With no electricity for the foreseeable future, she lights some candles before building a little fire in the grate for warmth. Then she ties a can of baked beans above the flames. Hot meals are important in cold weather, and this isn’t the first time Robin has cooked for herself in a storm. When the tin is empty, she’ll wash it out, carve two eyes and a smile in the tin, then use it as a candle holder. There are tin-shaped faces all over her little home. Some happy, some sad. Some angry.
Wearing mismatching oven gloves, she removes the can from above the fire and eats the hot beans straight from the tin. It saves on both time and washing up. When she has finished her own dinner, she opens a jar of baby food and spoons the contents into a bowl. She knows he’ll eat when he is hungry.
Robin eases into the old leather armchair. She’s wearing fingerless mittens indoors, but her hands are still freezing. She throws another log on the fire, then searches inside her cardigan pocket for the wooden pipe, holding on to it like an old friend. It wasn’t always hers – something else she borrowed. Sometimes it’s enough just to feel it, but not tonight. She takes it out, along with a small, round tin of tobacco. It’s a Rattray’s pipe, made in Scotland, just like her. A classic Black Swan.
She unscrews the tin, and sprinkles three pinches of tobacco just like he taught her when she was a little girl. It feels like feathering a nest before burning it down. A few strands fall onto her lap, where they stay, abandoned by unsteady hands. She notices the dry skin and bitten nails as she strikes a match, so closes her eyes briefly, to hide herself from herself, while she enjoys the smell of the pipe and the nicotine hit she’s been craving all day.
Robin stares at the chapel in the distance. From her window she can see that the lights are still on. Unlike her little cottage, the chapel still has power, because the owner suffered too many Scottish storms and installed a generator a few years ago. For all the good it did them. She listens to the radio while she waits, Robin is good at waiting. Patience is the answer to so many of life’s questions. She sits and she waits, even when the pipe is empty, and the fire has burned itself out. She listens to the voices on the radio – as familiar as old friends – while they report that the storm has already resulted in several road accidents. Robin wonders if the visitors know what a lucky escape they’ve had, managing to get here in one piece. When she glances out of the window again, and sees that the chapel is in complete darkness, she thinks that the visitors’ good luck might be about to change.
Maybe it has run out altogether, only time will tell.
Robin hears something then, tiny footsteps in the gloom behind her. The bowl of baby food is empty. It’s been licked completely clean and that makes her happy. Company is company, in whatever form it takes.
Amelia
I feel crazy for thinking it, but I don’t think I’m alone down in the crypt. I blink into the darkness, and spin around, but I can’t see anything. In my imagination, the walls are closing in on me, and I think I hear my name being whispered in the shadows.
Amelia. Amelia. Amelia.
My breathing soon starts to get out of control. I feel my chest tighten as though a heavy weight is pressing down on my lungs, and picture invisible hands strangling me as my throat starts to close.
Then the trapdoor opens up above, but I still can’t see.
‘Are you OK?’ Adam’s voice calls into the darkness.
‘No! What happened?’
‘I don’t know; power cut, I suspect. I dropped the door when the lights went out, sorry. Try and make your way towards the steps.’
‘I… can’t breathe!’
He doesn’t just hear my words, he hears the rasping sound of my breaths between them.
‘Where is your inhaler?’ he shouts.
‘Don’t… know. Handbag.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Can’t remember. Kitchen… table?’
‘Wait there,’ he says, as if I have a choice.
I’ve had asthma since I was a little girl – being raised by people who chain-smoked and living in inner-city flats probably didn’t help. Not all of my foster parents were child-friendly. My asthma isn’t as much of a problem these days, but there are still things that can trigger an attack. Being trapped in an underground crypt in the dark seems to be one of them. I edge forwards trying to find the steps out of here, but my fingers only find a damp wall, and a cold metal ring. It makes me shudder. If only the torch batteries hadn’t died, or I had my phone. I think of all the candles up in the library, wishing that I had one now, but then I remember the matchbox I used to light them. It’s still in my pocket.