Chapter 14
Amelia
Amelia looked down. It might be only a second-floor window, but these were high floors. If they fell, they wouldn’t be brushing themselves off and walking away. “You just said it’s impossible!”
“Impossible to climb down, sure. But we could use these.” He released a curtain from a tieback and gave it a tug.
“We’re going to abseil with three-hundred-year-old curtains?”
“You think they’ll hold up? This lining looks like plain old cotton. It should be reasonably strong.” He grabbed a handful of the fabric and went to rip it from the curtain.
She darted out a hand and grabbed his wrist. “No, don’t!”
A gunshot boomed and she screamed and ducked behind the desk as plaster rained from the ceiling. That one had entered the room.
“This is Chinese silk brocade,” she said, stroking the curtain fabric.
“Amelia, I’m prioritizing you over the curtains.”
“No, I mean this will be much stronger than cotton.” She climbed onto the desk and yanked the curtain rod down.
“It’ll be the difference between climbing into Rapunzel’s tower with all her hair or a few strands.
” She slipped the curtain and lining from the rod.
“There should be enough length that we can use the silk and cotton together.”
A gunshot blasted, followed by another, muffling her hearing.
A splinter flew off the door and struck the side of her cheek.
Tom grabbed an old letter opener from the desk and stabbed the middle of the first curtain, to get a rip started, then used his hands to tear through the length of it.
“Here,” he said, passing her the letter opener.
“Get started on the other curtain while I knot these together and tie them to the desk.”
Amelia was relieved that he seemed to know his knots—and that there wasn’t time for her to think through the implications of ruining such precious fabric.
This was not how she’d ever expected her master’s thesis on comparative tensile strengths to be put to use.
She handed the lengths to him as she ripped, and he quickly knotted them into one long rope.
“After you, Rapunzel,” he said, indicating the window as he tied one end of the length of fabric to the nearest leg of the big desk.
“Holy shitballs, don’t call me that!”
Something—someone—charged the door. The cabinet shuddered, threatening to topple.
Amelia scrambled to the windowsill. “Do you know what happens to her prince?”
“Hold on tight, and I’ll lower you,” he said, handing her the other end of the fabric. “The knots should stop you from sliding. Oh, and take this.” He held out the keys. “Just in case…”
She shoved it down her bra, trying not to finish his sentence in her head.
“When you get to the ground, make for the garage. It’s in the former stables, outside the western wing.
Look for the old blue Land Rover.” He checked over his shoulder.
“So, what happens to Rapunzel’s prince?” he said, as she climbed over the sill.
She recognized it as a transparent attempt to keep her from panicking about this particular life-threatening experience, but she appreciated the thought.
“A happy-ever-after?” His voice tensed as he took her weight.
Her life was literally in his hands—and the pillaged cocoons of several thousand long-dead silk moths.
“Only after he lands in thorns and gets blinded.”
“Good thing I’m not a prince. No one ever wrote a fairy tale about a younger son.
Don’t look down,” he said, as the fabric started to swing, creating a corresponding seesawing in her stomach.
“Look straight at the wall. Touch the soles of your shoes to the side of the house. It’ll keep you steady,” Another gunshot blasted out and the fabric shunted down, swinging her around.
“Tom?” she cried.
“Sorry, I just had to duck.”
She scrambled to plant her shoes back on the stone. Something crashed, inside the room.
“You know how to drive a manual car?” Tom called, with a greater urgency.
“A what?”
“A—what do you people call them? You know, with gears?”
“A stick shift! I’m out of practice, but sure.” Though she absolutely did not want to leave without him.
Her descent halted.
“That’s it, I’m afraid,” he called. “We’re out of rope.”
He was already climbing over the sill, holding the fabric in one hand and the gun in another.
She had to get her weight off the curtain—it couldn’t hold both of them.
Her feet were within reach of a stone window ledge, and from there it was only a short jump to the ground, which she managed with no grace whatsoever, kicking part of the ledge down with her.
“Run!” he called, as another gunshot fired. He swore, and something smashed to the ground beside her. His phone. “Don’t wait for me.”
She ran the long way around the house in case someone was looking out the ballroom windows, taking a shortcut through the kitchen garden, and sprinted along the turning bay.
The car was easy to find, parked on a concrete pad within the remains of the stables, which wasn’t much more than a rusty metal roof and chunky timber supports.
She opened the driver’s door and jumped in, remembering too late that the driver’s seat was on the other side.
She scuttled over, shakily drove the key into the ignition, and turned it.
Nothing happened. Nothing at all. Was she doing something wrong?
She stomped on the clutch and tried again. Still nothing.
There was a tap on the window beside her head. She screeched. Tom. Just Tom. She must have a word with him about the jump scares. She opened the door. “It won’t start!”
“Petrol’s been siphoned out.” He nodded to his shoes, which were sole-deep in a rainbow-sheened puddle. “The spare tank has been knocked over too,” he added, gesturing into the shadows of the shed.
“They really don’t want us getting away.
” Something banged, from the house. Not a gunshot.
More like the slam of an exterior door. “Is there some other way we can get out? Or raise the alarm? How about that farm I saw on the map—Wildwood?” She slipped out of the car and landed in the petrol with a slight splash.
“The Pritchard place. I was just thinking about that. It’s a bit of a hike through the wood to the south, but we can at least call the police from there, assuming their phone is working.”
“Are these the same neighbors who were shooting up your forest yesterday?”
“They’re a little shady, but mostly just with business dealings. And we don’t have a lot of options. Stay close. We can follow the riverbank around to the wood.”
As they ran, he picked a path that kept trees and various decrepit outbuildings between them and the abbey: sheds, a broken greenhouse, an empty chicken coop.
She was glad she could just follow along, and that he was holding the weapon like he knew how, even if it was an antique.
The fewer life-or-death decisions she had to make, the better.
When they made it under the canopy in the wood, she bent double, panting.
“Amelia?”
She waved an apology. “I haven’t really kept up my fitness in the last year.”
“We can take a minute,” he said, scanning the trees like he could see things she couldn’t.
“Puss in Boots,” she panted.
“Sorry, what?”
“The oldest son gets the mill, the youngest gets the cat. Which turns out pretty well for him.”
“O-kay.”
“You said no one ever wrote a fairytale about a younger son.”
“Ah, right. Do ghost cats count?” Tom drew his phone out of his pocket.
The screen was cracked and black. He tried switching it on, looking grim.
“Dead,” he proclaimed. “It slipped from my pocket when I climbed over the ledge. Not that it was much use to us.” He put it away.
“I feel awful for dragging you into this.”
“You didn’t drag me in—they dragged us both in. The blame isn’t on you.”
“Still, I’m buying you that therapy.”
There it was again, that assumption there’d be an afterward, and not just in terms of survival.
She didn’t want him to be one of those people you met once, clicked with, and never saw again.
But what was the alternative? Most likely, it would be a slow death by social media.
For a while he’d like her posts and she’d like his, until the algorithms phased them out of each other’s lives.
Note to self: do not connect with him on social media.
Her earlier strategy was still the best: Thank him for the good times, get therapy for the bad, and consign it all to memory—the parts she could remember.
She had to fix the life she had, not fool herself that she could become a different person in a different country and leave her crap behind.
You could never leave your crap behind—not the crap in your head.
“Let’s keep moving,” she said.
“Tell me if you need to stop. I’m aware we haven’t eaten for ages, and we don’t have any water.”
“I’m totally one-starring this trip review.”
The trees through the forest were different from those in the glade on the other side of the house—older, oakier, gnarled into fantastical shapes. And the terrain was hillier and muddier, which made for slower progress.
“So, what happens to Rapunzel?” Tom said, after a long silence, as they jogged down a slope strewn with rotting leaves. He was navigating with the confidence of someone following a path, though she couldn’t discern one.
“Huh?”
“You told me what happens to her prince. What happens to her?”
“She gets lost in the wilderness and gives birth to twins—his, before you ask. Sometime later he finds her, and she cries on his eyes and it restores his sight.”
“So they do live happily ever after!”
“Forever traumatized, but sure. I mean, she spent much of her childhood locked up in a tower by a witch. And imagine his PTSD!”
“I don’t suppose the Grimms were big on cognitive therapy.”