Chapter 23 #2
His diffidence was suddenly appealing. I had become so used to Tilly grabbing at any part of my anatomy that she could reach that I had forgotten how it felt to be ‘beyond touch’; that feeling that I belonged to myself and had the final say on whether I was touched or not.
I stretched out my own hand and took his. ‘Let’s go.’
Ross curled his fingers among mine and I felt suddenly stronger.
It wasn’t just his presence, it was the implicit future he was promising.
All right, we might not be able to have anything together but we could at least try.
If we never tried, we certainly wouldn’t have anything, so, with my heart shouting what the hell into the wind, we advanced through the undergrowth on Elm Cottage.
Ross had been right, it did look as though it were dissolving. The previously fallen section was still there propping up part of the roof but another part of the outer wall had sunk inwards and was being kept up only by the angle of the other walls. The whole building looked like a drunk horse.
‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘And you’re sure Isobel isn’t in there?’ She’d be safe, I was sure, as nothing had actually fallen. Unless she’d had a heart attack, there was nothing that could have caused her any damage.
‘I looked in through the window and I couldn’t see her. She should be fine, shouldn’t she? It’s just a bit wet.’ His whole tone told me that he was secretly scared and trying not to show it.
As Ross finished speaking another gust made the trees around us flail wildly as though denying that it was ‘just a bit wet’ and emphasising the sheer destructive power of wind and water when combined.
I felt the tightening of his hand around mine and thought, He’s not sure whether he believes that.
After David’s permanent 100 per cent certainty about everything, Ross’s indecision was rather pleasant.
‘We have to go and look.’
‘It might be dangerous.’ Ross’s hesitation tugged at my fingers again.
‘And you’ve got Tilly to think about. Nobody will miss an architect if half a tonne of masonry comes down on us, but you…
’ He tailed off, clearly entering another world of worry.
‘I shouldn’t have got you out here,’ he finished, slightly sadly.
‘It was selfish. I wanted you here for me, not Isobel.’
I wondered what constituted bravery and where the line lay between that and total stupidity. Bravery had been facing the birds. Stupidity might well be going into the house to possibly face them again.
‘Birds,’ I said, as the memory gripped me. ‘Where are the birds?’
He looked up at the thrashing treetops. ‘Denmark, if they’ve been trying to hang on in this wind. They can’t fly in this.’
‘Then maybe they’re in there…’ I pointed with my unheld hand at the sloping walls and angled roof. ‘If Isobel has been injured, they might be trapped in there with her. The windows are all closed, look.’
‘Would you leave the windows open on a night like this?’
‘My point is that we can’t just leave them all. We need to make sure Isobel is all right and that they aren’t all stuck in another room by a fallen bit of wall or something. They might be safe enough for now but if the storm goes on much longer it’s going to bring the entire place down.’
‘I see what you mean.’ The hand that wasn’t holding mine came up to his mouth and hovered as though Ross wanted to bite at a nail. Then it lowered again. ‘You’re right. We might both die a dreadful and pointless death, but we ought to check the place out.’
‘Ross…’
‘I know, I know. I can’t help it.’ I got a sudden grin then, a grin that made him look mischievous and sent a current of heat through me that was most unexpected in this dawn of cold and damp. ‘I’m an architect. Worst-case scenario is going to be carved on my gravestone.’
‘Where it will be appropriate.’ I smiled back, surprised at myself. ‘This isn’t dangerous, it’s just slightly hazardous and when you live with a toddler you soon get to grips with risk assessment. Come on.’
With the wind buffeting at our backs and the rain intermittently strained down onto us by the waving twigs above, we moved towards the cottage.
The remaining windows were streaked with water and curtained with darkness.
Nothing seemed to be moving. We circled around to the back, where the window of Isobel’s room was similarly unlit and showing no sign of life inside, even when we banged and shouted.
‘Hell.’ I pushed my hair out of my eyes. ‘We’ll have to go in.’
We walked back around to the front door, still clearly going through its ‘ajar’ phase and letting the wind and rain have a good rummage around in the hallway. As we slid in through the opening, I could see the line where the damp had reached inside. There was a slight groaning noise.
‘Is that her?’ I grabbed hold of Ross as he squeezed in behind me.
He cocked his head. ‘Sounds like timber. It’s probably the roof, let’s make this quick.’ He glanced up the staircase, which squatted like a toad under a brick. ‘Could she have gone upstairs?’
‘Half the stairs are missing. She couldn’t have got up there without a rope and several sturdy mountaineers.’
‘True, true.’
We both looked at the closed door to the back room. ‘What if she’s lying dead in there?’ Ross asked eventually.
I had been thinking the same thing. ‘Then we’re about to find a body.’
He recoiled as though the body was a definite fact. ‘I don’t know if I…’ The hand holding mine was snatched away and began poking at his hair as though he needed to grab handfuls of it.
‘It’s only Isobel. Alive or dead, it’s only her.’ I tried to sound rational, although the darkness and the closed door and the fear that a whole flock of birds might be about to burst free and claw at my face was making my voice shake.
‘No, it’s… I used to get home and find Mum unconscious,’ Ross said, the words rushing out as though they wanted to compete with the storm.
‘Oh, that makes it sound as though it was a routine thing, it wasn’t.
It might have been easier to stand if it was; it’s the uncertainty that gets you, you see.
Never knowing what you’re about to find—’ He stopped speaking suddenly and turned to face me, although I couldn’t see much more of him than his outline.
‘I’m a coward, I know it. Therapy at ￡150 an hour showed me that.
I want to save people but I’m afraid I can’t, and I don’t think we can save Isobel. ’
The storm, muted a little by the fabric of the house, boomed in what remained of the roof like an incoming tide.
I reached out and touched what I hoped was his face.
It was so dark that I might well have been poking him in the eye.
‘It’s all right,’ I said gently. ‘You’re allowed not to be perfect. ’
A sigh into the dark. ‘Thank you,’ he said softly. ‘I was worried that you…’
‘But I think we ought to have this conversation later,’ I went on, a little more briskly. ‘We’re in a house that’s trying to fall down, and we need to find Isobel, dead or alive.’
I heard him take a very deep breath. ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’
‘And if this room is full of birds, I am going to lose my shit so totally that you can spend the next ten years trying to save me from nightmares, all right?’
A gleam of a smile. ‘That sounds fair enough. Although I’d like to put in a bid for “a good long time”, if that’s all right with you.’
I didn’t answer, because the reality of a long time of bird nightmares was horrifying, although the thought of waking to Ross’s sightly desperate brand of reassurance was pleasant. I put my hand on the doorknob to that dreadful room and turned it.