21
‘Are you sure it’s in there?’ Adam says. ‘Maybe we left it in the house?’
‘I’m certain of it,’ I reply from behind a pile of boxes. ‘I have an inventory of everything I brought from your grandfather’s house, I remember clearly noting it down.’
I closed up the shop a little early tonight, and Adam and I travelled to the lock-up in my little van. Now, while Adam waits, I’m scrabbling about behind a load of boxes trying to find it.
‘Yes!’ I exclaim as I see a flat piece of oak wedged behind the frames of some large oil paintings. ‘I’ve found it.’ I tug at the wood, but it’s stuck tight. ‘Argh! I can’t shift it.’
‘Do you want me to try?’ Adam says.
The area behind the boxes is small, cramped and also very dark without the use of a torch, and after what Adam told me yesterday, I’m worried about asking him to go in there.
But if we don’t get the piece of oak out this way, we will have to move all the boxes and then the paintings before we can get to it, and it will take ages.
‘If you’re sure?’ I ask hesitantly. ‘The area behind here is quite … snug.’
‘Claustrophobic, you mean?’ Adam says, knowing exactly what I’m suggesting. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be fine, Eve. Now let me help you back over the top.’ I climb back over the boxes and Adam offers me his hand as I’m about to jump down.
His gesture is very sweet and gallant, and once more, as I take hold of his hand, I can’t help but like it. ‘Thank you,’ I say, feeling a little shy, as what can only be described as a warm glow spreads right through me.
Is it my imagination or is Adam holding my hand for a little longer than is strictly necessary now I’m back down on the ground?
I glance up at him to see if he might be feeling something similar. But as our eyes meet, this seems to jolt him back into action and he quickly drops my hand.
‘Right, then,’ he says with a brief nod of his head. ‘My turn!’
Adam, looking incredibly athletic, leaps effortlessly up onto the boxes and then does a sort of vaulting movement down over the other side, looking like a gymnast doing the perfect dismount from the pommel horse.
Whereas when I climbed over, I sort of grappled myself up on top of the boxes, then rolled, or rather fell, inelegantly over the other side.
‘Can you see it?’ I ask, holding my phone torch high in the air so he’s not in the dark for too long.
‘Yep, I can see something that looks like what you described, wedged behind these paintings.’
‘Yes, that’s it. Can you get it out?’
I hear some tugging sounds and Adam grunting.
‘Christ, it’s wedged tight,’ he says. ‘Right, one … last … pull !’
I hear a sort of scraping noise. ‘Have you got it?’
‘Yep! I’m going to pass it over the top to you.’
A thick piece of oak appears from behind the boxes and I carefully lift it down over the other side. It’s followed by Adam, looking a little more red-faced than before, climbing carefully this time over the top of the boxes.
‘You were right,’ he says, standing back to look with me. ‘There is a tree carved on there that looks just like the others. So now we have three trees – four if you include the one in the middle of Clockmaker Court.’
What we’re both looking at is a small door carved in solid wood. It has a bronze handle and bronze studs around the outside, and, just like the door on the grandfather clock, in the middle there’s the simple carving of a tree.
‘It’s small, isn’t it?’ I say, looking at the door. It can’t be much more than five feet tall. ‘If this is a standard door, it’s going to be pretty old. People were much shorter in the past, so they didn’t need such tall doorways as we do now.’
‘Why would my grandfather have this in his house, though? It definitely wouldn’t fit any of the door frames there – they were all standard height. Remind me where you found it again?’
‘Tucked behind some of the other furniture in his study – the bookcases, I think. It was the day when the company came in to remove the big bits of furniture I couldn’t take. They took the bookshelves after we’d emptied them and this was behind one of them.’
‘Right, so, along with a modernist painting, a grandfather clock and an actual living tree, we also now have a tiny door carved of… oak?’ Adam asks.
‘Yes.’ I rub my hand over the door. ‘I think so.’
Adam shakes his head. ‘This mystery just gets stranger and stranger as each day passes.’
‘But with no apparent solution… yet.’
‘Only Barney’s idea.’ Adam suggests this as if he doesn’t really want to.
‘That it’s time-travel related? We both thought that – it wasn’t just Barney. Do you really believe that?’
‘I don’t know what to believe any more.’ Adam sighs.
‘Why don’t we take this door back to my house tonight, get some food and think some more about it. There’s nothing more we can do here.’
‘Good idea!’
After we’ve driven back towards my house and safely parked up the van, Adam carries the door from the garage to my house. When we get inside, he props the door up in the lounge against the wall next to the fireplace. When he’s finished, I open two bottles of apple cider and pass him one.
‘Thanks,’ he says, taking a swig. ‘That hits the spot on a warm day.’
I do the same. ‘So, what do you fancy?’
‘To eat?’ he asks, his blue eyes twinkling.
‘Yes,’ I reply, hurriedly pulling open a drawer and rummaging about inside. My stomach does that flip-flop thing again, like it’s on a rollercoaster, only faster. It seems to be happening a lot around Adam recently. ‘I should have some menus in here somewhere.’
‘Sure,’ Adam says, sitting down on the sofa. He takes another sip of cider while he looks thoughtfully at the door in front of him.
‘Er… I can offer Chinese, Mexican, Thai, burgers and kebabs, pizza or good old fish and chips. Any of those sound good?’ I ask, choosing my words carefully this time.
‘I’m easy,’ Adam says, leaning back on the sofa and resting his elbow casually on the arm. ‘What would you like?’
I’m shocked when I find myself having to fight hard against the voice inside me that’s shouting, ‘Say you ! Say you !’
I swallow hard and take another gulp of my cider. I have to get a grip. I just can’t stop staring at him. Why is Adam so incredibly attractive?
I mean, I’ve always known that he’s attractive. He’s a very good-looking man. But just lately he’s become… hot . And him doing that stupid twinkly thing with his eyes isn’t helping either. And now he’s running his fingers through his hair. Oh, God – stop!
‘Eve?’
‘Er …’ Annoyingly my cheeks flush and I quickly turn away on the pretence of selecting one of the menus. ‘Chinese?’ I say, grabbing the menu from the side.
‘Sounds good to me.’
I pass Adam the menu from my local Chinese takeaway and take another sip of my cider. While he browses the dishes, I kneel down and take a closer look at the door.
‘What are you looking at?’ Adam asks, glancing up.
‘I don’t remember seeing an apple on the tree before, when we pulled it out of the lock-up,’ I say, putting my drink down on the coffee table behind me. ‘Look, there’s a tiny apple carved there on one of the branches.’
Adam kneels down next to me and inspects the carving. ‘So there is. I guess we could have missed it before; it wasn’t the best light in there.’
We both turn to look at each other and our eyes lock once more.
There’s no doubt in my mind this time – Adam’s expression completely mirrors my own feelings of desire.
Like an incredibly strong magnet pulling me towards him, I find myself unable to do anything else other than lean forward and kiss him.
For one awful moment I think Adam isn’t going to respond to my advance, and my impulsive feelings rapidly begin to subside as another feeling begins to emerge – humiliation.
I’m about to pull away and apologise, to say I don’t know what came over me, when I feel his hands gently cup both sides of my face.
His lips don’t need words to express what he’s thinking – their message is crystal clear…