All her attempts at phoning Shaun from the Tarr Steps car park had failed. Now she’d had time to compose herself, Thea was desperate to talk to both him and Tina. But how was she going to tell them that all their hard work had been for nothing?
Driving up through the village, towards Mill Grange, Thea noticed that one of the mill doors was wide open, and pulled her car to a halt. Hoping it was one of her volunteers inside, and not an uninvited guest, Thea approached, reasoning with herself that the mill’s doors were so solid they’d be very difficult to break into, and there was nothing inside to steal anyway.
Grateful that, thanks to Mabel, she knew it couldn’t be John inside, Thea stepped into the gloomy half-light. ‘Hello?’
Tina’s head peeped around the door to the connecting room. ‘Oh Thea, it’s you. I’m so glad you found me.’
‘What are you doing here? Are you on your own?’
‘I was getting fidgety waiting to hear from you, so I’ve left Sam with my phone. He’s pruning the hedge on the driveway in that spot where there’s a mobile signal. He was going to run here as soon as you called.’
Knowing she wouldn’t have been able to wait idly for news either, Thea understood her friend’s desire to keep busy. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been so long.’
‘Just tell me.’
Thea followed Tina into the old spinning room. A wave of guilt and sadness hit her. If she’d come straight back after the meeting, then perhaps Tina wouldn’t have spent so long turning this room into the ideal demonstration area for the Open Day’s guest spinner.
‘This is amazing. How have you done all this so quickly?’
A small row of tables had been erected along the far wall, each covered with fleeces in lieu of tablecloths. Upon those were baskets ready to fill with wool skeins and any other small sale products. Next to the hefty bunch of mill keys, a tray of candles flickered in the dim light, throwing the room into a gothic mix of light and dark.
The floor had been not just swept, but polished, and there was a large wicker-backed chair in the corner next to the only modern item in the room; a large Anglepoise lamp.
‘The lamp needs new bulbs, but otherwise, apart from sorting the lock on the door, I think we’re nearly there.’
‘It’s wonderful.’ Thea peered up at the high ceiling. The old electric lights were feeble to say the least. ‘Decent lighting, or a lack of it, is going to be our only issue once the locksmith has worked his magic tomorrow.’
As she heard the words come out of her mouth, Thea gave an internal groan. Better lighting wasn’t going to be their issue at all.
‘That’s why I have candles to help with that tonight.’ Tina pointed to the three flames across the room. ‘We can’t have those once we’re open. Health and safety and all that, but they’re helping for now.’ Tina started to pick at a piece of stray fleece wool. ‘It’s bad news, isn’t it? If it was good news we wouldn’t be talking about the candles. You’d have bounded in here, all smiles, and told me everything was alright. But you didn’t.’
Thea’s sigh was so deep it made the nearest candle flame gutter. ‘The house has already been sold.’
‘Sold!’ Tina’s face creased into a map of lines. ‘I thought they were going to tell you if it was going to go on sale or not. How can it already be sold?’
‘That’s what I’ve been wondering. If Malcolm was telling me the truth, then the house officially went on sale at nine this morning and was sold by noon.’
‘Is that even possible? Don’t you have to have surveys and mortgage meetings and stuff before you could buy a house?’
‘I should have said sold subject to survey, but even so it’s quick. Must have been a cash sale, but who has money like that in this day and age?’ Thea picked up one of the baskets as she voiced a suspicion that had been niggling at the back of her mind since leaving Taunton. ‘You don’t think it could have been Shaun, do you?’
‘Shaun? The buyer, you mean?’
‘No one else could have known about the sale so fast. He saw Malcolm first thing this morning to talk about his show. If he was told about the sale, he could have put in an offer before it went public.’
‘And a private sale would save the Trust a lot of hassle and a fair bit of money on agents’ fees.’ Tina examined the display critically as she added, ‘Could Shaun afford it?’
‘John seemed to think he could.’
‘Oh hell, it wasn’t John after all, was it?’
‘That was my first thought too, but he couldn’t have known. Anyway, I asked Malcolm outright if there was a John Sommers involved, and he swore not.’
‘I suppose that’s something.’ Tina looked around the room she’d spent the last few hours cleaning. ‘I suppose we’ll have to work out how to give everyone back their Open Day ticket money.’
‘Well actually, that’s happening. After that it’s all over.’
‘Why? What’s the point of giving a child a sweet and then taking it away once the wrapper’s off?’ Tina slumped against a freshly whitewashed wall.
‘Malcolm made it sound as if he was doing the community a favour, but I suspect it’s more to avoid the bad press of cancelling after so many tickets have been sold.’
‘I suppose the new owners might have insisted it went ahead.’
Thea put the basket back on the table. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘If I was about to buy a place that was tabled to be a house the locals were hoping would bring Upwich as a whole extra income, I’d want to do anything to keep them on my side if I’d taken that hope away from them.’
‘Makes sense.’ Thea grimaced. ‘There’s something else. Malcolm asked me to give you a message. He wants you to come off secondment from Monday.’
‘What? But that’s in two days! The trustees agreed I should stay until the Open Day.’
‘I know.’
For a second, Thea thought Tina was going to cry, but then she tilted her chin up and said, ‘We’d better finish this room now then. You’ll have too much to do after I’m gone to fiddle with this.’
‘There’s no need. You’ve done loads and it’s getting rather dark. I ought to go and tell Shaun and Sam what’s happening.’
‘I’ve only got to arrange the last of the fleeces. I thought I’d pile a few in the corner of the room on that table.’ Tina pointed across the room to an empty table behind the door. ‘If you hold a candle up so I can see better, it won’t take a moment.’
Lifting a candle from the table, Thea stood in the open doorway, casting as much light as she could in Tina’s direction. ‘Do you know where Shaun is?’
‘Probably with Sam in the driveway or waiting in the office so he’s in range of a call.’
‘As soon as you’re done, we’ll go and find them.’
*
‘Have you heard from Thea?’
Shaun had grown tired of waiting in the office. There were only so many emails he could face answering in one go, and his mind wasn’t on the job. With his phone held optimistically out in front of him to catch any stray signal in the ether, he’d gone to find Sam.
‘Not yet. I was going to go to the mill to help Tina, but it’d be sod’s law that Thea would call the minute I left this spot.’
Shaun checked his watch. ‘It’s almost half six. She should have been back ages ago. Let’s fetch Tina. She might have Malcolm’s private number.’
‘You’re worried something’s happened to her?’
‘John might not have gone straight back to Bath.’
A dark cloud crossed Sam’s countenance. ‘Let’s go.’
*
The fleeces were so heavy that Tina could either pull them into position or talk, but not both. With Thea nodding encouragingly, she draped the final one over the table in a manner she hoped appeared as if they were waiting to be carted off and turned into wool.
Just as Tina stepped back to admire the display, the mill plunged into a deep charcoal gloom.
‘Hell. A power cut.’ Thea moved the candle she was holding as close as she dared to the display so she could see Tina. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah. Let’s get out of here before we trip over something and—’
A sound in the dark made them jump.
‘What’s that? Is someone there!?’ Stepping back as she twisted towards the sound, Thea knocked her arm on the wall behind her, sending the candle flying, the motion blowing it out and plunging them into pitch black obscurity.
‘Is someone there?’ She shouted louder, but there was no reply.
Tina grabbed Thea’s hand and pulled her towards the door. ‘Come on!’
‘But I dropped the candle.’
‘I can’t see it, so it must have gone out. Come on!’
Following the glint of light coming through the part-opened main door, Thea stopped again.
‘I definitely heard something.’
They froze to the spot, their pulses racing as they listened. ‘I can’t hear anything, I…’ Thea sniffed. A new acrid scent was coming from behind them.
Wishing she hadn’t left her mobile with Sam, Tina tugged on Thea’s arm. Her voice barely above a terrified whisper, she said, ‘The fleeces were on paper tablecloths. The candle can’t have gone out after all.’
‘Oh God…’ Thea started to fumble for her phone, and then remembered she’d left it in the car. She was so used to it being little more than a timepiece here.
As the stink of burning paper filled Thea’s nostrils, she gripped Tina’s arm tighter and pulled her forward, following the fleeing figure towards the doors.
They were closed.
‘The noise must have been them swinging shut.’ Thea felt nausea rising in her stomach as she spun around to look back the way they’d come.
An orange glow grew on the far side of the mill.
‘Oh God!’ Thea stumbled towards the spinning room Tina had set up.
‘No!’ Tina tried to pull her back. ‘You can’t save anything.’
‘I’m going to shut the internal door, trap the fire in there.’
Tina immediately helped tug the connecting doors shut. ‘Faster…’
Running back to the main door, Thea tugged at Tina. ‘You have the keys.’
‘Keys?’ Thea couldn’t see the colour drain from Tina’s face, but she felt her friend’s fear.
‘You do have the keys, don’t you?’
‘They’re… they’re in there. I left them on the table.’ Tina banged on the inside of the main doors in the hope of being heard. ‘Is there another way out? An unlocked door?’
Suddenly remembering through her panic that the lock was broken, so the keys probably wouldn’t get them out anyway, Thea thumped her own fists against the doors, shaking her head into the dark.