David Belbin - Bone & Cane

‘I haven’t heard this since I was a student.’

She couldn’t see what he’d chosen, but when he put it on, she recognized it at once: Al Green Explores Your Mind . ‘Late night seduction music,’ Nick used to call it.

‘Are you trying to get me into bed before we’ve even eaten?’

Nick grinned, the old Nick she’d been missing for thirteen years. Sarah, not sure how to react, looked away. She sat at one end of the sofa. Nick took her cue and sat at the other end of the long, matt leather settee.

‘It’s been too long,’ he said. ‘Neither of us know where to start.’

‘You’re right,’ Sarah said. ‘And neither of us know where we’re going. Least, I don’t. I can’t decide anything until next Thursday. I don’t like it, not being in control of my life.’

‘I don’t remember the last time I was in control of my life, either,’ Nick admitted. ‘But you’re supposed to be running the country. Isn’t that interesting?’

That got her going. She felt awkward at first. Then, seeing Nick’s interest, she built up steam. Sarah explained how disorienting Parliament was. After the excitement of the by-election came the anticlimax of being an MP, at the bottom of a greasy pole she wasn’t sure she had the inclination to climb. She described her loneliness in London and the pressure her job had put on her and Dan. How once she got to Parliament it was easy to forget why she’d ever wanted to be there in the first place. She talked for ten minutes or more, with him occasionally putting in a prompt or sympathetic aside.

‘Sorry, I’m going on. You know, one of the things about this job is how it affects your relationships. People treat you differently. Non-political friends drift away. There aren’t many people I can open up to.’

‘I’ll try not to let the job affect the way I am with you,’ Nick said, then put a tentative hand on her knee. ‘We’ve both been through a lot.’

‘We’re still the same people, aren’t we? I mean, you’re here because of who I am, not what I am.’

‘Of course.’

She put her hand on his, then leant forward to accept the kiss she thought he wanted to give her. But he held back.

‘Before we go any further,’ Nick said, ‘I ought to tell you about why I left teaching.’

‘You got busted. I heard. You had to quit. It’s a shame.’

‘It was a bit more than that. You have to know what happened before we start anything. You might not want to take me on.’

Nick began to talk rapidly. She had assumed his bust was bad luck, for which he’d suffered embarrassment, a heavy fine and the loss of his job. Turned out he’d been to prison for five years after being caught growing enough skunk to get the whole city out of its tree.

‘Why on earth did you did it? You weren’t desperate for money, were you?’

‘I was short for the mortgage, but that isn’t an excuse.’

‘What got into you?’

‘Greed, I suppose. But at first I thought it was luck.’

‘Oh, shit, the kebabs!’

Sarah spent the next fifteen minutes sorting out the food. Then, over dinner, Nick told her the story of how he had discovered the caves beneath the flat.

23

Nick’s ground-floor flat was on the Canning Circus side of the Park, the cheaper section of the private estate where Sarah now lived. Nick had always aspired to live in the Park. He and Sarah used to walk around the place, working out where they would move. Their ideal home was a stone’s throw from Nottingham Castle, a five-minute walk to the city centre. In this idyll, she would be an MP and he a university lecturer.

In Thatcher’s Britain, teachers found themselves earning more than university lecturers. Nick took the plunge in 1989, when he could almost afford the flat he’d always hankered after. All right, it was a tatty two-bed with no garden and he’d have to take in a lodger to meet the mortgage payments. One day, perhaps, he’d find a woman to share it with. Women always seemed to back off when Nick got serious – all but Sarah. He wished she’d never joined the police. The police were the enemy. For most people, that changed as you grew older. But not, as things turned out, for Nick.

Structurally, the flat was sound. In every other way, it was a mess. The place had been repossessed after the previous owners defaulted on the mortgage. All the carpets needed replacing, but Nick couldn’t afford that. He hired a sander and began to clean and varnish the floorboards, covering the worst areas with rugs from his previous, rented flat. It was a long, tedious job. He left the large hall until last, as it presented the most difficulty. The dust would get everywhere and, once he varnished, he’d have to move out of the flat until it dried. That meant staying with his younger brother, Joe, in his bachelor pad by Trent Bridge, in the heart of the city’s flash-trash district. He and Joe got on, but they weren’t close. Joe was six years younger, and it could prove awkward, having a younger brother who was more successful than you.

The long summer holidays were nearly over when Nick got round to taking up the hall carpet. The threadbare flooring turned out not to be tacked down at the sides, so it was easily rolled out of the way. The boards beneath were buggered beyond repair. No amount of sanding would get them into shape. Nick couldn’t afford to replace them all. Several had been cut in an odd way. One even had a large hole in the middle. Tentatively, Nick put his hand through it. He was worried about splinters but the sides were smooth, as though they’d been sanded down. The gap wasn’t so much a hole as a handle. Nick reached in and lifted out a large section of floor, the size of a trap door.

Below, Nick could make out the top of a ladder. Excited, he went to look for a torch, but there wasn’t one. It was tempting to use a cigarette lighter, but caution prevailed. He hurried into Halfords in the Market Square and was back twenty minutes later with a heavy-duty flashlight.

The space beneath the hall was small – not tall enough for Nick, at over six feet, to stand upright – and partially boarded, like an attic, rather than a cellar. There was a light switch, too. Once Nick switched it on, he realized that the unboarded area was another hole, one that led to another space, beneath. Beside the gap was a miner’s lamp attached to a large roll of coiled electricity cable. One side of the cable came from the innards of the flat, above. Another length of heavy cable continued below.

The miner’s lamp still worked, casting a dense full moon of a beam. Nick turned off his flashlight and looked for a ladder down. Nothing visible bar a couple of ridges in the sandstone. Hard to tell how deep the cave was. Nick wanted to go down straight away, but prudence got the better of him. He lowered the lamp into the hole. The cave’s walls reflected light back at him. Why? The cave could be flooded, but it seemed unlikely. This was high ground. Even so, the risk of descent was too great. He might not be able to get back up. The presence of the miner’s lamp, however, suggested that the previous owners had been down there. To do the same, all Nick needed was a companion above.

His brother came round the next day, after training.

‘I’ll tie a rope round you and hold onto it, but I’m not coming down,’ Joe told Nick. ‘Don’t want to risk breaking something.’

Joe was in the first team at Notts County. He tied the rope.

‘You didn’t know this was here?’

‘Never even occurred to me.’

‘Think the estate agent knew?’

‘Maybe. It’s not in the plans. Risk of subsidence might put some people off. If she knew, I guess she’d keep quiet about it.’

This city was built over caves. Pubs used them as cellars. Cave passages linked important buildings. Nottingham Castle held tours of theirs. The council were making a museum out of the caves beneath the Broadmarsh Shopping Centre, most of which had been flooded with concrete when they were laying the foundations. Nick liked caves, but at the time he bought the flat he thought all the caves in the Park were lower down the hill.