbed his sleeve as he passed, held his hand firmly—despite his admonishments that, at eight, he was far too old to hold hands—and headed out to find Daisy.
‘Right. Now, here are the rules,’ he told them, as the three of them were reunited beside a mirror that stretched them out into giants.
‘Set your expectations,’ Heather always said. ‘Kids like to know what their limits are, even if they go on to test them.’
With Heather’s gentle voice in his head, he forced himself to keep his tone even and calm, rather than just yelling at them. ‘We stick together, okay? We can look at everything in here, for as long as you like, but we do it together. And we finish at the Camera Obscura, okay?’
‘I still don’t know what one of those is,’ Ryan grumbled.
‘Then let’s get exploring,’ Cal said, deciding to take their lack of answer as tacit acceptance.
Daisy rolled her eyes, but followed anyway.
To start with, Cal used the kids’ fascination with the illusions, the shadow wall and the plasma globes as an opportunity to check his emails. Daisy rolled her eyes at him again, but she and Ryan seemed to be having a nice time so he didn’t worry.
When they reached the Ames Room—where an optical illusion meant people appeared to shrink and grow as they moved around—he surrendered his phone to Daisy, so she could take photos of Ryan seemingly much taller than him. Then they reached Bewilderworld, where Cal just concentrated on not feeling dizzy and disorientated as they crossed a metal bridge surrounded by a tunnel of twisting, turning lights.
‘Where’s Ryan?’ he asked Daisy as he stepped off the other end.
‘He ran into the mirror maze,’ Daisy replied with a shrug. ‘I’ll go find him.’
She raced off before Cal could stop her. Uncomfortably, he stared into the walls and walls of mirrors and steeled himself to follow.
Apart from flashes of the kids as they ran ahead, their laughter echoing off the glass, all Cal could see was himself, reflected everywhere. A reminder of who he was...who he’d always be. A Bryce, with all the history that brought with it. And, try as he might, he couldn’t catch up with Daisy and Ryan, who always seemed just a stretch out of reach.
‘This is every parent’s worst nightmare,’ Cal muttered, before stopping inches away from crashing into another mirror.
Parent. He was the parent—or as close to one as these kids had. And while he might still have a long way to go in learning to take care of them...let alone loving them the way they needed...he was making progress. He was here, in a damn maze, not waiting outside on his phone.
He was here. And that was the first step.
Smiling to himself, he turned confidently left—and walked straight into another mirror pane.
‘This way, Uncle Cal!’
He spun to find Ryan waiting behind him.
‘Come on!’
This time his nephew grabbed his hand and led the way. And Cal couldn’t help but admit that it felt strangely right.
CHAPTER TEN
‘AND THEN UP in the roof there’s this magic camera that lets you see all the streets of Edinburgh right as they’re happening, only tiny. And we looked for you but we couldn’t see you. But the guy doing the show built a bridge for some other people and they walked right across it and it was brilliant!’