The Hiding Place(47)

As I descended, I counted. Ten, eleven, twelve. At nineteen, my foot missed a rung. It flailed in the air and then found purchase on solid ground. Relief flooded through me. I stepped down. I’d made it.

“I’m at the bottom!” I shouted.

“What can you see?” Hurst’s voice called down.

I looked around, the light from the miner’s helmet casting a pale, yellow glow. I was standing in a small cave. Barely big enough to hold more than half a dozen people. Aside from what looked like a few animal bones on the ground, it was empty. I wasn’t sure if I felt relieved or disappointed.

“Not much,” I said.

Hurst landed beside me with a thud. Fletch, Chris and Marie followed. She clambered down awkwardly in her stilettos, still clutching the carrier bag of cider.

“Is this it?” she said.

Fletch panned his flashlight around then spat on the ground. “Just a shitty hole.”

“Guess this was a waste of time,” I said, trying not to sound pleased.

Hurst scowled. “Fuck this. I need a piss.”

He turned to the wall. I heard him unzip his pants and the gush of urine hitting the floor. The acrid smell, strong with cider, filled the small space.

Chris was still staring around, frowning.

I glanced at him. “What is it?”

“I thought there’d be something more.”

“Well, there’s not, so—”

But he wasn’t listening. He started to circle the cave, like a dog sniffing out a bone. Suddenly, he stopped, at a point in the rock where the shadows seemed to coalesce and deepen. He bent down.

And then he was gone. I blinked. What the hell?

“Where’d he go?” Marie asked.

Hurst zipped up his jeans and turned. “Where’s Doughboy?”

“Here,” a disembodied voice called.

I trained my light in the direction of the voice. And now I saw it. A gap in the rock. About four feet high, and narrow. Easy to miss, unless you were looking hard. Or you knew it was there.

“It goes deeper!” Chris called from the darkness. “There are more steps.”

“That’s more fucking like it!” Hurst exclaimed.

He shoved me out of the way and squeezed straight through after Chris. After a moment’s hesitation, and another swig of cider, Marie followed, and then Fletch.

I sighed, inwardly cursing Chris, and bent down to go after them. My head clanged against the rock. The miner’s helmet. It was too wide. The light wavered and went out. Crap. I must have knocked the battery. I edged backward and took the helmet off. I’d have to carry it sideways. I started to shuffle through and then hesitated. I thought I’d heard something. A scraping and a rattle of stones. The sound had come from behind me, from the metal rungs we’d climbed down.

I looked around, but without the light all I could see were shadows and dancing spots in front of my eyes.

“Hey?” I called. “Anyone there?”

Silence.

Stupid, Joe. There was no one there. The noise was probably just the wind, gusting down the open hatch. How could there be anyone here? No one knew about the hatch. No one knew we were here. No one at all.

Ain’t nobody here but us chickens, I thought, a little crazily, remembering an old song my nan used to play. Ain’t nobody here at all.

I gave the darkness a final searching glance. Then I turned, squeezed through the gap and started down after the others.





20





“Good weekend?”

Beth emerges at my side from amid a throng of pupils.

She is looking fresh-faced and perky and all the things I generally hate to see in someone at just before eight-thirty on a Monday morning.

I look at her from beneath eyelids weighted with lead. “Just dandy.”

She squints at me more closely. “Really? Cos you look like crap.”

I shuffle along the corridor. “That’s what a good weekend will do for you.”

“Yeah. Guess when you get to your age the hangovers take longer to get over.”

“My age?”

“You know, the middle. Stuff of crisis, spread and prostate exams.”

“You really are a little ray of sunshine on a dismal Monday morning, aren’t you?”

“Oh, I haven’t got to my best stuff yet.”

“Let’s pretend you’ve peaked.”

She winks. “Oh, you’d know when I’ve peaked.”

“Doubtful. At my age.”

She chuckles, low and hearty, and actually, it does go a tiny way to lightening my current dark mood.

So why did she lie?

I’m just trying to work out a way to ask her when a Year 9 with boy-band hair and a uniform on the borderline of acceptable skids around the corner, almost colliding with us, before he manages to gather in his momentum and screech to a halt.

“Anyone mention no running in the corridors?” I say briskly.

“Sorry, sir, miss, but you need to go to the toilets.”

“I already went, thanks.”

Beth throws me a look.

“What’s up?” she asks.

He fidgets nervously. “I think you should just go and see, miss.”

“We need more than that,” I say.