The Retreat(91)

Except the tunnel we stood in was, apart from a puddle of rainwater around our feet, dry.

‘It must have been part of the mine,’ Julia said. The walls were constructed of compacted slate and the tunnel stretched in both directions as far as the eye could see. There were rusted metal tracks set into the ground. I guessed that once this tunnel would have been used to transport carts full of slate towards the town – or maybe towards the estate where we’d found the chapel. That didn’t matter right now. What mattered was that I was certain this tunnel ran beneath Julia’s house.

The roots of the oak tree, which would have been an acorn when this tunnel was built, hung above our heads. These roots had pushed through the roof of the tunnel and created the hole we’d climbed through. I guessed that, sooner or later, the whole thing would collapse.

I switched on the flashlight.

‘You know,’ Julia said as we made our way along the tunnel, ‘after you leave, I’m always going to associate you with dark, claustrophobic spaces.’

She was trying to keep her voice light, but it cracked towards the end of the sentence.

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ I asked.

‘Please stop asking.’

‘Okay.’

As we trudged through the darkness, with the woods above our heads, I thought about what she’d just said. After you leave. Despite everything that had happened here, the prospect of leaving and going home filled me with dread. There was nothing for me there, except an empty flat. Loneliness. Here, with Julia beside me, I felt alive, and maybe that was because of everything that had happened since I’d arrived at the retreat. Yes, I felt horribly guilty about what had happened to Zara and Max and the others, and I could foresee a period when I would have to deal with that guilt and the trauma of it all. But now, watching Julia as she walked through the tunnel beside me, I remembered how it felt to be thrilled by someone else’s presence.

I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to stay here, with her, whatever happened today.

But now was not the right time to tell her that.

As we progressed along the tunnel, we found old pieces of machinery that had been left there to rot. I didn’t know what any of it was called. A contraption the size of a fridge-freezer with a metal wheel that had turned brown. An iron bench that had suffered a similar fate. Lurking at the edges of this forgotten place, they made me think of rusting ghosts, the trapped spirits of ancient robots. The woman who became the Widow of legend – her husband had died down here, hadn’t he? That made me think of other kinds of ghosts and I reminded myself there was no such thing. I pulled my jacket tighter and increased my pace.

‘Surely we must be getting close to the house now,’ Julia said after we’d been walking a while.

The tunnel curved around a shallow bend. I thought of the River Dee, somewhere above us, where all this had started – for Julia at least. I sneaked a glance at her. Her jaw was set with determination. Someone had been in her house, on her territory. She hadn’t said as much, but I knew she felt violated. Angry. And something else: if the uninvited guest had been living here, roaming the woods, had she seen what had happened to Lily?

And why had she attacked Heledd and opened the door so Julia and I could escape?

We rounded the bend and stopped. It looked like we would be getting answers very soon. A metal ladder attached to the wall led up to a wooden hatch.

Without waiting to argue about who would go first, I started up the ladder. It was slippery, but less rusted than the other metal objects we’d seen down here. I pushed at the hatch. It shifted an inch, then got stuck. I managed to push one edge up, which let through a chink of light.

‘It’s not locked,’ I said. ‘But there’s something on top of it.’

Holding on to the ladder with one hand, I climbed as high as I could and put my shoulders against the hatch, bent into an awkward, painful position. I pushed. Something scraped against the floor above me. I pushed again, until I was able to lift one side of the hatch, tilting it until whatever was blocking it slid away. One more heave, and I was through.

I pulled myself up through the square gap and gestured for Julia to follow.

We found ourselves in a small chamber with stone walls. The ceiling was low, and I had to stoop slightly so as not to bang my head against the slightly damp ceiling. There was nothing here except a trunk that had been covering the hatch. At one end of the chamber was a solid wooden door. I tried it. It was open.

‘Are you ready?’ I asked Julia.

She nodded and we went through. I heard Julia catch her breath.

It was an underground apartment. A bedroom. A mattress lay on the floor in one corner, covered with a dirty quilt that looked as if it hadn’t been washed in years. Beside the mattress, a chest of drawers, with chipped and faded baby-pink paintwork. A lamp – battery-operated, I guessed – sat on top of it. There was a little porcelain bowl in the corner. It took me a moment to realise what it was – a bedpan. There was another, larger bowl next to that, and a silver tray bearing a bar of soap, a hairbrush, a toothbrush and toothpaste. There was a tap set into the wall. I gave it a quick turn and a trickle of cold water came through.

Julia stood in the centre of this room, her mouth open, looking at the posters on the walls. Pages torn from magazines: Care Bears, a couple of Australian soap opera stars from the late eighties, a boy band. There was a calendar too, dated 2013.