Page 51 of The Love Hack

There were almost as many of those as there were keys. Old letters, piles of invoices, and several sheets that were blank.

‘The blank ones, right?’

‘Got to be. And the lamp.’

Feeling a surge of excitement, I held one of the blank pages up to the light, but nothing happened. I tried a second, then a third, then hit pay dirt. When the light hit the paper, faint lines appeared on it.

‘Look here!’

Ross leaned in close, so close I could feel his breath tickling my hair.

‘Looks like a floorplan of the room,’ he said.

‘And there’s an X – look. Right there.’

I pointed to the spot on the map, and Ross did the same, at the exact same second. Our fingers brushed each other, and then jumped away like an electric current had passed between us. The paper fluttered to the floor.

But there was no time for awkwardness. Together, we hunkered down on the dusty floorboards and pulled back a corner of the rug. There, taped to its underside, was a key.

‘Yes!’ I saw Ross’s grin flash out again in the gloom. ‘Nailed it! You’re good at this, aren’t you?’

‘I think I played a game ages ago that had the same thing,’ I said modestly. ‘When you know, you know.’

I unpicked the tape and fumbled the key into my hand. We scrambled to our feet and almost ran the couple of steps to the door.

‘You want to do it?’ I offered.

‘Nah, you worked it out.’

‘Fine. I’m not going to waste time being polite.’

He laughed, and I slipped the key into the lock. It turned easily. We exchanged a half-high-five, our palms not quite meeting, and hustled through into the next room.

This had been arranged to look like the kitchen of some ancient manor house. There was a scrubbed pine table, a white ceramic sink beneath a window offering a fake view of a vegetable garden, and a trapdoor in the floor, an iron ring sunk into it.

I paused. ‘God, this reminds me of a place we went to on holiday when I was little. Somewhere in Cornwall. The kitchen was full of clutter like this – my sister and I thought it was magical but Mum moaned about what a pain it was to clean.’

‘I’m Team Your Mum,’ Ross said. ‘My flatmates call me Mari Kondo – I’m always tidying.’

I thought of his desk at work – the keyboard always arranged just so, the few papers he had on there stacked neatly in trays, his jacket on the coat rack instead of draped over the back of his chair like everyone else’s.

‘Fully house-trained,’ I said approvingly. ‘I like it. So what’s our mission here?’

‘Guess we need to get through the trapdoor,’ Ross said.

‘Right.’ I gave the ring a half-hearted tug, but predictably it didn’t budge.

I moved over to the sink, as if the backlit, painted view of the garden beyond would give me some sort of inspiration.

‘Hey,’ I said. ‘That cabinet, and the windowpanes – they’re the same layout and dimensions.’

‘So they are,’ Ross agreed. ‘You’re a genius.’

I felt a glow of pride. ‘I just like figuring stuff out. So I guess we open some of the drawers. But which?’

‘We could try random ones and see what works?’

I gave him a withering stare. ‘There’s sixty-four of them. The number of possible combinations will run into millions.’

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