Christmas at Lilac Cottage - Holly Martin Page 0,118
the tools down and tried again. It didn’t shift an inch. Shit. She threw her weight against the door in a panic, it still didn’t move. The handle wasn’t turning properly from the inside, partly frozen from the intense cold and her hands were too numb to apply any real pressure to it.
Leaning onto one of the shelves, she tried to kick the door handle with her feet, but that didn’t work either.
She banged on the door and shouted as loud as she could, but there was no noise from the room outside and no one came to rescue her.
She banged again, shouting, yelling, throwing her weight against it time and time again but she was trapped.
She quickly dug her phone out of her pocket and scrolled through her contacts. Who could she call? Henry or Daisy were the obvious choices; if they were next door they could come and let her out but Henry wasn’t speaking to her and she didn’t have Daisy’s number.
Maggie was twenty minutes away, Jill would be about half hour and her brother was a good fifty minutes from her house.
The phone beeped feebly to say she was running out of battery. Shit, could anything else go wrong?
She quickly dialled Henry’s number. He would be angry but he wouldn’t leave her in here to freeze to death.
It rang a few times and to her surprise he answered straight away.
‘Hello?’
She tried to judge his tone – was he still angry, upset, regretful? Now was not the time to get into any of that.
‘Henry, are you in your house? I need your help.’
‘No.’
One-word answers weren’t good, he clearly hadn’t forgiven her yet. She was so mad at him, she didn’t even want to speak to him right now. And if he was out then he couldn’t even help her.
The phone beeped, indicating that it was about to die any second.
‘How far away are you?’
His voice softened slightly with concern as he sensed the panic.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Is Daisy at home?’
‘No she’s at Anna’s, what’s wrong?’
‘I’m trapped in the freezer.’
‘How are you trapped?’
‘The door is stuck. After the power cut the freezer reset itself and it’s colder in here than it should be. I had to carve in here and I’ve been in here for nearly two hours and now I can’t get out.’
Henry was silent for a moment and then the phone rang off.
She stared at the phone in horror. Was he coming, was he not coming?
She tried to phone him again but before the phone even rang her phone died.
Crap.
She had to get out of here. She threw herself at the door a few more times but it just didn’t move at all.
OK, so she had to remember how to survive extreme temperatures. She had looked into it once when she had been trying to find out how long it was safe for her to work in the freezer. She didn’t think moving around was a good idea because that kept blood pumping around the extremities but away from the vital organs, so she just had to stay still. She sat down in the corner of the room and curled herself up into a tight ball, knees up to her chest, her arms wrapped round them.
Henry had to be coming. No matter how angry he was, he wouldn’t leave her to freeze to death. He would come and save her. It just depended on whether he could get to her in time.
Chapter Twenty-three
Henry skidded to a halt outside the house. It had taken him nearly half an hour to get home. He should have called the fire brigade or the police or someone, anyone would have got there quicker than he could have done, but he knew the satnav didn’t actually take anyone directly to the house and, remembering what a pain in the arse it had been for him to find the place on his first day, he didn’t want to waste time explaining where the property was. He had phoned Daisy to get her to cycle home, but neither she nor Anna had answered the phone and Anna didn’t have a car as Steve had taken theirs to come and meet him.
He raced around the back of the house and barged through the back door and into the cool room. He yanked at the freezer door. It was stuck but he pulled at it hard and it eventually opened. Penny was sitting in the corner of the room, huddled up into a ball. She wasn’t moving.