I licked my finger to remove a crumb of pastry from his cheek.
‘Jamie,’ I asked, ‘when your mummy went away, she left you a letter, didn’t she?’ I almost had to shout to be heard over the wind.
He shrugged and took another big bite of the pasty.
‘Only I was tidying your bedroom today and I noticed it wasn’t on your desk, where it usually is.’
‘Sarah, do you support Arsenal or Man U?’
‘I’m a Manchester City girl, but, Jamie, this is important. When was the last time you looked at Mummy’s letter?’
‘Dad said he’d take me to a football match one day.’
‘Jamie, listen to me.’
I took the pasty from him and turned his chin gently with my fingers so that he had to look into my face. ‘I need to know where the letter is.’
‘I don’t know where it is,’ he said. ‘It’s gone. I put it on the fire.’
‘You put your mummy’s letter on the fire?’
‘Uh-huh.’
He looked at me with the old expression of defiance. I did not know if he was lying or not; either way, he knew he was risking trouble. I dropped my hand and pulled my coat a little tighter.
‘What about your teddy?’ I asked. ‘Where’s your blue teddy?’
‘He went on the fire too.’
‘Jamie, you know you shouldn’t tell lies. You know that’s naughty. You wouldn’t put blue teddy on the fire, you love him!’
‘He’s in the fire, he’s in the fire, he’s in the fire!’ Jamie sang. ‘And he got burned to pieces, burned to death and he’s gone for ever!’
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
BACK AT AVALON, I phoned the detective to tell him what Jamie had said. He sounded harassed and distracted. He thanked me for my call but didn’t prolong the conversation.
I put the phone down and wandered around the house. Maybe there was a perfectly straightforward explanation. Maybe destroying the letter and the toy were Jamie’s way of finally accepting that his mother was gone; a child’s way of finding closure. But surely children didn’t put their teddies on the fire? Not normal children anyway.
I took vegetables out of the larder and started to prepare a cauliflower for dinner, but the knife slipped and sliced my finger. It bled awfully. I made a tourniquet out of a handkerchief and managed to staunch the blood, but it seemed like another bad omen. Jamie was behaving oddly – he was being rude and difficult – and the storm was growing fiercer outside. I sent Jamie upstairs to change while the dinner was cooking and I reinforced the cracked pane of glass in the outer door with Sellotape. I’d just finished that task and was praying for nothing else to go wrong when the power went down, throwing the house into a noisy darkness, draughts whistling through the black like bullets. At first I thought it was a power cut, but when I drew back the curtains I could see the distant lights along the quarry road at the bottom of the hill. The electricity had tripped again. This usually happened when a squirrel gnawed through a cable in the loft. I felt close to tears. Not only were we in the dark but there was another poor dead squirrel in the roof.
I knew where the fuse box was – it was in the cellar – but I’d never had to deal with it on my own before. Always, in the past, Alexander had been there to mend the fuses. I had never even been down to the cellar, partly because I hadn’t needed to and mainly because it was cold and dark and cramped and creepy. Now I wished I had carried out a practice run in daylight, while Alexander was with me.
‘Sarah! It’s dark – where are you?’ Jamie wailed from upstairs.
‘It’s OK, love, it’s just the electricity gone again,’ I called. ‘Don’t try to come down, you might fall. Just stay where you are, I’ll sort it out.’
I patted my way along the kitchen walls to the cellar door, and found the key on the hook beside it. It was cobwebby; I felt something run across my hand and cried out in alarm and dropped the key.
‘Shit!’ I said, half-sobbing, shaking my hand. ‘Shit, arsehole, shit.’
I dropped to the floor and fingered along the tiles, fearful of squashing the spider or whatever it was. The key had worked its way half under the skirting board. I managed to free it, then I rose to my feet again. The wind was howling now, making a truly terrible noise, and the windows were rattling in their frames. I found the handle to the cellar door, and held it tight while I worked the key into the hole, and turned it.
‘Sarah!’ Jamie yelled from a distance.
‘OK,’ I called. ‘It’s OK, Jamie, I’m going down into the cellar to fix the fuse. Stay there!’
I pulled the door open. I knew there was a flight of steps in front of me, with the wall to my left. I knew the ceiling was low; there was not room to stand upright. There was a torch on the ledge to my right. Gingerly I reached out and felt through the air, black as pitch, until my hand found the cold plastic casing of the torch. I picked it up carefully and held it close to my chest. I felt for the switch, and when the light went on, its beam sweeping madly around the cellar walls, I was weak with relief.
‘Jamie,’ I called, ‘I’ve found the torch. I’m going to get the fuse then I’ll come upstairs and get you. Stay there, don’t move.’
I pointed the torch down the cellar steps.
I hated enclosed spaces almost as much as I hated heights.
My heart was already thumping as if it wanted to escape my chest, and my knees were flimsy.
I turned to make sure there was no way the door could close behind me. It was wide open, pushed back as far as it would go. I tested it with my hand. It was all right. It was not sprung. It would not move by itself.
Slowly, I put one foot on the first step.
It was a concrete step. It was icy cold but solid as rock beneath my socked foot. I flashed the torch down into the cellar and in the dark I saw cardboard boxes, an old rucksack, a broken chair, a couple of suitcases: the usual junk. I took another step down; and another.
The cellar roof was lower than I’d expected; there was only about four feet between the floor and the ceiling, and the underground room was airless: what oxygen there was tasted of fungus and soil. I crouched in the space and let the torch swing its beam. It was a large area, pipes and cladding crawling over the walls. I sucked my bottom lip and tried to calm my heart and suppress my imagination. I had to concentrate on the job in hand. I found the fuse box with the torch and crept forward.
When I reached the wall, feeling panicky in the low space, I balanced the torch on a cardboard box, within easy reach. The beam of light now ran parallel with the fusebox wall, pointing to where the logs for the fire were stacked. Because the torch was casting its beam at such a strange angle, I could see there was an empty space behind the log stack. A passage? Or an alcove? I could have been into the cellar a thousand times and never realized it was there.
Why had Alexander stacked the logs in front of the alcove, blocking it off, when he could have put them anywhere? What were they hiding?
I picked up the torch and hobbled, hunchbacked, over to the wood stack.
By holding the torch at an angle, I could direct the light behind the logs. Behind was an opening about five feet square. At its base was a large wooden lid the size of a manhole cover.
Carefully, breathing hard, I moved a few of the top logs so I could get a better look. They were heavy and awkward and scratched at my skin but I didn’t stop. I knew Jamie was in the house alone and scared, but I had to know what this was and why Alexander had kept it hidden.
When I had made space for my arm to fit through, I reached over and tugged at the rope handle looped through an iron ring hammered into the wooden lid. I couldn’t shift it with one hand. So I put the torch down carefully, on the floor beside my foot, and, using both hands, I managed to work the lid free. I moved it enough to be able to see down inside the hole that it had covered. I picked up the torch and directed it into the area beneath the lid. A narrow hole had been chiselled out of the stone beneath the house. It seemed to go on down for so
me distance.
I wriggled my head and shoulders through the gap in the logs to get a better look. Now, I could direct the light downwards, and I realized that what I was looking into was a well. It must have been dug out beneath the house centuries ago. No doubt it had been walled in behind the wood stack so there was no danger of Jamie ever finding it and falling in.
I smiled to myself, feeling silly. I didn’t know what I’d been expecting to find, but I was giddy with relief. The hole probably didn’t even go down that far. I leaned over as far as I could and pointed the torch so the light went vertically down the well. The distance between the upper rim and the water was probably about seven feet, and the well’s diameter was big enough for an old-fashioned pail, nothing larger than that.
But there was something in the well, something smooth and modern and shiny. It took me a moment or two to recognize what it was. It was stuck between the wall and the well-bottom at an awkward angle, as if it had been dropped; it was something that shouldn’t have been there.
I could distinctly see the logo of an apple with a bite missing on the shiny white surface of the exposed part. It was an Apple MacBook.
It had to be Genevieve’s.
‘Oh Christ,’ I muttered under my breath. ‘Oh Jesus Christ, no!’
There was only one possible explanation: Alexander had hidden the computer in the well, and then he’d hidden the well. It couldn’t have been anyone else.
I backed away, put down the torch and began piling up the logs I’d removed. Alexander had some kind of system, but I had trouble making them fit and balance; it didn’t matter, I told myself: just put them back. I was sobbing with fear and frustration as I rammed them on top of each other, swearing and cursing under my breath like a madwoman. When I’d more or less replaced them, something on the shelf at the edge of the stack caught my eye. It was a small ceramic pot full of screws and nails and bolts. Underneath the pot was a pad of pale-blue writing paper.
My hands trembled as I hobbled across the cellar, moved the pot and picked up the pad. It was the same paper that had been used for Genevieve’s letter to Jamie, with the same daisy pattern around the edge. Several sheets were missing, but on the top piece of paper were doodles and drawings, practice drawings for the cartoon of Jamie holding blue teddy.
I licked my lips to moisten my mouth. My knees felt very weak. I flicked over the paper to the next page and I realized the truth.
On the page was writing. It started off in the rounded feminine hand that I’d come to recognize as Genevieve’s and deteriorated into Alexander’s untidy scrawl. He had scribbled over the lettering, but it was quite clearly his.
Alexander was dyslexic. He found handwriting difficult. He had practised a dozen times to make the letter plausible. There was no doubt at all: it was Alexander who had composed and written Genevieve’s goodbye letter to her son.
From way away, up in the house, I heard Jamie’s terrified screaming. I felt as if I’d been in the cellar for hours, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes – still too long to leave a seven-year-old alone in the dark. I put the pad back and reached for the pot, but in my haste I knocked it over. Nuts and bolts scattered and bounced all over the cellar floor and the pot shattered.
‘Shit, shit …’
I fumbled and scrabbled, but the little pieces of metal had rolled away into the dark. Gasping with panic and frustration, treading on bits of china, I picked up what I could.
‘Sarah!’ Jamie screamed. He was closer; he must have made his way downstairs in the dark. He mustn’t come into the cellar.
I told myself to calm down. I took a breath and held it.
Lights first, I told myself. Sort out the lights then you can go to Jamie and come back to tidy the mess later.
Still clutching the torch, I opened the fuse box, but I didn’t know what to do. The switches were the old-fashioned slot-in ones. They weren’t numbered or named, and they all looked exactly the same. I didn’t know which had tripped. I didn’t know what to look for. My fingers moved over the switches, searching for the one I needed.
‘Please,’ I said again. ‘Oh please God, help me …’
And then the cellar door crashed shut. There was a rush of air so strong it nearly knocked me off my feet and I dropped the torch. I heard the crack of the casing and the rattling of the batteries as they spilled across the floor. The dark was relentless. I could see nothing. I scrabbled for the steps but was disoriented. I didn’t know which direction I was facing. Cold sweat chilled my skin and I fought for breath; panic engulfed me like a wave. I tried to scream but no noise came. It was a waking nightmare, a terror, a kind of death.
The last thing I was aware of was a pain on the top of my head so intense that it was almost divine.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
I DRIFTED IN and out of consciousness.
When I came round properly, I was lying on the settee in the living room. A log fire was crackling in the grate and the electricity was back on. I was reclining on a nest of pillows, covered over with my own duvet. I felt warm and sleepy and comfortable, and it was only when I tried to move that the pain in my head reminded me what had happened. I put a hand to my face. My nose and upper lip were terribly sore.
‘Jamie?’ I called. ‘Jamie?’
‘Hey you!’
Alexander appeared beside me. The firelight cast shadows behind him, devilish, frightening, spiky figures that danced on the walls. His face was strangely shadowed by the firelight too. I retreated a little into the duvet.
Alexander smiled and leaned over, smoothed my forehead. His fingers were cool and dry.
‘You OK?’
‘Yes.’
‘Headache?’
‘Mmm.’
‘You knocked yourself out, you idiot!’
I curled and withdrew into myself.
‘You banged your head on the floor joist in the cellar and then you hit your face on the shelf as you went down. You’re going to have a shiner in the morning.’
‘I was trying to fix the fuse.’
‘I know.’
‘The door slammed shut.’
‘It must have been the draught from when I opened the outside door. I’m sorry it made you jump, but it was lucky I got there when I did. Jamie was in a right old state.’
‘Is he OK now?’
‘He’s fine. In bed fast asleep.’
I felt the top of my head tentatively with my fingertips. There was a huge egg. It was very sore.
‘Did it bleed?’
Alexander shook his head.
‘I think you’ll survive.’ He had a glass in his hand. He was drinking beer. ‘Do you want a drink? Glass of water?’
‘Tea,’ I said. ‘Please. I’m dying for a cup of tea.’
I had to think. I needed time to think. I wanted Alexander to go away and leave me alone so that I could remember what had happened.
The storm was still raging outside. Every now and then the flames in the grate shrank and cowered beneath the onslaught of rain being blown down the chimney. Any movement was painful and awkward. It wasn’t just my head and face; my neck ached terribly too.
I tried to remember.
Had the door blown shut, or had somebody slammed it?
Had I banged my head, or did somebody hit me?
Had Alexander seen the cellar door open, come down the steps and found me reading his practice letters to Jamie by torchlight? Had he hit me in anger, or desperation?
No, of course he hadn’t. When the door slammed and I panicked, I’d forgotten how low the ceiling was and stood up quickly. That was all. I’d knocked myself out.
Alexander came back into the room with a glass of water and two tablets in the palm of his hand.
‘Take these,’ he said. ‘They’ll help with the pain. I’ve put the kettle on.’
I tried to remember what they tell you in Accident and Emergency about head injury but I couldn’t recall the exact advice. Something about being sick, losing consc
iousness …
‘I think I should see a doctor,’ I said.
‘It would be madness to go out in this weather,’ Alexander said. ‘There are trees down and flash floods all over the place. The Glastonbury road’s under two feet of water. I wouldn’t have got back at all if it weren’t for the Land Rover.’
‘But I must have been unconscious for a while.’
‘It wasn’t that long,’ Alexander said. ‘Only a few moments. You walked out of the cellar on your own two feet. We were talking. Don’t you remember?’
‘No.’
‘You told me you were very tired so I made up the bed on the settee so you could have a sleep.’
I was thinking that was impossible. I had no memory of any conversation at all.
‘What else did I say?’
‘Not much. You were a bit confused.’
He smiled at me fondly, like a parent might smile at a sick child.
‘I think mainly you just need a good, long rest,’ said Alexander.
‘But my head …’
‘You’re going to be fine. I’m going to watch over you tonight to make sure.’
He leaned down and kissed me very gently, just above my left eye.
‘Ow,’ I said.
‘Is that sore? You poor thing. Rest now. Nothing’s going to happen to you. I’m going to watch you like a hawk.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
ALEXANDER HAD BEEN right. I was tired to my bones, but still I had trouble sleeping that night. I drifted off from time to time and, whenever I awoke, he was there beside me, holding on to me. When I tried to go to the bathroom for a glass of water, he sat up at once and insisted on fetching it for me.
‘Don’t move,’ he said. ‘Stay there and let me look after you properly for a change.’
I was resigned to the situation. I had no means of getting away from Avalon, even if that was what I wanted to do, and it wasn’t, or at least I didn’t think it was. I was so confused. I did not know what was right and what was wrong any longer, or what was true and what was a lie. I wanted to keep faith in Alexander. I had waited for months for him to tell me that he would look after me and that he would let nothing come between us, and now he’d said those words and they weren’t making me happy.
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