Annie had enjoyed meeting Alex so had found herself despondent when he left, swiftly followed by Sam. The house felt very empty once more.
As he left, Sam had told her, ‘Look. I’ll get all this fixed, OK?’
But the only thing that had changed since his departure two weeks previously was that autumn had arrived.
As she peered out of one of the bedroom windows, she could see that most of the maple trees had already dropped their leaves. Their spectacular shades of red, orange and purple were scattered on the ground beneath the trees. Elsewhere, the colourful display was in full riot. The leaves on the many trees and large shrubs which hugged the boundary of the estate were already deep shades of russet and yellow, glorious in their spectacular autumn tints. That included the huge weeping willow tree in the middle of the front law. Its long leaves had transformed over the last few weeks into a deep shade of gold.
She had taken a photo of it the previous day to Arthur’s nursing home. But he had been more interested in showing her the hydrotherapy suite that had just been installed.
‘I’ll need my swimming trunks,’ Arthur had told her.
Annie was amazed to think that Arthur even had swimming trunks that would be respectable so she had made a note to buy him a new pair. But she had been pleased with his progress. Arthur was now using two crutches instead of the walking frame.
‘Next week, I might even go down to the one crutch,’ he told her.
However it was his spirit that seemed lighter. He was having lunch in the dining room each day and was full of the other patients’ tales whenever Annie went to visit him. There were exercise classes and movie theatre afternoons in the large lounge and, from what she had heard, even a spirited game of darts every day. She was just pleased that Arthur was as far away from the Hall as he could be, given the mess everywhere.
She continued to stare out from the first floor, watching as the builders once more left on the stroke of four o’clock. Their destruction must have finished for the day. A low mist was already rising from the cold ground, heralding another possible frosty night. A cool breeze blew in through the gap in the wall where the window should have been. Would they ever have windows again? A rainproof roof? Heating? Hot water?
With a shiver, she turned away to cross the room. As she did so, she spotted Sam’s black jumper that she had shrunk in the wash. He had used this room when he had stayed two weeks ago. The thought of him lying in that bed did all kinds of things to her imagination.
She absent-mindedly picked up the jumper. Feeling the soft cashmere against her cheek, she thought she could detect a faint aroma of his woody aftershave. She didn’t know why it comforted her but it did. She pulled it over her head. It fitted her perfectly. Anyway, she needed the extra layers as a plummeting temperature was forecast for the following day.
She spent a while checking each bedroom for signs of progress, finding, with no surprise, absolutely none whatsoever. If anything, it all seemed even worse with no sign of anything ever being fixed or finished. Walking along the corridors, she realised that she felt very alone in the big house by herself. She was used to the creaks and groans of the place but it didn’t feel right anymore. Not that it wasn’t a relief from the relentless noise each and every day.
But for now, it was empty. With a shiver she realised the date. It was Halloween. And she was living in her very own scary shack.
Deciding to make a cup of tea, if only to pass the time and distract herself from an onset of gloom, she went towards the first floor landing where the sight before her filled her with horror. The stairs were missing. There was nothing but air between her and the ground floor.
‘What’s this?’ she cried aloud. ‘Where’s the staircase?’
She had come upstairs hours ago, deciding to pack away Arthur’s bed linen as it was covered in dust and debris. She had then bagged up most of the linen cupboard as it was equally dirty.
In the meantime, the builders had set to work with yet more demolition, which must have included removing the staircase. Annie was briefly horrified by the thought of the lovely, classic staircase being dismantled, before she arrived at a more pressing question.
‘How do I get down?’ she said out loud.
But peering over the ledge she found the answer. In the dark, late afternoon light, she could just about spot a ladder that had been propped up against the top floor.
‘I can’t,’ she muttered, beginning to back away.
It wasn’t that she was afraid of heights. She just really didn’t like them. The trouble was, there was no other way down and she had left her mobile phone downstairs somewhere.
‘I’m such an idiot!’ she ranted at herself. Why of all times had she left her phone behind?
But she had to get downstairs somehow.
Feeling absolutely terrified, she slowly crouched down at the edge, swinging her leg out. Waving it about in the air, she finally connected with the ladder. Then she moved her other leg to join it. Her heart was thumping as she clung to the top rung. But her legs had turned to jelly and she wasn’t sure if she could move.
Annie glanced down and wished she hadn’t because she could see how far down it was to the floor below. She spun her head back to stare at the top of the ladder and took a gulp. Then she moved her left foot down to the next rung. And then her right foot followed. She took her time, feeling every limb shaking in fear.
Please don’t let me fall, she prayed.
But she kept moving one foot at a time, slowly and surely.
She allowed herself another glance down. Nearly there, she told herself. Keep going.
With a shaky breath, she carried on her slow descent until her feet finally touched the ground.
Then Annie burst into tears.
*
Sam pressed his foot down hard on the accelerator as he drove through the outskirts of Cranley village. The hands-free line rang out loud in the car but there was no answer.
He was beginning to get worried. He had been trying Annie’s mobile for a couple of hours but there had been no reply. His first thought was that she had been at the nursing home and that something had happened to his grandad. But the nurse had assured him that all was OK and that Arthur was playing chess with another patient.
He made a promise to himself that he would visit his grandfather the following day. What if he had taken a turn for the worse and Sam hadn’t been there? Despite everything, he would never have been able to forgive himself. But that didn’t give any explanation as to Annie’s absence. Had she had enough and left Willow Tree Hall? It didn’t seem possible, but she had been telling him over and over how bad it was with the builders.
Maybe she was at a Halloween party, but she hadn’t mentioned anything the previous evening when they had spoken. As usual, they had discussed the builder’s lack of progress and not much else. He hadn’t had time to message her to let her know that he had caught an earlier plane and would be home that evening.
He pulled into the driveway and slowed down the car in deference to the potholes. He was relieved that he had managed to organise rental of a Range Rover for the time being. It was vastly more practical than the Porsche, but even so, the driveway was another thing to add to his list of things to get sorted.
But finding Annie was his top priority at that moment.
He knew he shouldn’t be worried about her. She was spiky and angry with him nearly all the time. Sarcastic. Borderline rude on many occasions. And yet, she cared for his grandfather and vice versa. She had looked after Arthur and Aunt Rose when no one else had been around. He remembered the tears she had shed at the hospital when he had first met her. There was a vulnerability to her. And he had left her completely alone in a huge, dilapidated house with a bunch of dodgy builders.
He skidded the car to a halt in front of Willow Tree Hall and was dismayed to find it unlit. There really was no one at home. But then he noticed a small light in the garage. Bracing himself for the prospect of either burglars, squatters or something even worse, he drew himself up to his full height and headed over to where one of the doors had been wedged open with a brick.
In the middle of the garage, which was now packed to the rafters with boxes, he found Annie sitting on a wooden crate, eating Nutella out of a jar with a teaspoon. ‘Hello,’ he said.
She jumped at the sound of his voice before breaking into a wide smile. ‘Hello!’ she said, far more enthusiastically than he had ever heard her speak before.
That was when he noticed the empty bottle of wine lying on the floor next to the crate and realised that she was more than a little drunk. ‘Been having a party?’ he asked, raising his eyebrows in amusement.
She shook her head. ‘Not dressed for a party,’ she said, dissolving into despondency.
She glanced down at the black sweater and jeans she was wearing. He realised with a jolt that she was wearing his black sweater that had shrunk in the washing machine. It certainly looked much better on her than it had ever done on him.
But something must be very wrong for her to have got into this state. ‘Is that all you’ve had to eat?’ he asked gently, nodding at the jar she was holding.
‘Needed sugar,’ she told him with a heavy sigh.
‘Come on,’ he said, going over to stand in front of her. ‘Let’s get you back inside the house.’
He tried to pull her up to stand but she was resolutely staying put.
‘No, no, no,’ she murmured, clutching hold of the crate. ‘I don’t want to go back in there when it’s like that. Let’s stay here.’ She looked over his shoulder into the darkness outside. ‘Anyway it’s a new moon and that’s my favourite.
‘Look, I know it’s a mess in there,’ he began to say.
‘You have no idea,’ she said, sounding near to tears.
He blew out a long sigh and realised he could see his breath in the dim light of the lamp nearby. Night had drawn in and brought with it a temperature hovering around freezing.
‘Well, if we’re staying in here for a while,’ he said, going to the open door and nudging aside the brick with his foot. ‘Let’s keep what little warmth there is inside, eh?’
The metal door swung to a close with a loud clang.
Suddenly Annie began to laugh. It was a delightful sound and one that he had never heard before.
‘What’s so funny?’ he asked, wondering how drunk she actually was.
Between hysterical giggles, she managed to say, ‘Because the door wedges itself shut and the only way to open it is from the outside.’
He gaped at her. ‘Which means?’
‘We’re stuck,’ she told him, as her laughter abruptly stopped.
He frantically looked around. ‘Where’s your mobile?’
She shrugged her shoulders and frowned hard in thought. ‘In the house,’ she eventually replied.
And his own phone was still in the car where he had left it in such a rush.
He began to push at the door but it refused to budge even an inch. He turned to look at Annie who was sucking on the teaspoon, completely unpanicked by the fact that they were both locked in there for goodness knows how long.
‘Have you got stuck in here before?’
She nodded. ‘Early one morning last week.’
‘How did you get out?’
She appeared to take a long time to remember. ‘I shouted out to the builders when they arrived. It was only for about half an hour. The peace was quite nice.’
But it was nine o’clock at night and nobody would be back until the following morning.
And the dimly lit lamp had just gone out.
*
Annie stared into the darkness. ‘What’s happened?’ she whispered, touching her eyelids. ‘Have I gone blind?’
‘I think the battery has run out in the lamp,’ came Sam’s dry reply.
‘Oh God. Is this going to turn into a scary movie because I’m not sure I can cope.’
‘Look,’ she heard him say. ‘Is there anything else in here apart from boxes? Any tools or equipment?’
She shook her head before realising that made her head feel really fuzzy. ‘Only ornaments. Some designer clothes. Oh and some very heavy books.’
‘I thought that perhaps there may be a saw or a drill in here. Of course, in the darkness I’ll probably end up giving myself an amputation.’
‘You could always start with your head,’ she muttered before breaking into giggles once more.
There came a sound of boxes being moved around, interspersed with some loud oaths.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked. Her voice sounded all high and squeaky.
‘I wasn’t planning on standing up all night,’ she heard him say. There was the noise of more scraping and movement. ‘There’s probably enough room for two over here.’
She shook her head in the darkness, causing yet more light-headed fuzziness.
‘Come on,’ said Sam. ‘Don’t you trust me?’
She wasn’t sure about anything anymore.
Of course, there were bound to be spiders in an old garage like this. Really large ones. And she was cold. Very cold. So she slowly stood up and stuck her hands out, groping around in the darkness for Sam.
It turned out that Sam was also holding out his hands in front of him as he accidentally grabbed her left breast when she got near him.
‘Watch it!’ she hissed, backing away from him.
‘Sorry,’ he replied, but it sounded as if he was laughing. ‘I wasn’t actually hoping for a quick grope in the dark.’
‘Just watch those hands, buster,’ she told him. ‘I know karate.’ She attempted to strike a pose but only managed to whack her hand against the side of a nearby hat stand. ‘Ow!’
‘Come on,’ chuckled Sam. ‘Where’s your hand?’
Their fingers finally collided. He grabbed the rest of her hand and manoeuvred her onto the makeshift seat next to him. With Sam’s large frame, there wasn’t much room and the sides of their bodies were pressed together.
Annie sat in the dark, her head spinning round and round.
She had to stay professional, which was quite hard having drunk a bottle of wine on an empty stomach. Why on earth of all evenings had Sam come home now, especially when she was drunk and not thinking straight? She should never have drunk the wine in the first place, of course. But she had been so shaky and upset after climbing down the ladder that she had staggered into the kitchen and gone straight to the bottle hidden in one of the cupboards.
Then she had realised that all the glasses were packed away in the garage. So she had come outside to find them, carrying a jar of Nutella with her as her meagre dinner. But there were so many boxes that she had given up looking for a glass and just drunk the wine straight out of the bottle.
She had no idea how long it had been until Sam had arrived but it was dark now. Both inside the garage and outside.
*
Sam couldn’t think straight with Annie sitting so close to him. Her subtle touch of perfume was filling his senses and he was having a hard time concentrating on the situation.
‘Why don’t you want to be king of the castle?’ she suddenly blurted out.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
‘Earl, Lord, whatever it is. You know, the inheritance.’
‘Oh. That.’ He sighed. Perhaps he could be honest in the dark. ‘My father didn’t want it either. He just wanted to see the world.’
When his parents had been killed in the car crash, it was only much later that he had discovered that his dad had bought a house in Australia with the intention of emigrating all four of them out there. Far away from Willow Tree Hall and his grandfather.
‘But you’re not your father, are you?’
Annie’s words hung in the darkness around him.
He had begun to see as the years went by that his own rebellion into the music world had been a way of escaping from the inheritance.
‘No, I’m not,’ he finally replied. ‘But I can see how much of a burden it can be to have this place.’ A burden his grandad had had to carry alone for so many years. Maybe too many, now he knew how heavy a responsibility it was.
Annie shifted slightly next to him, her leg brushing his.
‘What about you? What are you doing here?’ he asked, trying to ignore the tingling in his leg from her touch.
‘I’m stuck here with you, remember?’
‘Not in the dark but you know what I mean. Why choose to stay here of all places?’
‘I don’t expect you to understand,’ she told him.
‘Look, I know you don’t trust me. But we’re in this together, aren’t we?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. Not even about how to be a housekeeper.’
‘Well, you’ve done all right so far,’ he replied.
But he could feel her shaking her head in disagreement, her long hair trailing across his chest.
*
Annie was beginning to feel very tired, the effects of a bottle of wine on an empty stomach starting to hit home. It was very hard to think straight when Sam’s muscly thigh was pressing up against hers.
‘I just don’t understand where you’ve been all this time and how you could leave your grandfather for so long,’ she told him, her head feeling heavy.
‘Nor do I.’ He gave a soft sigh. ‘It’s a long story.’
She couldn’t seem to prevent her head from flopping onto his shoulder. ‘And you seem to be a really nice guy which makes it even more confusing. You’re good-looking and have obviously done well for yourself. Even if your girlfriend is a bit of a diva. But you do love your grandad, no matter what you say. I can see it in your eyes.’ She yawned. ‘It’s all very confusing.’
‘For me as well, if it makes you feel better.’
‘A little,’ she murmured, closing her eyes. ‘I’m so tired.’
‘Go to sleep,’ he told her, putting his arm around her so that they could both lean back against the brick wall behind them.
She yawned again and was just sinking into drowsiness when she heard him say, ‘You think I’m good-looking?’
‘Only because it’s dark in here,’ she told him before falling asleep.