I took my phone out, hoping to ring Rosie for help, but there was no reception, which didn’t surprise me considering we were underground. Flynn had no signal either. We tried all over the cellar but there was nothing. Next step was to check for some tools or even just a knife to see if we could jimmy the lock. Flynn took one side of the cellar and I took the other. Each time I checked a box and found nothing helpful inside, panic built inside me. The lights continued to flicker and even intermittently went off for a second or two.
‘I don’t like this,’ I admitted to Flynn.
‘Don’t panic. We’ll find something in one of these boxes and be out of here in a jiffy.’
I wished I could share his optimism. Most of the boxes were filled with papers and more photos but I couldn’t muster any excitement about the history inside them while we were trapped. As we reached the end of the cellar, the lights flickered on and off in quick succession followed by a pop, a buzz and darkness. I stayed rooted to the spot for a moment, waiting for them to come back on like earlier but they didn’t.
‘Looks like the lights have died,’ Flynn said, flicking his torch back on.
I couldn’t stand it. I had to get out of here. It wasn’t that I was scared of the dark or anything like that. It was being trapped with Flynn which was too much for me. I raced back to the crates by the door and began frantically searching in the boxes again for something to help force open the door.
‘You’ve already looked in there,’ Flynn said, ‘and so have I. Nothing is going to have magically appeared in any of the boxes since we looked. There’s no tools or anything down here so there’s no point searching again. You’ll have to let it go.’
I stopped rummaging and stood upright, my heart pounding as those words took me back in time. He’d said the same thing when I’d tried to find out why Noah turned to drugs.
‘Let it go?’ I cried, blowing my fringe out of my eyes. ‘That’s your answer to everything, is it? Just let it go, walk away, forget about it.’ The words came out too loud, too shrill.
‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Noah, of course!’
Flynn came closer and I could only just see his face in the torchlight but he looked bewildered. ‘I’m not the one who walked away. You did that.’
‘Because you didn’t care.’
‘About what?’
‘About what happened to Noah. About me.’
‘Is that what you think? Of course I cared!’
‘Then why didn’t you show it?’ I put on a deep voice to mimic him, part-quoting, part-paraphrasing what he’d said at the time. ‘Every question leads to more questions. Where’s it going to end, Mel? You’re going to have to let this one go.’
‘And you took that as me not caring?’ He took a couple of steps closer so that there was only an arm’s length between us. ‘How could you think that? It was because I cared so deeply about you that I said those things. I could see how broken you were and how every avenue you went down made it worse instead of better. I wanted you to stop for your sake.’
‘But I couldn’t stop. I had to know what really happened to him and I needed you to understand that, but you didn’t even try.’ As I said the words, I knew they were unfair. Hehadtried to understand. He’d repeatedly asked me why it was so important to me and I hadn’t been able to answer him.
He gently placed his hands on my shoulders. ‘I’m sorry if that’s how you felt. My intention wasneverto brush it aside. I only wanted to take the pain away.’
And now he was apologising when he’d done nothing wrong. My eyes burned, my throat felt like it was on fire and it worried me how close to becoming uncorked that bottle of emotion inside me felt. I needed to apologise. I knew that. But for some unknown reason, I shrugged his hands off me.
‘I didn’t need you to take the pain away. Nobody could do that.’
An agonising sob burst from me, scaring me. Flynn tried to pull me to him but I shoved at his chest with both my hands and suddenly the fire was back.
‘What I needed was for you to support me.’ Another shove. ‘To find the answers with me, to understand that I had to know.’
The cork finally burst from the bottle.
‘You let me down,’ I cried, pounding my hands against his chest as tears coursed down my cheeks. ‘You let me down.’ Those final words were barely a whisper as the fire left my body and I sagged against him, my cries echoing around the dark cellar.
Flynn pulled me close and held me as years of pent-up frustration and grief poured out of me. I needed him right now too and he was here this time doing the best thing he could possibly do for me – holding me and letting it all pour out. Pain, guilt, grief. And even though I was laying it all on him, he wasn’t to blame. I was. Flynn hadn’t let me down. I’d let him down, let me down, let Noah down.
39
Flynn somehow managed to shuffle me across to the chaise, still holding me and stroking my hair – something he’d always do to soothe me anytime I was upset or feeling ill. With the energy expended from my outburst, the cold really took hold and I couldn’t stop shivering. Flynn slipped off the zipped jacket he’d been wearing under his coat and helped me into it. Initially the warmth from his body transferred to me and hugged me but that soon faded and I was shivering again. He left me for a moment and returned with one of the curtains from the packing crates, wrapping it round me like a cloak.
‘You look like one of three kings in a school nativity play,’ he said, making me laugh.
