been their birthday - still filled imaginary stockings every Christmas Eve.
She forced herself to open the door, casting a panicked glance at the flight of steep stone steps, plunging down to peril and decay. Already she was sweating with fear, wrinkling her nose against the smell of rotting remains. “Don’t be stupid,” she told herself, “there’s no smell whatsoever, no trace of blood on the steps.”
She took them one at a time, clinging to the banister rail, and ready to plunge back any moment to the safety of the kitchen. At last, she reached the bottom step and looked nervously around, astonished to see not piles of junk and swathes of dirt, but a clean and well-swept room - cluttered, yes, but cluttered with intriguing things. A model railway was laid out on a table, its metal tracks gleaming, the carriages liveried in smart maroon. On another table was a half-completed jigsaw puzzle of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers , in radiant yellows and golds. And underneath the table was a row of Gro-bags, each boasting a crop of healthy-looking mushrooms.
The mushrooms she used for cooking were poor things in comparison: supermarket mushrooms, plastic-packed. Yet here was Colin’s own private home-grown supply, unrevealed, unshared. And she, too, loved jigsaw puzzles, especially challenging ones with a limited colour range. Couldn’t they have done it together - upstairs? And there was room for the model railway upstairs - plenty of space in Colin’s study, or even in the lounge.
She tiptoed over to inspect it, still feeling an intruder here, and thus trying to make her movements unobtrusive. Crouching down at eye level, she saw it was more than just a railway - a whole model village, in fact, with houses, shops, a church and pub and, in the centre, the railway station itself, complete with platform, level-crossing, goods yard and signal box. The detail was amazing. There were passengers on the station: perfectly proportioned little people, dressed in coats and hats, and holding miniature cases and umbrellas. Each railway carriage was meticulously constructed, even down to the interiors. One boasted a luxurious restaurant car, its tables laid with snowy white cloths and lit by tiny gold lamps. The others had plush upholstered seats, topped by minuscule luggage racks, and containing more small but lifelike passengers reading papers or smoking cigars.
What in heaven’s name had all this cost? Not to mention the price of that château-bottled wine; those rare coins in mint condition. Was this the reason they’d been forced to sell their house? - not, as Colin claimed, because of the rising costs of running it, but because he had poured their money into this subterranean treasure-vault.
She sank into his easy chair. Even that was cosily set up, with cushions and a tartan rug. One easy chair, not two, though. Yes, that’s what hurt, and much more than the cost - the way he had excluded her. Why should he mind losing their house when he had a village-full of houses here - a romantic little Happy Valley, entire in itself, and his alone?
And his empire spread well beyond the village. Wherever she looked were more of his possessions: a dartboard on the wall, flanked by two model ships, a pile of encyclopaedias, a brass telescope, an exercise bike. This was Colin’s other life, which he had totally concealed from her. Oh, of course she knew that he was often in the cellar, but he always told her he was mending things: soldering an old radio, repairing a vacuum cleaner, stripping and varnishing a damaged grandfather clock. And when she queried the hours it seemed to take, he would go into laborious detail about other time-consuming projects - he was re-plastering the cellar walls, re-laying the concrete floor. Yet there was no sign or smell of fresh plaster, and the floor was neatly covered with off-cuts of their bedroom carpet. Yes, another bedroom, for his adulterous affair. This was worse than another woman - this was
She forced herself to open the door, casting a panicked glance at the flight of steep stone steps, plunging down to peril and decay. Already she was sweating with fear, wrinkling her nose against the smell of rotting remains. “Don’t be stupid,” she told herself, “there’s no smell whatsoever, no trace of blood on the steps.”
She took them one at a time, clinging to the banister rail, and ready to plunge back any moment to the safety of the kitchen. At last, she reached the bottom step and looked nervously around, astonished to see not piles of junk and swathes of dirt, but a clean and well-swept room - cluttered, yes, but cluttered with intriguing things. A model railway was laid out on a table, its metal tracks gleaming, the carriages liveried in smart maroon. On another table was a half-completed jigsaw puzzle of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers , in radiant yellows and golds. And underneath the table was a row of Gro-bags, each boasting a crop of healthy-looking mushrooms.
The mushrooms she used for cooking were poor things in comparison: supermarket mushrooms, plastic-packed. Yet here was Colin’s own private home-grown supply, unrevealed, unshared. And she, too, loved jigsaw puzzles, especially challenging ones with a limited colour range. Couldn’t they have done it together - upstairs? And there was room for the model railway upstairs - plenty of space in Colin’s study, or even in the lounge.
She tiptoed over to inspect it, still feeling an intruder here, and thus trying to make her movements unobtrusive. Crouching down at eye level, she saw it was more than just a railway - a whole model village, in fact, with houses, shops, a church and pub and, in the centre, the railway station itself, complete with platform, level-crossing, goods yard and signal box. The detail was amazing. There were passengers on the station: perfectly proportioned little people, dressed in coats and hats, and holding miniature cases and umbrellas. Each railway carriage was meticulously constructed, even down to the interiors. One boasted a luxurious restaurant car, its tables laid with snowy white cloths and lit by tiny gold lamps. The others had plush upholstered seats, topped by minuscule luggage racks, and containing more small but lifelike passengers reading papers or smoking cigars.
What in heaven’s name had all this cost? Not to mention the price of that château-bottled wine; those rare coins in mint condition. Was this the reason they’d been forced to sell their house? - not, as Colin claimed, because of the rising costs of running it, but because he had poured their money into this subterranean treasure-vault.
She sank into his easy chair. Even that was cosily set up, with cushions and a tartan rug. One easy chair, not two, though. Yes, that’s what hurt, and much more than the cost - the way he had excluded her. Why should he mind losing their house when he had a village-full of houses here - a romantic little Happy Valley, entire in itself, and his alone?
And his empire spread well beyond the village. Wherever she looked were more of his possessions: a dartboard on the wall, flanked by two model ships, a pile of encyclopaedias, a brass telescope, an exercise bike. This was Colin’s other life, which he had totally concealed from her. Oh, of course she knew that he was often in the cellar, but he always told her he was mending things: soldering an old radio, repairing a vacuum cleaner, stripping and varnishing a damaged grandfather clock. And when she queried the hours it seemed to take, he would go into laborious detail about other time-consuming projects - he was re-plastering the cellar walls, re-laying the concrete floor. Yet there was no sign or smell of fresh plaster, and the floor was neatly covered with off-cuts of their bedroom carpet. Yes, another bedroom, for his adulterous affair. This was worse than another woman - this was
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