the door was open I could not close it again. But the fresh air, sudden after so long without it, was delicious.
Having secured my escape route, I went back into the utility room. There was another door, and when I opened it what I found behind it was, as I’d expected, a pantry: food tins lined up on shelves, jars of pasta sauce, and, on the wider shelves below, catering-sized pots and pans, wide serving platters, packs of paper napkins. Perhaps because the doors had remained shut, there was no dust in here – just a wafting smell of something bad, rotten, like the smell of the sewage outlet I’d found on a lonely beach as a young girl. A sudden assault on the senses.
There was a noise again, this time much closer, as though she was inside this space with me.
‘Audrey?’ I said. ‘Hello? Is there someone there?’
To my left, between two shelves, was a light switch. I had been expecting the electricity to be disconnected, but to my surprise when I flicked the switch a single bulb overhead came on, and illuminated a long, narrow space lined with shelves. And at the back – right at the back – another door.
It was locked, of course. And although I fumbled on all the shelves, my hands shaking, there was no sign of a key.
I went back out into the utility room and started searching in all the drawers, pulling them out quickly and slamming them shut again, and then the cupboards underneath. In the very last one I tried, there it was: an old metal toolbox, of the type that opened like a concertina at the top. I pulled it out of the cupboard, clattering it on to the terracotta tiles, tugging the creaking hinges to open it. The tools were old, rusted, but here was exactly what I needed – a big, flat-headed screwdriver. I went back to the pantry and the door at the end, inserted the screwdriver into the space beside the lock and levered it. I was expecting the door to pop open, but of course what happened was that the wood splintered and cracked, and from behind the door somewhere I heard wailing and crying, and finally a single, wailing, desperate word rising to a shriek: ‘No!’
I worked at the door, digging away at the wood, until finally the screwdriver came up against metal, and I dug beneath it and levered, and with a sudden shudder and a bang the door opened.
Beyond it, darkness, and a staircase leading down.
‘Audrey?’ I said.
A pause, and then a hushed, throaty voice: ‘Who are you?’
I looked for a light switch – surely there must be one? And then there it was, under a shelf loaded with tubs of dishwasher tablets. I flicked the switch and the staircase illuminated, and from below another shriek.
I went down the steps, gripping the screwdriver firmly in front of me in case Colin was going to appear from nowhere.
It was a small room, whitewashed brick, with a window high up on the left wall. The darkness it looked on to suggested that it was buried beneath weeds. There was a table, and an old divan with a mattress, a tea chest, empty boxes – and on the bed, curled into a ball, her face covered with both her hands, a dark-haired girl wearing a short satin skirt.
I felt a surge of relief. It was her; it was definitely her.
The room stank.
‘My name’s Annabel,’ I said. ‘I’ve come to get you out. Are you OK?’
‘Water,’ she said.
I went back up the stairs to the utility room. There was a butler sink in the utility room and when I ran the tap it rumbled for a second and then cold water splashed into the sink. I left it running and looked for something to hold water. In the pantry, finally, a ceramic vase. It would have to do. I filled it and turned off the tap.
As I did so, I heard a noise, a sudden bang from the front of the house.
I froze for a second, then ran back to the pantry, turning off the light, then to the door to the cellar, turning that light off too and coming down the steps blind. He would see the open doors. I’d opened them all over the house, and the one to the cellar was broken open. My only hope was that he’d think we’d escaped already through the back door.
‘We’ve got to hide,’ I whispered,