by Lynda Stacey
‘What?’
‘Maddie, this is serious. That fire is coming up that stairway, fast. You have one rucksack; fill it with anything you can’t live without, you have five seconds.’ He grabbed her laptop, data sticks, her reading glasses and Emily’s diary. ‘Is there anything else you have to have … your work Maddie, your books? Is there anything you can’t manage or continue without?’
‘Poppy. Oh my God. I can’t live without Poppy. I need Poppy. Where is she?’ She felt her heart bang in her chest as once again she began to cough. Pulling away the sheets from the door, she pulled it open and saw the flames coming towards her. Slamming the door tightly closed, she quickly replaced the wet sheets across the bottom. ‘There’s fire, it’s coming up the staircase. Why aren’t the sprinklers working? Bandit, what happened to the bloody sprinklers? We’re trapped.’
‘Well done, Sherlock, I did tell you there was a fire and I think someone sabotaged the sprinklers. Now, come on, we need to get out.’
‘But what happened to the sprinklers?’ She was still half asleep and hadn’t understood.
He grabbed her by the shoulders. ‘Maddie, wake up. I told you, someone sabotaged them, and we have to get out. NOW.’
He opened the window and looked down at the drop. It was at least twenty feet down and nothing but flowerbeds, pathways and concrete below them. The flowerbeds were under the windows, each one full of sharp, prickly roses. The lawns were set back behind them and would be impossible to reach in one jump.
Madeleine stared down at the drop in horror.
He tried to smile. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get you out, I promise.’
He pushed towels in the rucksack to cushion the laptop before throwing it from the window and into the flowerbed below. The branches of the rose bushes broke its fall and he cursed the day that he’d ever planted them, vowing that as soon as they were safe, he’d dig them up. But right now there was no time to think, he had to save them. He hadn’t waited half his life to meet a woman as wonderful as Madeleine just to lose her in this way.
‘Maddie, listen to me. We can’t jump. We have to try and climb our way out. Wait here, I’ll try and find us a way.’
He climbed onto the windowsill and disappeared from her view.
‘Bandit, I’m scared. Where’s my Poppy? What if she’s hurt? Oh my God, what if she’s trapped?’ She leaned out of the window, looking both up and down in an attempt to see where he’d gone. ‘POPPPPPYYYYYYYY … POPPPPYYYYYY … where are you, baby? Oh my God, please, please … please let her be okay.’
This side of the hall was quiet. It was the private quarters and was about as far away from the guestrooms as it could be. She closed her eyes and thought of the room plans that had been on her father’s computer. She remembered the new sprinkler system, along with the fact that it had been fitted in the main hotel but this was the family wing, this area would have had to wait until last, until the rest of the hotel had been finished.
She closed her eyes and thought of the guests and hoped they’d all got out safely. They should all be at the meeting area at the front of the house. All the staff would have gone there too, meaning that no one would come to the back of the hotel to look for them and since her father had died, no one else resided in this part of the house, no one except for Jess.
Bandit reappeared and climbed back in through the window. ‘The room that’s above this one, what is it?’
‘What room? I don’t think there are any rooms above here.’ Madeleine leaned out of the window. ‘There can’t be a room, and how would you get to it? The staircase stops out there.’ She pointed to the door.
‘Seriously, Maddie, there’s a room. I think it’s the room next to the bell tower. Do you remember in Emily’s diary? She mentioned that the noise of the bell could be heard on the staircase.’
Madeleine looked around the room. ‘Where’s the diary? It might give us a clue.’ Her coughing got worse and she leaned out of the window to gasp at the air.
‘I threw it out the window. Now come on, we have to get to that room. It just has to lead us out.’
There was a loud bang, followed by a distant scream; glass shattered and another scream. Bandit ducked briefly as though waiting for a second explosion. He then stood up and looked out to see if he could see where the scream had come from. ‘If we can hear them, they should be able hear us.’
‘Okay, we need to shout together.’
‘HEEELLLLLPPPPPPPP …’ they both yelled as they leaned as far out of the window as they could.
‘Did they hear us?’ She coughed again, her breathing was becoming laboured and she knew the smoke would soon completely fill the room. If they didn’t get out now, it could be too late.
Bandit shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. Are you okay?’
‘I think I’m gonna be sick.’ She climbed up onto the ledge, caught her breath and began to vomit.
‘It’s the smoke. I know you feel ill, but we have to keep moving.’ He held out his hand. ‘Here, let me help you.’
Madeleine wiped her mouth on her sleeve. Her head spun but she began to move slowly. The windowsills were wide but she could feel the danger in every step. Her legs felt like jelly as she inched her way across from one sill to the other. Her hands worked their way along the wall until she reached where the house came to a corner, where it jutted out in a right angle that branched out over the kitchen and, above it, Madeleine could just about see the bell tower.
‘Here, it’s easier to climb up the corner.’ In one swift movement, Bandit pulled himself up onto the roof; lay spread-eagled on the wet slate tiles and then leaned forward, holding out his hand and arm to where she balanced.
‘I can’t, Bandit, please, can’t we just break through one of the other windows?’
‘Madeleine just grab my arm and, for God’s sake, don’t smash a window. You’ll cause a backdraft, the last thing you need is a fire ball throwing itself at you.’
Madeleine looked up to where he balanced. Stone ridges lined the edge of the tiles. She took hold of the tile, but felt it immediately slip through her hand and crash to the floor.
She held her breath and looked down to where the tile now lay in pieces on the concrete and began to shake with fear. Every millimetre of her body froze, she knew that she couldn’t stay where she was, but was too afraid to move, too afraid that she’d fall too.
‘Madeleine, grab my arm. NOW.’
Madeleine looked up at Bandit. ‘I swear to God that if we get out of here I will dig up the concrete by myself and lay that bouncy stuff that they put in children’s playgrounds. That has to have a soft landing, right?’
‘Right, but what you really mean is you’ll ask me to dig up the concrete and lay that soft bouncy stuff. Now do as I say, grab my arm. I’ll pull you up. Trust me.’
Madeleine hesitated before reaching up and then felt her whole body suspend in mid-air as he pulled her towards him. The next moment, she was lying on the roof and Bandit dropped a kiss on her forehead.
‘Well done. Now, do you see the window, the one right there?’ He pointed to a small window that stood to the left of the bell tower. It would have barely been noticeable from the woods and she’d certainly never noticed it from the ground.
‘If Emily’s diary is right, this room is separate to the rest of the house, not only is it separate, it has its own staircase. We should be safe from the fire and, let’s hope, from backdrafts.’
Pulling an army knife from his pocket, Bandit pulled out the blade, slipped it between the wood and the lock and prised the window open.
‘Come on.’ He once again grabbed her hand and pulled her to the window. ‘Put your foot on there.’ He pointed to a concrete sill and Madeleine stepped forward, her foot slipped and she landed with a crash in the cold, dark room. She wasn’t hurt and tried to adjust her eyes to take note of her surroundings. It was dark and dusty. She sneezed.
‘My goodness, how dirty is this room?’ She wiped her hand across an old dressing table
that stood to the side of the window and could physically feel the dirt move beneath her fingers. There was an old glass mirror, which reflected the moonlight and lit the room just enough to show a baby’s crib. It too was covered in layers of dust and stood by a single metal-framed bed, a paraffin lamp and an old dark wood wardrobe, which had long since lost its doors.
‘I have to come back up here in daylight,’ she said as Bandit climbed into the room and began feeling his way around the walls. ‘Do you see the crib? This is the room she talks of; this is where Emily hid her baby.’
He continued to feel his way around the edges of the room. ‘Here, there’s a door.’ He pulled at a handle; a firm thud told them both that the door was locked and he fiddled around until he found a key. ‘It’s stuck,’ he said as he pulled. The door was swollen and stiff. Bandit stood back, assessed the situation, pulled his knife back out of his pocket and began prising at the hinges until the door fell from its frame and landed on the floor, sending a plume of dust high up and into the air.
Madeleine saw the darkness beyond and a staircase that led downwards. Smoke drifted up to where they stood and she looked up as she continued to cough. ‘That must be the bell tower Emily mentioned. I can still smell the smoke … can you see the fire?’
‘Staircase looks clear,’ Bandit said. ‘Come on, we need to get out.’ Bandit led the way and Madeleine watched as he placed his foot carefully down on each tread, checking its yield before trusting it to take his weight.
‘This really is where she came to have her baby, isn’t it?’ she said excitedly as she tried to look up to where the bell hung above them both. ‘Jesus. I do hope that’s secure.’ She pointed to the bell. ‘Shall we ring it, just once? It would let people know we are here.’
Bandit shook his head. ‘What if it isn’t secure and it falls to the ground? It could damage the staircase which we are about to escape down, couldn’t it?’
Madeleine looked up once more. ‘Okay, okay. You have a point, we’ll do it another day, keep going.’
Bandit kept moving down the stairs with caution. ‘We’re at the bottom. Stand back, I’m going to open the door. I need for you to lie as close to the floor as you can, on your belly. There could be a backdraft and, Maddie, if anything goes wrong,’ he paused and dropped a kiss on her forehead, ‘Remember, I love you.’
Nomsa cowered in the cellar with Poppy. ‘It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. Someone will come soon, I promise.’ Once again she repeated the words that she’d continually muttered for the past twenty minutes, but no longer believed. She looked at her watch for what seemed like the hundredth time. It felt as though she’d been down there for at least an hour and listened desperately as the sound of crashes, bangs and screams echoed down the staircase.
Both she and Poppy had been in the kitchen when the fire alarm had sounded. Nomsa had immediately run to the back door with the child in her arms, as both Bernie and Jack had run to the front, through the house and past the flames.
The back door had been locked and Nomsa remembered the lost key that had fallen behind the Aga. In desperation, she turned and ran back through the kitchen, but stopped dead in her tracks and froze as she saw the flames advancing towards her.
‘We’ll be safe down here, Poppy. Smoke rises.’ Nomsa looked at the wine racks, remembered the tunnel and used her hands to feel for the opening. She wished she’d paid more attention when Madeleine had shown her the entrance. When she’d been told of how it had opened. All she knew was that the wine rack had moved. ‘Do you remember where it was, honey?’ she asked Poppy.
Poppy shrugged in a matter of fact way. ‘’Course I do, Nom Nom, you push the rack right here,’ she said as she ran to the rack that stood right at the back of the room.
Chapter Forty
Bandit pushed up at the grate above his head. The entrance to the stairway had brought them out below ground level and at some point, someone had put metal grates above the stone steps that led down to the door, either to hide it from view or to stop anyone from gaining access.
‘No wonder I couldn’t find the door, it’s hidden down here,’ Madeleine said as she looked around for something to push the grate with. ‘We need to make a noise. Should we both scream together?’
They mentally counted to three and began to scream and shout as loudly as they could. Madeleine reached for Bandit’s hand. ‘I’ve not climbed out of windows, over roofs and found secret staircases to die in a horrid smelly hole in the ground.’ She balked at the smell and turned back towards the stairs. ‘Keep trying, I’ll be quick. There has to be something up there that can help us.’ She looked back over her shoulder, gave Bandit a smile and then disappeared up the stairs, while Bandit continued with his attempts to move the grate, to no avail. It had probably been there for over seventy years, with seventy years of rust, seventy years of dust and seventy years of rain that would have fallen above it.
‘Damn you.’ He swore directly at the grate, shook it and pushed at it with every ounce of strength that he had. ‘Come on,’ he screamed. ‘You son of a bitch, move. Arrrghhhhhhh!’ The bellow left his lips, his voice full of anger and emotion as his taut muscles flexed against the grate.
He had no idea what to do next, but he knew that Madeleine was right. Tonight was not going to be the night that they died. He hadn’t been to Afghanistan, watched his friends and lover die and spent the past years coming to terms with what was left of his life only to die in a storm drain below the ground level of the house.
Besides, he had Maddie now. He’d only just found her. Had made love to her for the first time and he knew that she was worth fighting for. He had to stay strong. He had to survive, had to ensure that she survived too and all of that was going to take some planning. He assessed the situation, used his penknife to work its way around the edges then forced the blade up as far as he could to create a wedge.
Anger took over as once again he pushed against the metal. ‘Arrrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhh, come on!’ he screamed as the grate moved a fraction.
‘Maddie, it moved. Quick, I felt it move.’ He listened intently for her returning footsteps, but all he could hear were the crackling, banging and explosions that came from within the house. His thoughts went back to Emily Ennis’s diary; she’d said it would burn like a tinderbox and she’d been right. He felt helpless, the house was burning down, and from down here there was nothing he could do about it.
‘I found this,’ Madeleine said as she suddenly appeared behind him carrying a long wooden pole. ‘It was in the wardrobe. I’m sorry I was so long, I had to break the wardrobe to get it out.’
Bandit took the pole from her hands and pushed it under the grate at an angle. As slowly as he dared, he inched the pole higher and higher, a millimetre at a time until he felt the grate once again begin to move.
‘When I shout, help me push the pole higher,’ he said as he grabbed the grate in both hands. ‘NOOOOWWWWW…!
Madeleine pushed with all her strength. Bandit screamed with pure emotion, the grate lifted and then dropped back into the position it had been in for all the years before as the pole twanged and snapped in half and both Madeleine and Bandit dropped to their knees.
‘No, no, no, it can’t. It can’t break,’ she sobbed as Bandit threw his arms around her. The smoke had reached their prison and again they both began to cough and choke. Her thoughts went back to Poppy, of all the happy days when they’d played with her doll’s house, ran through the woods and rolled around with Buddy.
‘Buddy, that’s it. Shout for Buddy.’
They both began to shout as loud as they could. A dog’s hearing was so much better than a human’s. He always came when Madeleine called and she knew he’d hear her voice; she just knew he’d respond.
‘What if he’s trapped in his kennel?’ she began to cry. ‘What if … what if … Buddy, come on, boy, please, Buddy, come on,’ she continued to cough, cry and shout all at once.
Then as though he was just out for a walk, Buddy appeared. His nos
e poked down the grate, his whole body waggled as though bending in two and he tried to lick at Madeleine’s hand through the metal.
New tears fell down her face, tears of joy and relief. Buddy was still alive.
‘Okay, Buddy. Sit. Sit down. Now, Buddy, SPEAK, BUDDY, speak!’ she shouted as the pup took the hint and began to bark repeatedly and louder than normal. ‘Good boy, Buddy. Speak for Mummy. Come on, Buddy, do it again. SPEAK!’
She closed her eyes and began to pray. She’d taught him this as a way to get Poppy to eat and right now she may just have got him to save their lives.
‘It’s times like this that I wish I’d trained him to retrieve or bring help. I mean, did you ever watch Lassie?’ she said trying to lighten the situation as a new coughing fit began to overtake her body.
‘Listen.’ Bandit held his finger to his lips as the sound of people’s voices could clearly be heard as they got closer.
‘Okay, Buddy. Do it again. Speak, speak for Mummy.’
Chapter Forty-One
Madeleine felt overwhelmed with relief, yet distraught with anguish as she was dragged out of the ground, forcibly taken to an ambulance and laid on a trolley bed.
Fire engines surrounded the hall and firemen ran around spraying water towards reception where flames jumped out from the window frames and shot up to the roof of the house.
‘Bernie, Jack, where’s Poppy, where is she?’ Madeleine felt the panic flood through her as both Jack and Bernie shook their heads.
She’d been so sure that as soon as they escaped the house someone would have brought Poppy to her, but they hadn’t. Why hadn’t they brought her?
‘Maddie, she’s with Nomsa. Jess left her with Nomsa. They were in the kitchen,’ Jack said as tears streamed down his face.
Madeleine felt a moment of relief. ‘That’s good, right? If she’s with Nomsa, that would be good. Nomsa would look after her, right?’ she tried to find a rational explanation as Jack crumpled before her.
