‘I’m sure I’ll be fine.’
‘The right fit for the dog.’
‘But… I’ve bought the matching outfits already.’
‘Outfits?’
‘Yes, off eBay. Ghostbusters costumes. One for me, and a mini dog version for Lola. My Insta followers are gonna love it! Does it do tricks?’
I rejected Donna’s application. I rejected the next two people who came to see Bertie too – even though one threatened to ‘speak to my manager’ and the other called me a ‘see you next Tuesday’。 Nobody goes to a home where they won’t really be loved on my watch.
There are as many varieties of heartbreak as there are love, but fear is always the same, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m afraid of so many things right now. I think perhaps the real reason I am so scared of losing – or leaving – my husband, is because I don’t have anyone else. I’ve never known what it is like to have a real family, and I’ve always been better at collecting acquaintances than making friends. On the rare occasions when I feel like I have met someone I can trust, I hold on. Tight. But my judgement can be faulty. There are some people in my life I shouldn’t have walked away from: I should have run.
I never met my parents. I know that my dad liked old cars, perhaps that’s why I do too, and why I can’t let go of my ancient Morris Minor despite Adam’s constant complaints. I find it hard to trust new things, or places, or people. My dad swapped his vintage MG Midget for a brand-new family car just before I was born. New doesn’t always mean better. The brakes failed on the way to the hospital when my mum was in labour, a truck smashed into the driver’s side of their car and they both died instantly. The doctor – who had been driving in the other direction – somehow delivered me into the world on the side of the street. He called me a miracle baby, and named me Amelia because of his obsession with the aviator. Amelia Earhart liked to fly away too. I flew from one foster home to the other until I was eighteen.
‘I’m guessing people don’t stay here very often. It’s freezing cold and everything is covered in dust,’ Adam says, appearing behind me and making me jump. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.’
He did.
‘I wasn’t scared…’
I was.
‘… I’m just tired from the drive and I can’t find anything to eat.’
‘Did you try in here?’ he asks, heading for an arched door in the corner of the kitchen.
‘Yes, but it’s locked,’ I reply, without looking up. Adam always thinks he knows better than me.
‘Perhaps the handle was just a bit stiff,’ he says, as the door creaks open.
He flicks a switch, and when I catch up, I see that the door leads to what looks like a walk-in larder. But the shelves are filled with tools instead of food. There are neatly stacked boxes of nails and screws, nuts and bolts, different-sized spanners and hammers, and a selection of saws and axes hanging on the back wall. There are also a series of strange-looking smaller tools I don’t recognise, like miniature chisels, curved knives, and round blades all with matching wooden handles. The damp, dark space is lit by a single lightbulb dangling down from the ceiling. It struggles to illuminate everything below, but it’s impossible to miss the large chest freezer in the corner of the room. It’s bigger than me – the kind you might find in a supermarket – and, unlike the fridge, I already know it is plugged in from the humming sound it makes.
I hesitate before lifting the lid but needn’t have worried.
The freezer is stocked full of what look like individual homemade frozen meals. Each foil container and cardboard lid is carefully labelled with elaborate joined-up writing. There must be over a hundred dinners for one in here, and quite the selection: lasagne, spaghetti bolognese, roast beef, steak pie, toad in the hole…
‘Chicken curry?’ I suggest.
‘Sounds good. Now we just need some wine. Luckily, I think I might have found the crypt,’ Adam says.
He has discovered a torch among all the other tools, and is shining it on the stone floor. It’s only then I realise that some of the giant slabs we are standing on are old tombstones. People were buried here once upon a time, and someone thought they should be remembered. But the names that were engraved have worn away after years of being walked over.
‘Down here,’ Adam says, shining the torch on an ancient-looking wooden trapdoor.
I shiver, and not just because this room is inexplicably cold.