Next minute I crumbled again as I thought of Noah as a young boy.
‘Do you remember when Noah was a king and his crown came apart?’ I asked.
‘I’ll never forget him standing in the middle of the stage demanding they stop the nativity until one of the teachers stapled it back together for him.’
‘Completely upstaged the little girl playing Mary. What was her name?’
‘Maddie Weston. I don’t think she ever forgave him.’
There was a pause and I wiped my cheeks.
‘Feeling any warmer?’ Flynn asked.
‘Much. You should grab one yourself.’
He disappeared and returned moments later wrapped in a matching curtain.
‘What else do you remember about Noah?’ I asked.
Whenever I thought about Noah, the first image that always popped into my head was the day I found him and, when I pushed that aside, my focus was invariably on the last six to eight months of his life, searching for signs that I’d missed. I rarely remembered him as an innocent young boy. I feared that the eighteen-year-old Noah who’d died of a drug overdose had eradicated those memories so it had been a special moment just now thinking about him in the nativity.
‘I remember that phase where he was obsessed with space and aliens.’
I frowned at Flynn, not recalling it.
‘He’d stayed over at your mum and dad’s for the weekend and your dad decided they’d watch a few films from our childhood. He became obsessed withE.T.Made your poor dad watch it three or four times that weekend.’
‘Oh, gosh, yes. Didn’t he want a Speak & Spell for his birthday?’
‘Yes! He wanted to communicate with the aliens so we indulged him and he lost interest in it within five minutes.’
We spent the next couple of hours sharing stories from Noah’s childhood, most of which made us laugh, some of which were poignant. I’d refused to talk about Noah for so long and wondered why when I could feel the conversation doing me so much good. Every so often, Flynn got up, swished his curtain cloak, and ventured over to the door, but it remained stuck fast. All we could hope was that, when Rosie finished at the stables, she’d notice Flynn’s van still parked by the hall and come searching for us.
Flynn’s stomach rumbled loudly and I checked the time on my phone – 4.06p.m. – meaning we’d not only missed lunch but teatime was rapidly approaching.
‘I’m hungry too,’ I admitted. I’d skipped breakfast because I’d been nervous about spending the morning with Flynn. ‘And I’m really thirsty.’
‘In that case, come with me,’ he said, taking hold of my hand.
He led me a little way into the cellar and shone his torch behind a dressing room screen. I was expecting it to illuminate the wall but there was an arched opening to another room.
‘Go inside,’ he said.
I stepped through the archway and gasped at all the dust and cobweb-covered wine bottles resting in racks. There had to be hundreds of them.
Flynn reached for one, blew the dust away and read the label. ‘Nineteen sixty-three. I hear that’s a good vintage.’
‘You can’t be serious.’
‘You said you’re thirsty.’
‘But that bottle could be worth a fortune.’
‘Or it could be rank. Either way, I’m sure Rosie and Oliver wouldn’t begrudge us one bottle after we’ve been stuck down here for over five hours. We just need something to open it with.’
There was a ledge between the racks with some dusty wine glasses on it, also covered in cobwebs, and I spotted a corkscrew hanging from a hook above it.
‘Could that open the door?’
