THE SOCIETY OF UNKNOWABLE OBJECTS
Also by Gareth Brown
The society of unknowable objects
Gareth Brown
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First published in Great Britain in 2025 by Bantam an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Gareth Brown 2025
Gareth Brown has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
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To May, for the love of books. And to booksellers everywhere, for the same reason.
Prologue: The Atlas of
Lost Things (2015)
Imelda Sparks was alone and exhausted in the wilderness of Nevada, and she had never been happier.
She perched on a rock at the edge of the hiking trail, dropped her shoulder bag to her feet and pulled out a bottle of water. The evening sun was a rich orange smear just above the horizon, and the sky over the Great Basin Desert was slowly turning the colour of candyfloss and peaches. Thunderclouds towered up from the flat brown ground in the distance like smoke from campfires and Imelda thought the view was one of the most beautiful she had ever seen.
She glanced down past her feet to where the hillside dropped away steeply. The bottom of the gully was a pool of shadows that was slowly rising up towards her. Soon it would be too dark to have any chance of finding what she had come looking for, maybe even so dark that the hour-long hike back to the car would become treacherous.
‘Stupid,’ she muttered. She slid her water bottle back into her bag and her hand brushed the flower that Magda had cross-stitched into the canvas flap all those years ago. Imelda wondered how Magda had spent her day back in London. Probably work, and then an evening writing. Magda wanted to be a novelist and that seemed to demand all of her time and attention. Imelda worried sometimes that Magda wasn’t leaving room in her life for friends or for love, but her daughter had always known her own mind, even as a toddler. Imelda smiled as she remembered Magda at a much younger age, stomping around the house and pretending to be a dinosaur long after she’d been told to go to bed. That happy memory faded as Imelda turned her eyes to
the distance and saw the sun flattening at the bottom as it touched the horizon.
‘Come on, get on with it,’ she muttered to herself.
She removed a square of paper from her back pocket and unfolded it to study in the golden-pink light. It was a hand-drawn map, with sketched lines in black ink that detailed Imelda’s surroundings, and a scribbled star in the centre of the page indicating the location of the lost thing – like an X marking the spot in some movie-prop treasure map. The sketch had changed since Imelda had last looked at it fifteen minutes earlier; the image on the paper shifted constantly, in fact, because this was not an ordinary map. This was the Atlas of Lost Things, a guide to lost magical artefacts.
The Atlas had already taken Imelda on a journey across Europe. She had found the worn gold coin in a small museum in Bavaria, the crucifix in a cluttered antiques shop in the Trastevere neighbourhood of Rome, and the blue carnation, which Imelda had retrieved only a couple of days earlier, in the lapel of a wizened bulb-grower working in the tulip fields east of Amsterdam. After Imelda had obtained the flower – which had taken some gentle persuasion and a generous financial donation to the old man – the Atlas had shown her that another lost thing could be found in the Nevada desert, in the United States. She had jumped on a flight at Schiphol, hired a car at the airport in Las Vegas when she had arrived earlier that day, and then she had driven for four hours out into the wilderness, north along Highway 93 before turning west on to the mountain trail.
As Imelda peered at the Atlas now in the low light at the end of the day, her vision blurred with fatigue. Her neck was stiff from the hours behind the wheel, and the throbbing in her knees and lower back were grumpy companions spoiling the hike with incessant complaints.
She shook her head to clear her vision and focused on the Atlas. The lost thing was near, perhaps only a few feet away from where she was perched. If she could find it quickly, she could be on her way back to the car before all the light drained from the day. She closed her eyes, anticipating a couple of nights of luxury in an
expensive hotel back in Vegas, a big bath of bubbles and a tray of room-service food.
‘That would be lovely,’ she murmured.
She was tired, she knew, not just from an hour of walking on sixty-year-old legs, but from three months of travelling and adventure. Imelda had always had an easy life, the child of wealthy (if absent and occasionally problematic) parents, and an adulthood spent working as an artist, living comfortably off her inheritance while painting landscapes and portraits with some modest success. When Magda had come along – unexpectedly, when Imelda had been in her mid-thirties – Imelda had focused her energy on being the sort of parent that she herself had never had: present, attentive and loving. But Magda was an adult now, and increasingly Imelda had found that she had more time to herself than she knew what to do with. That was why three months earlier she had relished the idea of going off on a big adventure by herself in search of lost things.
And it had been an adventure, and a successful one, too. For she would be going back to Frank with items to add to the Society collection. Including, she hoped, whatever she might find on the hiking trail.
‘If you get on with it,’ she murmured. ‘Instead of sitting here daydreaming.’
She studied the Atlas once more and it showed her that she was now sitting directly on top of the lost thing.
‘But that makes no sense,’ she muttered in confusion, rotating the paper in case she was misreading it (easily done with a map that changed constantly). She stood up and pivoted on her heel, running her eyes over the hillside and the boulders, the bare ground that surrounded her, all of it now washed in a thin, colourless light. ‘It was right here.’
The coming darkness was a threat that Imelda was trying to ignore, but thick shadows were crouching in corners like animals, waiting to pounce as soon as the sun was gone. She was running out of time.
She exhaled in frustration, ignoring the sinking sun, and tried to make sense of the Atlas, but the lost thing had moved again and now
appeared slightly behind her and to the right. Was it in a stream, maybe? Or floating in the air on thermals? How could it be moving? She sighed in frustration and kicked a small rock, sending it flying out into space before it dropped and bounced its way down the hillside into the gully.
‘I don’t have time for this,’ she exclaimed to the sky.
She glanced up to the hillside, scanning back and forth for answers or inspiration but seeing only more rocks and scrub and boulders. And . . .
Someone is watching you!
Imelda gasped in surprise, a hand going up to her chest as her heart performed an impromptu drum-fill. There was a stranger on the hillside, a man, only three or four strides up from the trail. And he was watching her.
What on earth?
The man was entirely motionless, squatting down with his arms around his knees, but he was facing Imelda, and she could tell – she knew – that he was watching her.
That he had, in fact, been watching her the whole time she had been perched on the rock.
Imelda’s scalp prickled, warnings and worries running through her mind.
Why wouldn’t he let me know he was there? Who does that?
When it became obvious that Imelda had spotted him, the man stood up in one quick movement. He was wearing old blue jeans and a brown waxed overcoat on top of a checked flannel shirt and a Tshirt, a faded blue baseball cap on his head. He stood motionless for a moment, the breeze flicking the collar of his shirt, his arms held out slightly from his body as if he was deciding what to do.
Watching him, Imelda felt uncomfortable in a way she couldn’t identify. It wasn’t just her unease that this man had been observing her; it was something else, something she couldn’t put her finger on, something about the way her eyes and her brain felt when she was looking at him. The only thing she could think to compare it to was seasickness, but that made no sense at all.
‘I wasn’t doing anything,’ the man said suddenly, his voice almost a whine. ‘I wasn’t watching you.’
Yes, you were. That’s a lie. The first thing you’ve said to me is a lie. ‘That’s OK,’ Imelda replied, careful to keep her voice neutral. Her eyes flicked away to the ground and her mind conjured the memory of an encounter many years before, when she had been a much younger woman alone in an Underground station in London at the end of a long night on the town. There had been a homeless man there that night and he had been charming at first, a happy drunk sharing a joke with Imelda. But then, in one shocking moment, he had changed. Imelda could still picture how his smile had instantly become an aggressive sneer, how for no reason, because of nothing she had done, he had suddenly attacked her for the money he had assumed she was carrying. He had charmed her into lowering her guard and then he had beaten her, only relenting when the rush of air and the screech of brakes signalled the arrival of the train. Imelda had never forgotten how vulnerable and weak she had felt that night, lying in tears on the platform as her attacker had fled. Now, on the trail with this strange man who had been watching her and who made her feel seasick, that same horrible vulnerability chilled her to the core.
You’re alone and an hour from the car and it’s almost dark. And there’s something not right about him. What a mess you’ve got yourself into, Imelda.
The man spoke again: ‘I was here before you.’
Imelda nodded, trying to be agreeable and calm despite the adrenaline that coursed through her. ‘Yes,’ she told him. ‘I know. I’m sorry.’
The man took three awkward, scampering steps down the hillside and came to a stop a few feet in front of her. Imelda moved backwards in response, trying to judge his intent even as her whole body implored her to turn and run.
Turn and hobble, maybe. You’re not going to run anywhere in your condition. You can’t outrun him, can you?
Beneath the cap the man’s face was long and thin, tanned and weather-worn, as if he spent a lot of time outdoors, and his dark eyes
kept moving, never settling anywhere and avoiding meeting Imelda’s gaze. She thought he was younger than her, maybe only just into his forties, but it was hard to be sure. The hair beneath his cap was brown, though, with no hint of grey, and he had stubble across his cheeks. There was nothing specifically wrong with the man – if anything, his features might have been considered objectively handsome. And yet . . .
The hairs on the back of Imelda’s neck prickled at the thought of the man watching her without her knowing. What might he have done if she hadn’t noticed him? And why was he out here in the wilderness at sunset by himself?
‘I wasn’t watching you,’ he said again, eyes meeting Imelda’s and then darting away.
He has a shifty look. That’s what that is. Shifty.
‘I believe you,’ Imelda lied.
The man dropped his gaze to Imelda’s bag where it sat on the ground like a half-deflated football. Then he ran his eyes slowly up and down her body, dispassionately, like a dressmaker assessing an outfit on a model. Imelda shivered, her mind working furiously against the overpowering seasickness, trying to understand what it was that was upsetting her sensibilities.
He has the lost thing!
The answer came out of nowhere, immediately making sense of the world. The Atlas had led her to a lost thing somewhere nearby, and the man had been there the whole time. He had to have it, perhaps in one of his pockets. It had to be the lost thing that was making her feel so unwell.
But that answer led to other questions, other things to worry about. What thing does he have? What might he do with it? What might he do to you, Imelda?
Imelda took another step backwards, wary of an unknown lost thing in the possession of this odd man. She would pick up her bag and make her excuses and then be on her way. Yet the man’s eyes narrowed as she moved and that simple change in his expression, like a cloud passing over the sun, multiplied her discomfort. It was too
much like the change she had seen on the face of the homeless man in the Underground all those years ago, too much like the moment before her attack.
It’s happening again!
Panic exploded out of the restraints she had tried to bind it with, and all rational thought shattered into pieces. Her body made decisions for her, taking two hurried steps backwards towards her bag. On the second stride her foot found only empty space where there should have been solid ground.
Shit!
She realized her mistake immediately and a gasp escaped her. She was suddenly off kilter, leaning backwards with nothing to counterbalance her. Her arms cartwheeled automatically, seeking purchase, and the Atlas of Lost Things fluttered out of her grip, flapping in the breeze like a baby bird trying to fly. The man’s eyes and mouth widened in surprise. He darted forward, just as Imelda felt herself tipping backwards beyond the point of no return, and grasped at her with thick, dirty fingers as if trying to catch her. Imelda found that she hated the thought of him touching her, even if it was to stop her falling. His fingers made contact, scraping her clothes and catching on the crucifix that was hanging from its chain, the crucifix she had found weeks earlier in Rome. Imelda felt the chain bite into the back of her neck as it took her weight, and relief and disbelief washed over her. Then there was an audible snik as the chain snapped, and Imelda was released into the air, tumbling out of the light and down into the shadows of the rock-strewn gully.
A memory came to her: an image of the last time she had flown, many years before, Magda smiling beside her in the air. Then the back of Imelda’s head smashed into a boulder twenty feet down the hillside and she was dead instantly.
She would stay that way for almost two years.
Part One: Adventure in the Electric Night
Magda Sparks’s Favourite Place (2025)
Magda Sparks’s favourite place was to be found at 114 Bell Street in London’s Marylebone, in an unspectacular four-storey Georgian townhouse that was identical to many other buildings on the street.
The ground floor of the building and the two floors above were occupied by a second-hand and antiquarian bookshop called Bell Street Books. In these rooms the walls were lined with shelves from floor to ceiling, and bookcases sat on the old wooden floorboards wherever there was space. Books were squeezed into every available corner, hardbacks and picture albums, paperbacks with yellowed pages and cracked spines, and even vintage comics, their colours faded with age. The shop was more book than brick, and all the better for it in Magda’s view. She had spent many hours in happy solitude in Bell Street Books, discovering long-forgotten novels, sometimes with handwritten notes in the margins or on the title page, faded ink and pencil marks from people long gone. But as much as she loved the shop, Bell Street Books was not the reason that 114 Bell Street was Magda’s favourite place in the world.
The top floor of the townhouse had been converted into an apartment where the owner of the shop, Frank Simpson, had lived alone for as long as Magda had known him. Frank was the closest thing Magda had ever had to a father. Magda was, as her mother had once told her, the beautiful product of a decidedly average and anonymous drunken dalliance, and she had been raised solely (and entirely successfully, in Magda’s opinion) by her mother, Imelda. But Imelda had
always loved books and she had frequented the shop often during Magda’s childhood, seeding Magda’s own love for books at a very young age. There had been many weekends when Imelda had taken Magda for cakes and milkshakes at a nearby cafe, or for ice cream in one of the busy parlours in Covent Garden where they watched the tourists, and then afterwards they would head to Bell Street so they could both pick up some new books. Frank would be there, shelving books or reading in his chair behind the old writing desk he used as a counter. His face would light up whenever Magda and her mother appeared, and he would bounce Magda on his knee and call her Sparks because of her bright-red hair, or delight as she clattered around the shop in search of picture books and comics.
‘Bookshops shouldn’t be quiet and sombre!’ he would pronounce, if ever any of his customers tutted or frowned at Magda’s ebullience. ‘This is not a library! We are a place of stories and adventure, and children should make noise if they want!’
Sometimes Magda and her mother would visit Frank in his apartment and Frank would give her cake or chocolates from a cupboard he always referred to – with a secret wink just for Magda, or with a twinkle in his eye – as Magda’s Magic Pantry. In later years, when Magda was studying law at university and living in student accommodation, she would visit weekly and she and Frank would catch up, the radio playing in the background while they ate and chatted or played board games. Frank lived alone, but his apartment never seemed to be a lonely place – it was comfortable and welcoming, with table lamps that threw honey-coloured light into the corners and soft seats that felt like a hug from a friend when you sank into them. The apartment had dormer windows that afforded a view of the rooftops of Marylebone, and Magda remembered sitting in those windows as a young girl, watching the world below, the strawberrycoloured tops of double-decker buses cruising past on nearby streets. She had formed many happy memories in Frank’s apartment, as a child and as an adult, but even this was not why 114 Bell Street was her favourite place in the world.
Hidden away out of sight, with no outward signs of its existence,
there was a basement beneath Bell Street Books. At one time, in the Georgian and Victorian eras, this space had been where servants lived, working long hard hours for the wealthy Londoners who occupied the upper floors. In the first part of the twentieth century, the ground floor of the building had become a tailor’s shop, and the basement had been converted into a storeroom for fabrics and wool and offcuts. And then, when the tailor’s shop had become a bookshop in the middle of the century, the basement had become something else entirely, and it was the basement of 114 Bell Street that was Magda Sparks’s favourite place in the world.
Because this was a place where an incredible secret was kept within its walls, a place of mysteries and magic.
This was the meeting place of the Society of Unknowable Objects.
An Extraordinary Meeting
Foras long as Magda had been a member, the Society of Unknowable Objects had only ever held two meetings a year, one at the end of April and one at the end of October. As the longest-serving member of the group and the chair of the Society, Frank Simpson was able to call an extraordinary meeting whenever he wanted, but he never had – at least not until a sunny morning in early autumn ten years after Magda had first joined the Society.
‘I need to convene a meeting,’ Frank said, interrupting Magda’s breakfast with a phone call. ‘This evening.’
‘Today?’ she asked, a cup of tea in one hand, her phone in the other, and a burst of adrenaline racing like a sports car through her body. ‘A meeting?’
‘Yes,’ Frank confirmed. ‘Can you make it? Are you busy?’
Magda was a novelist, and having recently completed the edits on her seventh book, her plan for the day had been to stay in her pyjamas for as long as possible, reading and drinking tea in the comfort of her living room. She was not busy. ‘Of course I can make it,’ she said. ‘But why are we meeting?’
‘I’ll tell you when you get here. It will keep for a few hours yet.’
An unhelpful answer, but not unexpected.
Magda lived on Norfolk Road in the St John’s Wood area of London, in a detached Georgian house built sometime around 1830. The house was far more expensive than she could ever have afforded on her author’s income, but it – and a large fortune – had been passed down to her from her mother after her death. There were
many things that Magda loved about the house – the space, the big windows that let in the light, the garden with the mature trees, and the simple fact that every room reminded her of happy moments of her childhood – but one of the best things was that it was only ever a short tube ride away from Bell Street Books. She would visit Frank often, for dinner or to catch up, or just to browse in the shop. That day, Magda decided to walk, feeling the need to burn off some of the nervous energy that had been thrumming through her ever since Frank’s breakfast call.
She left home with plenty of time to spare and took a pleasant stroll through a city washed with the warm light of an early-autumn evening. Long shadows stretched out along the pavements like spilled ink, and the green trees with their topmost leaves turning golden looked like caramel-dipped apples. As she approached the bookshop Frank was visible through the window, sitting owlishly behind the old writing desk, his nose in a battered hardback book. He was a thin man, folded awkwardly into the chair, his legs bent into ungainly angles and points. Behind him, on the shelf where he kept first editions and other valuable books, there was also a collection of Magda’s six published novels, one of each turned out to face the shop. This display always warmed Magda’s heart, a tangible demonstration of Frank’s pride in her writing success. Frank looked up as she approached and beckoned her in with a wave of his hand. The shop was stuffy inside, having been warmed by the sun all day, but full of the comforting smell of old books.
‘Sparks!’ Frank exclaimed, pushing himself to his feet. He was dressed, as always, like a schoolteacher: a burgundy V-neck sweater over a shirt and tie, brown corduroy trousers, and equally brown sensible shoes. His short grey hair was neatly combed on his head, and his eyes glinted behind his spectacles as he squeezed between the desk and the books that were piled precariously against the wall. Frank was tall, and Magda short, so when they embraced Magda’s cheek pressed into his sweater. Her senses filled up with the smell of his laundry detergent, and the many memories of previous hours in his company. But more than this, she felt how thin Frank was through his clothes.
He’s all hard edges. No fat upon him. It’s like hugging an ironing board. Has he always been like this?
‘You made it!’ Frank said as he pulled away from the hug.
‘Like I wouldn’t,’ she muttered. ‘What else am I going to do when you call an extraordinary meeting? What is it all about, anyway?’
Frank flapped a hand at her, dismissing the question as he squeezed back behind the desk. ‘You’ll have to wait,’ he said, avoiding her probing gaze. ‘Downstairs with you, and I’ll be right with you.’ He sat down, picked up his book and crossed his legs again, affecting the demeanour of a man who wasn’t going to be right with anyone anytime soon. ‘I need to close up the shop.’
‘You don’t look like you’re closing up,’ Magda observed, trying not to show the irritation she felt. ‘You’re sitting down again.’
He shrugged in his seat. ‘I want to finish this chapter.’
Frustrated at the lack of answers and impatient to get on with it, Magda pushed through the door in the corner of the room and into the narrow space beyond. A set of ancient, worn stairs led down to a wooden door. The door appeared old, but Magda knew it was reinforced with steel. An incongruously modern security keypad was on the wall at the bottom, requiring a six-digit code to unlock the door. As she reached the foot of the stairs, Magda tapped in the code and waited a moment until the magnetic locks released, the familiar thrill vibrating through her chest like guitar strings strummed, just as it had the first time she had been granted entry, a decade earlier.
Stepping into the basement, Magda saw that Will Pinn was already there, sitting at the large round table in the middle of the room and staring at his clasped hands. He looked up at her arrival. ‘Magda,’ he said, a smile flickering on his face.
‘Hello, Will,’ she replied. He stood up as she approached so they could embrace briefly. Will wasn’t a man who hugged easily, but he seemed to make allowances for Magda.
‘How are you doing?’ Magda asked, expecting that he probably knew as little about why Frank had called the meeting as she did. Will nodded. ‘Very well, thank you, and you?’
‘Oh, you know,’ she smiled. ‘Happy-go-lucky as usual.’
Will was a watchmaker, operating out of a small shop on a quiet street between Marylebone and Mayfair. It was a profession that Magda had always thought entirely suited Will’s character. He was an introvert, and seemed to prefer time in a room by himself doing intricate work rather than dealing with unpredictable human beings. He was a slight man, with blue eyes behind wire-framed spectacles and floppy blond hair, and he had the pale skin of someone who spent most of their time under electric light. Magda knew from experience that Will liked the finer things in life. He drank expensive ground coffee and ate food from London’s best independent delicatessens, and despite his reclusive nature he always dressed in good-quality tailor-made suits, his armour against an uncertain, irrational world. Will had been a member of the Society for longer than Magda, joining upon the death of his father, several years before Magda’s mother, Imelda, had died.
‘How is the life of an author?’ Will asked, as Magda made her way back around the table.
‘Fine, fine.’ She shrugged. ‘Just finished edits on my next book. Should be out late next year.’
Will nodded slowly as if this was interesting information, but Magda seriously doubted that he had ever read any of her books. She wrote thriller and adventure stories under the pseudonym Miranda Hepworth, and Will had once mentioned that he preferred to read non-fiction, particularly books about engineering and science. He had irritated her – entirely unintentionally – by confessing, ‘I don’t like made-up stories.’
‘Do you know what the meeting is about?’ Will asked.
Magda shook her head. ‘Frank gave nothing away.’ She stripped off her coat to hang it over the back of her chair. ‘Clearly to neither of us. But it’s got to be about Henrietta, right?’
A frown creased Will’s brow. ‘Henry,’ he murmured. It seemed to Magda that Will hadn’t even thought about Henry for quite some time.
Henrietta Wiseman – or Henry – was the fourth member of
the Society, but she hadn’t attended a meeting for over three years. Nobody had heard from her or knew where she was, but Frank had refused to replace her despite her extended absence.
‘He didn’t call a meeting when Henry stopped attending,’ Will observed. ‘Why call one now? We’ve never had an extraordinary meeting, Magda. Never. Not even for Henry.’
Magda heard worry vibrating in Will’s voice and his anxiety threatened to infect her. ‘It has to be Henry,’ she said, trying to convince herself.
She looked across the table to the empty chair where Henrietta had always sat, realizing how much she missed the other woman’s presence. Henrietta was perhaps twenty years older than Magda, but she’d always had the vitality of a much younger person. She’d been effortlessly charismatic, cheeky and irreverent to the point of being a troublemaker, but always with a disarming smile or a twinkle in her eye such that people would forgive all her sins. The meetings of the Society had never been as fun since Henrietta had stopped attending.
‘I can’t think what else it could be,’ Magda continued. ‘Maybe Frank’s heard from her?’
Will nodded, but he seemed distracted, the fingers of one hand tapping the knuckles of the other restlessly. Magda sighed, disappointed that Will couldn’t shed any light on why they had been called together. She ran her eyes around the basement to check all was in order. It was a large, rectangular space with bright, buzzing strip lights on the ceiling. Like the bookshop above, floor-to-ceiling shelves covered most of the walls, but there was more than just books here. The shelves were laden with boxes and tins, piles of papers and other odds and ends, an assortment of forgotten-about, broken or misplaced everyday items.
Away from the shelves, there was a small table which stood off to the side, laden with a kettle and a coffee maker and boxes of biscuits. A mini fridge sat on the floor beneath this table and hummed contentedly to itself. On the wall above the table there was a gallery of photographs, pictures of former and current members of the Society.
Adventure
Included among them was a large photograph of Magda with her mother, taken only a year before Imelda’s death. In the opposite corner, next to one wall of bookshelves, a couple of old armchairs sat on a rug, a low coffee table between them and one of Imelda’s landscape paintings hanging on the wall above. All in all, the basement was a comfortable place, a featureless square box softened by knick-knacks, furniture and memories. But just like the reinforced door, there was a secret behind what was seen. The most important thing in the basement was hidden away out of sight. If a concealed button was pressed, one of the bookcases would swing open, revealing a recess. Magda had only seen inside that recess on a handful of occasions, and never for longer than on the day she had first joined the Society of Unknowable Objects ten years earlier.
But if this was an extraordinary meeting . . . perhaps . . . What if it’s not about Henry? What if it’s something else? Something exciting?
Possibilities popped and fizzed in her mind like fireworks, but then she shook her head, curtailing childish daydreams. She walked over to the table at the side of the room to make drinks to distract herself.
‘Here you go,’ she said to Will a few minutes later, setting before him a mug of instant coffee that he hadn’t asked for. He peered into it as Magda placed two biscuits on the table next to the mug. ‘Get that down you.’
Will sipped the drink obediently and Magda watched him try to muster a smile of enjoyment as she picked up her own mug and returned to her seat. ‘Lovely,’ he said, with an expression that suggested exactly the opposite.
The door to the stairs opened and Frank appeared. Magda’s heart kicked up to a faster rhythm: the meeting was about to start. She didn’t know whether to be excited or worried and the uncertainty reminded her of the awful nerves she used to feel before exams: Have I revised enough? Am I going to fail? Am I ready?
‘Right,’ Frank announced. He closed the door with a reassuringly solid thunk and walked over to his seat. ‘Shop’s all locked up, I’ve finished my chapter, and we’re all here.’ He looked at both of them in
turn, pushing his glasses up his big nose with one finger. ‘We can get down to business.’
Frank was an old man now, and visibly older each time Magda saw him. He had always delighted in telling long and winding stories, but increasingly these days Frank seemed to lose the thread of his tales, and on more than one occasion Magda had seen him stranded at a narrative dead end, wondering how he had got there. During the last few meetings of the Society there had been moments when Frank’s attention had seemed to drift off, as if he was falling asleep, or as if his mind was briefly elsewhere. Magda had noticed this without comment, always relieved whenever Frank snapped back into focus and was immediately the man he had always been again: warm, engaging, full of history and knowledge and secrets, the chair of the Society. The idea of Frank no longer being able to lead the Society, or no longer being around at all, was unbearable to Magda, the sort of dark thought she turned away from whenever it appeared. The sort of dark thought that was creeping in now as she sipped her tea and pondered the reason that Frank had called them together so unexpectedly.
‘What is this all about, Frank?’ Will asked, the question almost a plea. ‘We’re not supposed to meet for four weeks yet.’
‘Is it Henrietta?’ Magda asked, before Frank could answer.
‘Three weeks,’ Frank said to Will. ‘We’re due to meet in three weeks, not four.’
Will blinked at Frank. ‘OK, we’re due to meet in three weeks. What could possibly have happened to require us to meet now? Nothing ever happens, Frank.’
Frank bobbed his head back and forth. ‘Sometimes things happen.’
‘No,’ Will insisted. ‘Nothing happens. There’s never anything to talk about. We come here. We drink coffee and we eat cheap biscuits.’ Will lifted one of the biscuits Magda had given him to illustrate his point. ‘We agree everything is fine and then we go away again.’
Magda suppressed her annoyance at Will’s petulance, wishing he would let Frank talk.
‘I quite like the biscuits,’ Frank commented.
‘And then we do it all again six months later,’ Will continued. ‘That’s fine. I can handle the routine because it is predictable. But calling meetings at short notice – that’s never happened. It makes me anxious.’
‘Will, let him speak,’ Magda muttered, unable to contain herself any longer.
Will looked at her sharply, then dropped his eyes to the table.
‘I don’t mean to make you anxious, Will,’ Frank said, reaching over to clasp Will’s arm reassuringly. Magda immediately felt bad for snapping. ‘I’m really sorry about that.’
‘Well . . . you know, it’s OK,’ Will mumbled.
‘But I am afraid I had no choice,’ Frank continued, his expression turning serious. ‘It’s not about Henrietta; her whereabouts remain a mystery.’ Magda glanced again at the vacant seat at the bottom of the table. A part of her was disappointed not to hear news about her friend, but if the meeting was not about Henrietta . . . then what?
‘This is about something else entirely,’ Frank said.
Magda picked up a biscuit and took a bite, just to be doing something. Her whole body was trembling with nervous energy. Frank said nothing for a few moments, and he seemed lost in thought, his eyes gazing vacantly ahead. Magda wanted to shake him and demand he get on with it.
Finally, blessedly, Frank spoke again. ‘It’s been almost forty years since an artefact was last deposited within the Clockwork Cabinet,’ he said. ‘Neither of you were even members then. And I was so young.’ He shook his head briefly, as if suddenly taken by how quickly time had passed. ‘Forty years we have waited, protecting the archive, keeping it safe, always on the lookout for anything to add to the collection.’
‘What are you saying?’ Will asked, peering at Frank.
Magda realized what Frank was building towards and her mouth dropped open in disbelief.
‘We’ve found an item,’ Frank said, smiling. To Magda he sounded as if he could barely believe it himself. ‘For the first time in forty years, a new item has come to light.’ He bobbed his head again. ‘Maybe.’
Magda didn’t know what to say. The fridge hummed thoughtfully in the silence, and Will goggled at Frank with eyebrows high on his head.
‘You’re joking,’ Magda said finally, although she knew he was not. Frank never joked when it came to the work of the Society.
‘No,’ Frank confirmed. He leaned forward on the table. ‘So now we must act. Just because we haven’t had to do it for forty years, doesn’t mean we neglect our responsibilities now. It’s why we are here.’ He looked at Will. ‘It’s why we have tolerated all these pointless meetings over the years. Because we knew that someday, one day, we might be needed again.’
Magda found herself nodding, oddly stirred by Frank’s words.
For eighty years the Society of Unknowable Objects had existed with a sole purpose: to collect and protect and keep secret the magical items of the world. For forty years no new item had come to light and the world of magical things had been quiet, the Society’s collection undisturbed in the hidden recess behind the bookcase.
‘It would appear that this magical artefact is in Hong Kong,’ Frank said, nodding to himself. ‘And we have to do something about it, before it falls into the wrong hands.’
The Clockwork Cabinet
The item is an ivory chess piece,’ Frank said. ‘A rook.’
‘What does it do?’ Magda asked, sitting forward in her seat, desperate to know. She watched Frank’s eyebrows scrunch down as they always did when he disapproved of a question.
All unknowable objects did something: ordinary, everyday items that could enable those who possessed them to do unusual and extraordinary things. Several such items had been discovered throughout the history of the Society, some identified through concerted effort, others stumbled upon in the most unusual of places or unexpected of circumstances. And now that collection, the Society archive, was hidden away in the basement beneath Bell Street Books, kept safe from the world.
‘No idea,’ Frank answered. ‘Anyway, what it does is not really the point.’
For a man responsible for looking after magical items, Frank was stubbornly incurious about what they could do, and that frequently drove Magda to distraction. How could you not want to know about magic? Magda had often thought that if she were the owner of a collection of magical items, she would spend all her time studying them and experimenting, not keeping them locked away out of sight.
‘How do we even know about it?’ Will asked.
Frank relaxed back into his seat and Magda heard him sigh heavily, as if his old body was sore. ‘That’s partly why we’re here,’ Frank admitted. ‘Because someone has breached the secrecy of the Society.’
‘What?’ Magda gasped.
The Society of Unknowable Objects was a secret created by Arthur Simpson, Frank’s grandfather, and three of his friends in the 1940s,
a secret that had been passed down through the same four families ever since. At any one time, no more than four living people were supposed to know about the Society. Arthur Simpson had given the name ‘unknowable objects’ to the magical items because they were impossible to understand, and he and his friends had created four rules to guide the work of the Society, four rules that Frank still reminded them of regularly:
Firstly, unknowable objects within the Society collection should be kept safe from those who might seek to use them.
Secondly, unknowable objects within the Society collection should be kept secret from the world.
Thirdly, unknowable objects within the Society collection should not be used, except by members of the Society for the purpose of securing other unknowable objects.
Fourthly, decisions about unknowable objects held by the Society must be made by the Society as a whole.
As Magda absorbed the revelation, Frank removed his glasses to wipe them with a handkerchief from his pocket. ‘Don’t worry, it was neither of you.’
‘Then who?’ Magda asked.
Frank pointed his glasses towards Will as he cleaned them. ‘Will’s father,’ he said. ‘Ellery Pinn.’
Magda had met Will’s father – Doctor Ellery Pinn – on just a couple of occasions, each time only briefly and before she had really known anything about the Society. She remembered a man who was a lot like Will: slight, short, with floppy blond hair, and reserved to the point of being socially awkward.
‘My father?’ Will asked. What little colour there was in his cheeks appeared to drain away. In that moment, he made Magda think of the perfect schoolboy who had been caught by the head teacher doing something he shouldn’t.
‘Your father visited Hong Kong a lot, didn’t he?’ Frank asked. ‘Wasn’t he attached to a teaching hospital out there for a few years?’
Will considered the question for a moment, and Magda thought he seemed reluctant to answer. ‘Yes, I believe so.’
‘Did he make any friends when he was out there?’ Frank wondered. ‘Anyone he spoke about?’
Will pursed his lips, his eyes resting on the tabletop. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter. ‘My father didn’t speak about much; not to me, at least.’
A silence followed that answer and Magda fidgeted, suddenly uncomfortable in the face of Will’s rare openness. She looked to Frank, but the old man continued wiping his glasses, saying nothing.
‘What’s going on, Frank?’ she pressed, trying to get to the point.
‘A young man contacted me,’ Frank explained, slipping his glasses back on. ‘A man from Hong Kong. A Mr James Wei. He claims to be the son of a friend of Ellery Pinn. He seemed to know that Ellery had died several years ago, and that’s why he contacted me. Somehow, he knows about the Society and what we do. And he thinks he’s found a magical item.’
Frank shrugged loosely and then said nothing more, glancing back and forth between Magda and Will as if waiting for one of them to speak. Magda slumped back in her chair, still holding her mug. She could tell that Frank was unhappy about their secrets being known, and she could feel his unhappiness hanging in the air and souring the atmosphere.
‘It’s not Will’s fault, though, is it?’ she said eventually. ‘He didn’t reveal the secrets.’
‘Doctor Dennis Wei,’ Frank continued, looking at Will. ‘That’s the father’s name. Does it mean anything to you?’
Will shook his head slowly. ‘I wouldn’t know anything about my father’s friends.’
Frank harrumphed unhappily, keeping his eyes on Will. Magda waited, frowning, flicking her eyes back and forth between the two men. It was like they were talking around something that Magda
knew nothing about, as if they were excluding her from the conversation even though she was right there. It was infuriating.
‘I don’t know what you want me to say, Frank,’ Will complained finally. ‘I didn’t tell this man about us. It was my father. Go dig up his bones and scowl at him if you want to make yourself feel better.’
Frank rubbed his face, nudging his glasses up his nose. Then he got up and walked over to the small fridge, and Magda watched Will sag in his seat. Frank picked up a biscuit and munched on it as he returned to the table, crumbs landing on his jumper, and Magda saw a bottle of lemonade in his other hand. Frank had always loved sugary drinks; Magda was sure it was a big part of the reason why she had enjoyed visiting him with her mother when she was younger, because there were always bottles of fizzy lemonade or cherryade or Coca-Cola in his fridge. ‘These are not cheap biscuits, by the way,’ he said to Will. ‘I get them from Waitrose. Especially for the Society.’ He opened the lemonade with a crack-hiss and then glugged from the bottle.
‘Is he credible?’ Magda asked Frank, as he swallowed the lemonade. ‘This James Wei?’
Frank nodded. ‘As far as I can tell. I’ve done some checking. He said Ellery and his father were friends years ago. He even sent me a photo of the two of them together.’ He pulled his phone from his pocket and played with it for a moment, passing it to Will. ‘See?’
Will squinted at the phone. ‘Yes, that’s my father.’
Frank turned the phone to Magda, and she saw two men in suits standing together and smiling for the camera, Will’s father and a taller, distinguished-looking Chinese man. To Magda’s eye the two men looked happy, like old friends reunited after a long separation.
Frank burped noisily and Magda smelled lemon in the air. Across the table she saw Will’s face twist briefly with displeasure. ‘It would seem Ellery told his friend all about us,’ Frank continued. ‘Breaching the second rule of the Society. Ellery told this man to let him know if he ever came across an unusual item. And then Doctor Dennis Wei told his son before he died. It’s not a crazy story. Could have happened.’