‘Calm down, love. I am wishing you happy Christmas. I’m simply looking out for you – I don’t want you to run into any trouble while you’re there on your own.’
‘Well, it feels like you’re getting at me,’ she said grumpily.
‘I’m not. Now, have you got enough money to be getting on with?’
That question couldn’t help but make Grace smile. Annabel and Grace had a joke that even if they became multi-millionaires, their dad would still ask them if they had enough, as he had done when they were teenagers heading out for the evening.
‘Yes, I have enough,’ she said, turning around to see her sister look up and grin. ‘Now, do you want to speak to Annabel?’
The rest of the evening passed in a weary haze of wine and television. When Grace climbed into bed, exhausted, she knew she would sleep the night.
Except she woke up three hours later, sweating, Annabel motionless beside her in the dark. The answer she’d been searching for earlier was right in front of her. She knew exactly what was troubling her about the cellar.
Grace crept downstairs, hoping she wouldn’t wake James. There was no way this could wait till morning: she needed to look in the cellar right now.
Luckily James had left the TV on, so the flickering light filtered through the living-room door and flashed in staccato bursts on the passage walls. But as she got further towards the back of the cottage, it became gloomier, the light dwindling to nothing. She ran her hands over the cellar door until she found the handle and pulled it open, hearing it creak. Then she made her careful way down the steps, engulfed in blackness, knowing that once she reached the bottom she could switch the light on.
She was jittery, jumping at every slight noise or rustle, feeling her way along the wall, nearly retreating in panic as something soft brushed against her hand, until she realised it was her dressing-gown cord. ‘Stop working yourself up,’ she scolded herself in a whisper.
When she reached the bottom, she felt along the wall, and flicked the light switch.
The change from total darkness to the stark white light of a bare bulb was utterly disorientating. Grace closed her eyes for a moment, making a conscious effort to slow her breathing, and then opened them again, squinting.
Everything was as she remembered, including the bitter cold. She headed straight for the box of Adam’s personal effects – the one she knew he had brought with him from London. She began taking things out, quickly and carefully, piling them on a nearby shelf.
She didn’t have to dig down far until she found what she was looking for.
His passport. She opened the small purple booklet, to double-check, and there was his picture, the one that Grace had always laughingly told him looked like a police mug shot.
She stared at Adam’s handsome face. A rush of tenderness weakened her legs, and she held on to a shelf to stop them buckling. This was evidence, surely, that he hadn’t intended to run away? Or at least it made it less likely. But if that were so, then other possibilities, some unbearable, edged closer to being true.
Her mind swirling, she whirled around.
James was standing silently behind her.
She squealed with fright. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ she shrieked.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ he shouted back. Barefoot and bleary-eyed, he was brandishing a large piece of wood. ‘For Christ’s sake, Grace, you scared the life out of me. I woke up to a bloody door creaking, and then heard all this scraping and rustling. After what Annabel’s been telling us, I was terrified I was about to confront the headless horseman rummaging about down here.’ He laughed, but when Grace didn’t join in he immediately sobered up. ‘What’s wrong?’
She shook the passport at him. ‘They asked me to find this last year, when they were suggesting that Adam had done a runner – and I couldn’t. But I didn’t know the bloody cellar existed then, did I? It suddenly dawned on me that I never checked the boxes he put here. Perhaps the police will take his absence more seriously now – though I somehow doubt it.’ She dropped her arm despondently.
‘Grace,’ James began to rub his bare arms as he stood there in T-shirt and boxer shorts, ‘come upstairs and we’ll talk about this. It’s freezing down here.’
He held out a hand. She went across and took it, and he began to lead her towards the stairs. ‘Hang on,’ she said, ‘we have to turn the light off.’
He waited as she flicked the switch, then they edged slowly back up in the darkness. Once in the corridor, Grace dropped his hand and closed the door gently, trying to stop it from creaking.
James followed her down the hallway, but when she began to climb the stairs, heading back to bed, he said, ‘Grace, wait a minute.’
She tried to look at him, though she could barely make out his face.
‘Come and sit with me for a moment.’
She went into the lounge with him. He pulled her onto the sofa and unzipped his sleeping bag, covering them both with it.