Chapter 38
38
‘It’ll be all right,’ Flynn said, his voice calm and soothing. ‘We’ll look around then try the door again. So, what can you tell me about the cellar?’
‘Very little. I haven’t spent much time down here as it’s not part of the refurbishment plan. No windows, so they can’t use it for accommodation. I checked it over to make sure there’s no damp or structural issues and it seemed sound to me. Dougie spent longer down here and he didn’t have any concerns. It looks like it’s been used for storage. Oliver and Rosie say they haven’t a clue what’s down here.’
As I spoke, the lights – a couple of rows of exposed bulbs stretching to the far end of the cellar – kept flickering. Flynn picked up a duster abandoned on top of a crate and used it to avoid burning his hand as he went along one row and back along the other testing the bulbs.
‘They’re all screwed in tightly,’ he said, placing the duster back where he’d found it. ‘We might lose the light, not that it’s great anyway.’
He whipped out his torch and slowly walked down to the end of the cellar, shining it at the walls and ceiling. There was no point me trailing behind him so I decided to look in some of the boxes. The nearest ones to me were vintage timber shipping crates and, when I shone the torch on my phone into them, it appeared that six of them contained a mixture of glassware, crockery and ornaments, all carefully wrapped. I didn’t delve too far as I didn’t want to risk breaking anything. There could well be some beautiful and potentially valuable pieces in there but I’d need to take them upstairs for a proper look. Another shipping crate contained folded-up curtains and there was one with some lacework, possibly table runners and place settings.
Piled next to them were several cardboard boxes full of paperwork and old photos. I lifted out a black-and-white photo of a woman and a girl standing by the front door of the hall and flicked it over to see if anything was written on the back. Agnes and Rebecca, 28 July 1913. The date jumped out at me – exactly one year before World War I began. They’d have had no idea about the loss and destruction that lay ahead. I turned it back to the front, wondering who Agnes and Rebecca were and what had happened to them. I’d done some research into the owners of Willowdale Hall but those names weren’t familiar, although they could easily have been extended family or friends.
For the first time this morning, I felt a moment of calm. A box like this was a dream find for me and I could easily lose myself for hours in the history. At the opposite side of the room there was an old chaise with some padding bursting out of a hole. I carried the box over to it and gave it a wobble to make sure there wasn’t a leg missing, but it seemed to be secure. I couldn’t see Flynn but I could see his torch beam at the far end of the cellar so I sat down with the box beside me and rummaged further. Inside, there were stacks more photos, postcards, letters, invitations to parties and menus.
It wasn’t long before I felt the cold seeping in. At first, it was just my hands and I kept rubbing them together in an attempt to warm them but soon my whole body felt cold and I regretted abandoning my coat in the kitchen. I definitely needed it down here. The T-shirt I was wearing might be long-sleeved but it was only thin cotton and provided no protection. I wished I was wearing a fleece, but I hadn’t opted for trapped-in-cellar-chic when I’d dressed this morning.
Flynn returned and tried the door again but, after several attempts from him and from me, there was no way it was going to open. He couldn’t even try to barge it as it opened inwards.
I took my phone out, hoping to ring Rosie for help, but there was no reception, which didn’t surprise me considering we were underground. Flynn had no signal either. We tried all over the cellar but there was nothing. Next step was to check for some tools or even just a knife to see if we could jimmy the lock. Flynn took one side of the cellar and I took the other. Each time I checked a box and found nothing helpful inside, panic built inside me. The lights continued to flicker and even intermittently went off for a second or two.
‘I don’t like this,’ I admitted to Flynn.
‘Don’t panic. We’ll find something in one of these boxes and be out of here in a jiffy.’
I wished I could share his optimism. Most of the boxes were filled with papers and more photos but I couldn’t muster any excitement about the history inside them while we were trapped. As we reached the end of the cellar, the lights flickered on and off in quick succession followed by a pop, a buzz and darkness. I stayed rooted to the spot for a moment, waiting for them to come back on like earlier but they didn’t.
‘Looks like the lights have died,’ Flynn said, flicking his torch back on.
I couldn’t stand it. I had to get out of here. It wasn’t that I was scared of the dark or anything like that. It was being trapped with Flynn which was too much for me. I raced back to the crates by the door and began frantically searching in the boxes again for something to help force open the door.
‘You’ve already looked in there,’ Flynn said, ‘and so have I. Nothing is going to have magically appeared in any of the boxes since we looked. There’s no tools or anything down here so there’s no point searching again. You’ll have to let it go.’
I stopped rummaging and stood upright, my heart pounding as those words took me back in time. He’d said the same thing when I’d tried to find out why Noah turned to drugs.
‘Let it go?’ I cried, blowing my fringe out of my eyes. ‘That’s your answer to everything, is it? Just let it go, walk away, forget about it.’ The words came out too loud, too shrill.
‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Noah, of course!’
Flynn came closer and I could only just see his face in the torchlight but he looked bewildered. ‘I’m not the one who walked away. You did that.’
‘Because you didn’t care.’
‘About what?’
‘About what happened to Noah. About me.’
‘Is that what you think? Of course I cared!’
‘Then why didn’t you show it?’ I put on a deep voice to mimic him, part-quoting, part-paraphrasing what he’d said at the time. ‘ Every question leads to more questions. Where’s it going to end, Mel? You’re going to have to let this one go .’
‘And you took that as me not caring?’ He took a couple of steps closer so that there was only an arm’s length between us. ‘How could you think that? It was because I cared so deeply about you that I said those things. I could see how broken you were and how every avenue you went down made it worse instead of better. I wanted you to stop for your sake.’
‘But I couldn’t stop. I had to know what really happened to him and I needed you to understand that, but you didn’t even try.’ As I said the words, I knew they were unfair. He had tried to understand. He’d repeatedly asked me why it was so important to me and I hadn’t been able to answer him.
He gently placed his hands on my shoulders. ‘I’m sorry if that’s how you felt. My intention was never to brush it aside. I only wanted to take the pain away.’
And now he was apologising when he’d done nothing wrong. My eyes burned, my throat felt like it was on fire and it worried me how close to becoming uncorked that bottle of emotion inside me felt. I needed to apologise. I knew that. But for some unknown reason, I shrugged his hands off me.
‘I didn’t need you to take the pain away. Nobody could do that.’
An agonising sob burst from me, scaring me. Flynn tried to pull me to him but I shoved at his chest with both my hands and suddenly the fire was back.
‘What I needed was for you to support me.’ Another shove. ‘To find the answers with me, to understand that I had to know.’
The cork finally burst from the bottle.
‘You let me down,’ I cried, pounding my hands against his chest as tears coursed down my cheeks. ‘You let me down.’ Those final words were barely a whisper as the fire left my body and I sagged against him, my cries echoing around the dark cellar.
Flynn pulled me close and held me as years of pent-up frustration and grief poured out of me. I needed him right now too and he was here this time doing the best thing he could possibly do for me – holding me and letting it all pour out. Pain, guilt, grief. And even though I was laying it all on him, he wasn’t to blame. I was. Flynn hadn’t let me down. I’d let him down, let me down, let Noah down.