The House on Cold Hill

49

Ollie raced out of the yellow room and back again into the blue room. It was deserted and icy, the temperature seeming to have dropped since he’d last been in it, only a couple of minutes ago. It was like entering a walk-in deep freeze. He went over to the window and called down. ‘Caro, are you sure? This is the next window!’

She shook her head vigorously. ‘No, there’s a small one in between. They’re not there any more. But they were, Ols.’

He struggled as hard as he could to lift the broken window enough to get his head out and look properly, but it would not budge. How the hell could there be an extra window, he wondered? Had there originally been another room, and the window left in place when it was knocked through? He had seen plans of the house a few months ago, before making an offer on the place, when he was discussing work that needed to be done with the surveyor. But he couldn’t remember at this moment where they were.

‘Wait there, Caro!’ he said.

He went downstairs and out of the front door, where several metal ladders belonging to the builders lay on the ground. He selected the longest, lugged it round to the rear of the house, and propped it up against the wall beneath the tiny window with the broken guttering. The ladder didn’t quite reach, but it would at least enable him to see in, he calculated. The base was resting on the mossy flagstones of the rear patio.

‘Be careful, Ols.’

‘If you hold it to stop it slipping, darling.’

She grabbed the vibrating ladder as he began to climb, jamming her feet against both legs, watching him anxiously.

Ollie climbed slowly and carefully. He’d always been scared of heights, and even a short distance above the ground made him uneasy. And as he neared the top he realized he was short of breath again. He stopped for a moment, feeling giddy, his head swimming.

‘Ols, darling, are you all right?’ Caro called out, anxiously.

‘Yes.’ The word came out as a gasp. He carried on until his hands reached the top rung, where he was still not high enough to see in the window. Another couple of feet. Very slowly, still holding the top rung, he raised his feet up one rung, then the next.

‘Ols, please be careful!’ Caro said, her voice irritating him now.

‘I am being sodding careful, OK?’

Placing his hands against the rough brick wall for balance, he slowly raised his body up, inches at a time, until he was able to grab the sill with its flaking white paint. But as his fingers gripped the wood it crumbled like papier mâché.

‘Jesus!’ he cried out, almost toppling over backwards.

‘Ollie!’ Caro screamed.

He just managed to grab the top of the ladder with one hand, and then leaned forward, steadying himself, gulping air.

‘Come down!’ she commanded. ‘Come down, we’ll get one of the builders to go up — this evening if we can.’

Ollie hesitated. But his head was swimming again, he realized. This was not smart. Slowly and very carefully, he descended. When he climbed off the last rung, relieved to have his feet back on terra firma, he was sweating heavily.

Caro looked at him, anxiously. ‘Are you feeling OK?’

‘Yes,’ he fibbed. His heart was pounding and, strangely, he had toothache. The garden seemed to be swaying in front of his eyes, as if he had just stepped off a boat and hadn’t yet got back his equilibrium. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand; his T-shirt beneath his jumper felt sodden. ‘Yes, I’m fine.’

‘You’ve gone a horrible colour.’

‘Really, I’m fine, darling. I’ll phone Bryan Barker and see if he can get someone over right now.’

With her help, he lowered the ladder then carried it back and laid it down with the other, shorter ladders. When he stood back up, he was again panting, his heart racing. He was coming down with a bug, he realized. Flu. But he had no time for that.

‘You don’t look right, Ols,’ Caro said.

‘Ley lines,’ he replied. ‘I’ll go and call Bryan and then check them out on my computer.’

‘I’ll come up and show you the sites I’ve been looking at,’ she said, still staring at him, concerned.

He climbed up the two flights of stairs to his office, hauling himself on the handrail much of the way, then had to stop for a moment when he entered the room to get his breath back.

‘You should go to bed,’ Caro said. ‘You need to be right for tomorrow evening.’

‘I’m fine,’ he said, sitting down in front of his screen. ‘I’m fine. I feel like bashing that wall down, but with a houseful of kids we can’t do that. I don’t want to freak them out.’

Barker’s phone went to voicemail and he left a message, asking him to call back urgently.

They spent the next ten minutes scanning and studying segments of websites on ley lines. Then Caro looked at her watch. ‘I’d better go down and see to lunch.’ She looked at him anxiously once more. ‘Are you sure you shouldn’t be in bed?’

He stood up and put his arms round her, holding her tightly. ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Really. I guess I’m just all wound up about everything.’

‘That makes two of us,’ she said. ‘And we’re both going to be like this until we find out just who the hell else we’re sharing this house with.’

‘We will,’ he said. ‘And we’ll get rid of any unwanted guest we have, OK? The vicar and this Minister of Deliverance, Benedict Cutler, will sort it out tomorrow. They will, darling.’

She smiled, thinly. ‘I hope so.’

‘We will get this sorted out,’ he said, adamantly. ‘I promise you.’

She kissed him on the forehead then went out of the room and headed downstairs. He sat back down, turned to the computer screen, and froze. There was another message in large black letters.