Sara Foster - Beneath the Shadows

She shook the passport at him. ‘They asked me to find this last year, when they were suggesting that Adam had done a runner – and I couldn’t. But I didn’t know the bloody cellar existed then, did I? It suddenly dawned on me that I never checked the boxes he put here. Perhaps the police will take his absence more seriously now – though I somehow doubt it.’ She dropped her arm despondently.

‘Grace,’ James began to rub his bare arms as he stood there in T-shirt and boxer shorts, ‘come upstairs and we’ll talk about this. It’s freezing down here.’

He held out a hand. She went across and took it, and he began to lead her towards the stairs. ‘Hang on,’ she said, ‘we have to turn the light off.’

He waited as she flicked the switch, then they edged slowly back up in the darkness. Once in the corridor, Grace dropped his hand and closed the door gently, trying to stop it from creaking.

James followed her down the hallway, but when she began to climb the stairs, heading back to bed, he said, ‘Grace, wait a minute.’

She tried to look at him, though she could barely make out his face.

‘Come and sit with me for a moment.’

She went into the lounge with him. He pulled her onto the sofa and unzipped his sleeping bag, covering them both with it.

‘Lean on me for a while. Let yourself relax.’

Grace did as he bid, and felt her eyes grow heavy. The next thing she knew she had woken up with James asleep next to her, his arm still around her. Quietly, she disentangled herself and got up. James stirred briefly as she kissed his forehead and whispered ‘Night’, before tiptoeing from the room. Out in the hallway, the grandfather clock greeted her with its steady tick. The thought of it stopping sent her hurrying upstairs without looking to see what the time was, falling gratefully into bed next to Annabel.

Grace was woken again what felt like five minutes later, to the sound of Millie crying. Grey light was beginning to poke through the curtains, but inside the cottage it was dim. She found Millie sitting up cuddling Mr Pink, and Grace only needed one look at her wide-eyed tear-streaked face to know that Millie wouldn’t be settled back to sleep. She lifted her little girl out of the cot, trying to stave off her own tiredness by blinking hard and rubbing her eyes. They began to play together on the floor by the cot, but after a while Millie grew restless. Grace picked her up and tiptoed downstairs to get breakfast, trying not to wake James.

‘What time is it?’ James asked from the depths of the sofa.

‘Too early,’ Grace muttered, then walked back out to check the grandfather clock, only registering the silence as she did so.

‘The clock’s stopped,’ she said in bewilderment. The hands were pointing to just past three.

‘It must be stuck, I’ll look at it later,’ James mumbled sleepily.

‘Thanks.’ Grace went over to her mobile phone on the tabletop. ‘It’s nearly eight o’clock,’ she said, surprised. Then she pulled back the curtain and looked out. ‘And I think you could say that we’re snowed in.’

She heard the sofa’s springs creak as James pushed himself up, then he was behind her, peering through the window. ‘Bloody hell!’

The garden had disappeared. It looked as though someone had laid a sparkling white blanket from the level of the low garden wall right up to the cottage. Only the tips of the taller hedges poked through, and the bare trellis arch midway along the path.

‘I’ll have to dig us out,’ James declared. ‘We have got a spade somewhere?’

‘I… I don’t know,’ Grace said. ‘I didn’t think about it -’

James made a noise of exasperation.

‘Do we actually need to go outside?’ Grace queried. ‘Unless you’re going to shovel your way right over the top of the moors, I think it’s safe to say we’re stuck.’

In reply, James threw himself onto a chair.

‘What’s the problem?’ Grace asked, amused. ‘You’re always talking about how much you love the snow.’

‘Yes, because in Switzerland I can ski on it,’ James grumbled. ‘It’s completely different.’

‘You could take Millie sledging instead…’

‘Well, we can’t do anything much until we can get down the path.’ James began to pull on his jeans and a jumper. ‘I’ll search around and see what I can find.’

‘Be my guest.’ Grace felt annoyed as she carried Millie across to the kitchen area and sat her in the high chair. James always had to make big issues out of little problems. Adam would have found it the perfect excuse to cuddle up in front of the television. She briefly wondered whether Ben would be shovelling snow right now.

Daylight had finally conquered the night by the time Annabel appeared downstairs. ‘What’s that noise?’ she asked, tuning in to a recurring scraping sound.

Grace went across to the window and pulled back the curtain. ‘James found a shovel, so he’s clearing the path. I’m not sure why, but he obviously thinks it’s important.’

‘Wow!’ Annabel stared out of the window. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much snow.’ She spun around, beaming. ‘Let’s get our coats on and make snowmen all day, Millie.’ She ruffled her niece’s hair, and was delighted when Millie looked up and grinned at her.

Grace laughed at them both. ‘Sounds great. But can you give me some help first?’

Annabel’s eyes narrowed.

‘Don’t look at me like that. Last night I remembered I hadn’t checked the boxes in the cellar for Adam’s passport, and so I took a look, and sure enough – I found it.’

‘Really? Why on earth did he put it down there?’

‘I don’t know. I wish he’d told me about the damn cellar in the first place. I have no idea why he didn’t.’

‘Maybe he thought you knew about it,’ Annabel suggested, shrugging.

As Grace considered that, her annoyance eased a little. ‘Perhaps. Anyway, I want it emptied while you two are here to help, it’s too creepy to do it on my own.’

‘I don’t believe you sometimes,’ Annabel muttered, flinging herself onto a chair. ‘Some Christmas holiday this is turning out to be. Well I’m sorry, but you can count me out – it’s bloody freezing and I bet there are rats down there. Get James to bring the boxes up.’

‘Look, it won’t take long,’ Grace tried to persuade her. ‘And you can sit at the top and sort the stuff out. We’ll get through it in no time if we all pitch in.’

A few hours later, Grace felt like she was corralling unruly sheep. Annabel and James had agreed to help, but both would slip away endlessly – James to check on the football scores; Annabel for any reason that would avoid the task at hand. At least when Millie got up it meant that her enthusiastic auntie was happy to keep her entertained, leaving Grace free to go through things.

By mid-afternoon they had done well. There were piles of full boxes and binbags destined for either the tip or a charity shop. The cellar was now rimmed with bare, grimy shelves.

‘Okay,’ Grace conceded, when she took stock of how much they had done. ‘Let’s take a break.’

‘Finally, she lets us rest.’ James sat down heavily on the stairs and leaned against the wall.

‘Let me tell you this before I forget,’ Annabel said. She patted the three boxes in front of her. ‘These look like they contain personal effects, letters and suchlike, so you’d better go through them. It’s strange that they weren’t in the attic with the rest.’

‘Perhaps Connie and Bill got too old to clamber about in the attic,’ Grace replied, opening one of them and rummaging inside, finding exercise books, notebooks, more photograph albums, newspaper clippings and loose papers, all mish-mashed together. She sighed. ‘There’s so much of this stuff. It’s such a wrench, going through all their memories and deciding which ones are worth keeping – that’s if I can even make sense of them. Sometimes I’ve no idea why they held on to something. I wish I wasn’t packing away their lives with so little idea of what these things meant to them.’