It’s lunchtime. And a strange thing happens. Keats stands, with the others following suit. I feel like a solitary audience watching a synchronised chorus line of male workers. I tried to talk to one of the guys earlier and he blanked me. I was midway through asking him a question about his role when he shuffled away like he was fleeing from me asking him out on a date. My teeth press into my lip as doubt and indecision play tag. Am I meant to stand too? New jobs can leave you so insecure with their unwritten rules and regs no-one takes the time to tell you about. Before I can decide on what to do, the door opens revealing a beaming Michael.
He rubs his hands together as he makes a jolly announcement. ‘Who’s for pizza?’
Ah! So that’s why they all got up. I assume this is some kind of lunchtime office ritual, Pizza Tuesday, bonding over food and drink. What a great idea. So I stand and reach for my jacket as Michael disappears back into the corridor. But Keats puts his hand on my shoulder. I tense at his touch. I’ve never felt his flesh on me before. I thought it would be the sensation of forbidding cold, but beneath his imprint is a stirring warmth. How strange, I wouldn’t have expected a cold creature like him to be warm-blooded. He goes over to his computer and types. I lean down to view my message box.
Keats: Not you. Permanent staff only.
I’m engulfed by this retched sense of isolation. It’s never a great feeling being left behind. Brings back memories of Mum passing over. As they file out, leaving me alone, I try to cheer up by insisting I’m not entirely sorry that I won’t be joining these zombies, or Keats in particular, for lunch. I’d love to be a fly on the pizzeria wall to see the stunned expression on the waiter’s face when Keats orders his Hawaiian in his full combat desperado rig. Pineapple and ham? No, Keats will be a pepperoni and Cajun sauce guy. Hot ‘n’ fiery.
The steel door clangs shut. I sigh lightly and then decide I might as well go for lunch too. I push the door handle down. The door doesn’t budge. I tug harder. It refuses to detach from its frame. The metal handle slips from my hands when the penny drops. I’m locked in the basement.
Alone.
All the earlier patient work I’ve put in to keep composed goes out of the window. Correction: window. There’s no window down here. No natural light. I fumble in my bag for my mobile and call Michael. No connection. The basement must be beyond the reach of my service provider’s reception. And stupid me forgot to ask for the password for the office wifi, so I can’t even send an e-mail. I turn. My edgy gaze bounces and bounces about. My chest squeezes, my eyes water as if they’ve been stung by a film of dust.
The walls are closing in on me, I know they are, the ceiling inching lower. The lights come alive, stabbing me with their hostile glare. I’m caught in a coffin, the bang bang of nails cementing its lid over me forever. It rushes back to me, the girls who died in this very trap room over a hundred years ago. The words on the website come back to haunt me.
As the flames drew closer, their faces wreathed in choking smoke, prayers for divine intervention were feverishly howled by the doomed girls. The heroic dog that had led the way, keened in helpless anguish. All twenty-two perished.
I panic. Thump my fist on the door and cry out. No-one comes. I flatten my back helplessly against the door, my palms spread against unresponsive cold steel. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Didn’t a character say that in the classic comedy, Dad’s Army, as they did the opposite, panicking enough for England?
They’ll be back soon, won’t they? How long does a pizza take?
I hurry to the back of the basement, hoping to find a way out of this prison. The wall is shadow and whitewash over ancient wood panelling. Something catches my eye. A semi-circular wooden handle. I study the panel more closely and note the straight lines defining it. I think it’s a door. I look back at the handle. Damn. It’s been painted over and is stuck to the panel. Screwing up my face with determination, I dig in my nails and pull. Let out an ouch of surprised pain as I spring backwards and stumble. The handle hasn’t budged an inch.
Think. Think. Think.
I rush back and rummage around in drawer after drawer until I find a metal ruler. It takes all my will and strength but I manage to jemmy the handle free. Then I tug desperately. No joy. I use the ruler to scrape away the old paint from where I think the door frame is and put my foot against the wall and pull with all my might. A thick solid oak door creaks on its hinges, gives off the groan of a dying person, opening enough for me to inch through.
I sense it’s another room. Blanketed in dark, coated in a musty smell. I use my hand to feel along the wall. Touch something that’s the shape of half a tennis ball jutting from the wall. A dated light switch. My fingers roam over it until I locate the on/off switch. Flick. A pasty dirty brown-yellow light throws its gloom over what appears to be an empty storeroom. The aged bulb inside is hanging by a wing and a prayer, its wiring frayed and torn. There’s another door at the back. It’s fastened shut with what must be decades-old rusty bolts. I won’t be defeated. I bite and fight the pain that attacks my hands as I pull the bolts free. Open up.
Fresh air. Streams of natural light. I tip my head back like a convert reborn. Tilt my mouth open. Bliss. I stay like that, don’t move for a while, breathing in the invigorating oxygen that I’ve always taken for granted. I look about me and am surprised to see I’m not fully outside. It’s a kind of narrow courtyard, functional, not pretty, save for its cobbled ground. In the middle is an old-fashioned drain to catch rainwater through the large iron grill above that links the courtyard to the world outside. Two black things suddenly clatter over the grill. I jump back, grossed out it’s a pair of rats swishing their tails taking a lunchtime stroll. Then it happens again and I understand – it’s the shoes of pedestrians walking over.
I breathe with relief now I can holler for help at passers-by if I need to. Thank God my mobile works here because of the reception coming through the grill to outside. Now I know I can come here, it feels okay to go back inside.
I close the door to the narrow passage, fasten the bolts again but their age and rust mean they’re nearly hanging off. I push the internal door to the basement back into place and try to cover where I’ve scraped off the whitewash.
Now I’m here on my own, naughty thoughts come to me. While the cat’s away… I slip into Keats’s seat and spin round. I can’t resist grinning. I shake the mouse on his computer to get rid of his screen saver and look at what he’s been doing all morning. He’s a busy boy, no doubt about it. The guy’s a whirlwind. On his recently opened files option, there’s a dozen he’s opened today alone. One is a policy document for a corporation that explains how to create a happy and integrated workforce. I can’t hold back the nasty laugh that bursts out. Laughter dies, curiosity grows when I see a graphics file called ‘P Funeral Service’. Strange thing for a management consultant to be doing. Or perhaps ‘P Funeral Service’ is a cover name for something else. I open it.
It is indeed the first page of an order of service programme for a funeral. The photo of the deceased, a young man, stuns me. My breathing changes, along with the beat of my heart, both high kicking to a dangerous level of acceleration. My earlier wish that Keats’s chair turns into lethal electric must have come true because I swear I’m being electrocuted. You see, I knew this handsome young man in the photo. But I’m not paralysed with shock because he’s dead. I knew he was dead. How can Keats be working on his funeral service programme now? He can’t have passed away. Not recently.
Philip died that summer ten years ago.
Philip can’t have died twice over.
My head, my brain, my everything is shaking in numb denial. This can’t be Philip. Not my Philip. No! I’ve got this wrong. Being alone down here, in this stagnant vault, has mushed my mind. My head moves closer to the screen to check…I hear the zombies coming back in the corridor outside. A tribe of footsteps playing musical echoes. Keats.
Panic is beside me again. A fine sheen of sweat blooms below my hairline as I hurry, with shaking hands, to close the file. The footsteps beat louder. Hell, I can’t get Keats’s screen saver back. Come on. Come on. The footsteps are the intense beat of a drum as they near the reinforced door. The screen saver won’t be found. Awful silence from outside. My heart lurches. I jump into my chair, head down, tapping nonsense on the keyboard as the door opens.
I run my hand over the damp sweat on my brow. Look up at Keats. Smile innocently enough, although I suspect he deliberately locked me in this room. The zombies file back on his tail. Keats takes his seat and studies his screen for a moment. He moves and clicks his mouse. He turns his head towards me slightly and pauses. What’s going on behind that bandana and sunglasses of his? A patchwork of confusion? A vision of menace? Lips parted because he’s going to let rip at me?
He turns slowly from me and carries on working as if nothing has happened.
I’m completely shot. The only sounds are digital hums, the walls’ peculiar breathing and my own aching heartbeat.
Nothing in my life could prepare me for this moment. My eyes have just told me one thing but my searing and inerasable memory tells me something else. Philip died, was buried. Ten years ago. That’s not something I’m ever going to forget. It made me the person I am, more than anything else. Now a file – a funeral programme – on Keats’s computer tells me Philip’s just died and is about to be laid to rest in the near future.
Both can’t be true. Deep down inside my soul, someone, something is screaming at me to somehow, someway, print off a copy of the funeral programme. I can hear the screaming. But my limbs and hands are stiff, stuck still by a bitter cold as my fractured mind hurtles back into an unwilling past.