Smiling at the machine as if they had solved the problem together, Gabe wiped his oily hands on a dry cloth he kept in his toolbox.
'Don't let us down, baby,' he said to the generator. 'We don't need any more scares like last night.'
Carrying the long metal toolbox, Gabe left the boiler/generator room and went next door to the well cellar. Like the landing light, the lightbulb down here was far too weak to brighten the place efficiently and the thicker shadows that were created somehow made him feel uneasy.
The rushing of the river at the bottom of the well was loud enough to catch his attention. Downing the toolbox, he went over to the low wall that encircled the pit at the cellar's centre and shone his flashlight into it. The beam of light reflected off the slick mossy wall before revealing the spumy, surging river thirty or so feet below. Anyone unfortunate to fall in wouldn't stand a chance, he mused: there would be no grip on the rough but slimy stonework and the coursing waters would immediately sweep that person away. He reminded himself to make sure the door at the top of the stairs was always locked in case Cally's curiosity got the better of her (he thought he'd locked it yesterday, but this morning he had found the door ajar again). The stone wall round the well was low enough to be dangerous should either one of his daughters lean over it for a look-see.
The noise of the river was amplified by the round wall to a constant, only slightly muffled roar, and the air here was so chilled he could see his own breath vapour.
Gabe checked himself. He had been leaning too far over the wall, almost mesmerized by the black pit he was staring into. He hurriedly stepped back from the brink and drew in a slow breath. Damn right it was dangerous. Loren, too, would be banned from venturing down here alone.
He climbed the cellar stairs and at the top he carefully locked the door behind him, giving it a pull to ensure it was secure. It was loose in its frame but remained shut. Leaving the toolbox on the hall floor, Gabe went into the kitchen.
Chester had dragged his sleeping blanket into the corner by the kitchen's other door and he looked up expectantly at Gabe.
'Still jumpy, boy?'
Gabe squatted to pat the dog's flank. Although no longer trembling, Chester nevertheless gazed appealingly into his master's eyes.
'Guess you're still not happy with the place, right? But you gotta acclimatize, pal. We all do.'
Gabe wondered if they would. He felt that Eve would leave right now if she had her way. And the girls? Last night's incident scared them, but neither of them had complained this morning at breakfast. It was as if Loren was looking to her mother for guidance, and Cally seemed to have forgotten her upset already. The three of them had gone off to the Sunday-morning service at St Mark's—even though it was C of E—without mentioning the episode; but Gabe knew that Eve was waiting to get him alone.
With one last comforting pat on Chester's rump, Gabe rose and went to the sink where he poured tap water into the kettle. While he waited for the water to boil, his thoughts returned to Eve.
She really was creeped out by Crickley Hall. And he wasn't too comfortable with the place himself. When he had gone downstairs during the night to bring Chester back to their room, he had trodden in more small puddles on the broad steps, and there were others across the flagstone floor of the hall. If the dog hadn't been shut away in the kitchen, Gabe might have suspected him of leaving his mark all over the place. But these had no smelclass="underline" they were plain water. However, it had been windy outside and he supposed that rain might have been blown through cracks in the tall window over the stairs. Had it been windy when he had first noticed the puddles the night before? He couldn't remember. But anyway, that wouldn't explain the ones across the hall.
Maybe they should get out right away, find some other house to rent, something not as weird as Crickley Hall. A place slap-damn in the middle of a village or town, somewhere not so isolated. Or so lonely. He couldn't risk Eve becoming more depressed than she was already. She had been through too much this past year—they all had.
But the tragedy had changed Eve more than it had Gabe.
When they had first met, she had been a staff fashion writer for a magazine called Plenty, organizing fashion shoots, auditioning and hiring models, choosing photographers, finding suitable locations for background interest, liaising with PR companies, reporting on the main fashion shows in the UK and Europe, interviewing celebrities to discover whose labels they were currently wearing.
She and Gabe were only married six months before Loren came along and Eve went freelance. Her contacts and her reputation were good and before long she was doing work for a number of magazines—Marie Claire, Vogue, Elle, among others—and was able to concentrate on writing purely about fashion without the baggage that went with it. But when Cameron was born, and then Catherine (Cally) a year later, Eve put her career on hold for a while so that she could devote more time to her family.
By then, they were living in a largish Victorian property in Canonbury, north London, and Gabe's salary was high enough to cover most of their needs. She still accepted the more interesting assignments, however, and when she did she would put her best efforts into them, which was why her very last freelance job—covering London's Fashion Week—had left her so exhausted. And that exhaustion had led her to falling asleep for a few minutes in the park where Cameron had gone missing…
Eve was wrong to blame herself, but how could he convince her? He pushed the thoughts away as he spooned coffee granules into a mug, then poured boiling water over them. There had been too much brooding for way too long. If only for Loren and Cally's sake, Eve had to snap out of it. But how could he help her?
Although Cam was a real boy's boy, a son that a father could really enjoy, Eve seemed to have a special 'connection' with him. No, he wasn't a momma's boy, but there was an affinity between them. They even shared the same trivial abnormality: the little finger of Cam's right hand was shorter than the one on his left, the same as Eve's; they also both had fingerprint whorls on the fleshy mount of their right palm. It was a similarity that they enjoyed, for it wasn't an obvious deformity—hands had to be compared to notice it.
Looking out the window, Gabe saw that the rain had stopped, although only temporarily judging by the ominous clouds that cruised the sky. As he watched, the sun broke out from behind one of those clouds and the lawn glistened with raindrops caught in the grass. The sudden brightness and the green denseness of the grass and foliage lifted some of the heaviness of spirit from him. Whatever the shortcomings of Crickley Hall itself, it couldn't be denied that it was in a beautiful location. From where he stood in the kitchen he could see past the old oak from which the swing dangled to the rushing waters of the Bay River, fallen leaves and small broken branches swept along with its hurried journey down to the Bristol Channel. He watched as a heron landed on the opposite bank close to the wooden bridge; the heavy bird must have decided that this was a poor place to catch passing fish, for its great wings soon flapped and it took off again in an impossibly lumbering rise into the air.
Gabe felt the need for fresh air himself and he carried his mug of coffee into the main hall where he unlocked the big front door to let the breeze, such as it was, circulate and disperse some of the musty odour that permeated the house. He stood on the doorstep and sipped the coffee as grey wagtails, with their black bibs, wheeled and dived over the garden, catching insects and celebrating the rare sunshine.
His thoughts returned to Eve, how she had changed, how she was before that fateful day. She was still beautiful to him—slim, small-breasted, long-legged, with deep-brown eyes that matched her deep-brown hair—but now there were lines on her face that had only appeared during the last few months, and there was a darkness round her eyes that spoke of sleepless nights and sadness of soul. Her hair, once worn so long that its ends cascaded over her shoulders, was now cut short, urchin-style, not because of fashion but because it was easier to manage, nothing to bother over. A psychologist might suggest it was shorn as self-punishment, arising from guilt.