Page 103 of The Cornish Cream Tea Holiday
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The worst thing was, Thea thought, as she stared at the scene she had come to know so well over the last couple of hours, that she could see the passage of time marked by the sun: the way it moved overhead, the shadows elongating before her eyes. She had more things to add to her pity party now: mainly the fact that she had briefly fallen asleep, and was sure that a whole horde of people – probably an entire hiking party, with crampons and sensible hats and flasks of water – had been past while she had been dozing, mouth slightly open, possibly catching spiders while she failed to save herself.
Enough, she thought. She could get out of here. Shecould.
She left her upstairs viewing post and, her limbs stiff, her hip and elbow sore from her awkward snoozing position, went back downstairs. She tried the beam again. It was wedged as tightly as it had been earlier: steadfast and solid.Just like Ben, she thought. She gripped it with both hands, planted her feet wide apart, and pulled. There wasthe tick-tick-tick of wood shifting, but nothing more promising than that.
‘Fuck it.’ She walked to the window where, less than three weeks before, she had peered into the building for the first time. The glass was latticed, and she knew that breaking one of the panes would get her no further than sticking her hand outside. She went back to the beam and tried to move it again. It groaned, as if to say, ‘Enough now’. But itwasn’tenough. She had to get out of here. She had roughly twelve hours, maybe sixteen, to find Ben and tell him she was sorry. To explain that she had picked this place, that she was coming back here to live, to start a new chapter of her life. She had to—
What was that? A sound cut through the stillness of the sunny afternoon, and it was close – nowhere near the beach or harbour. The sound of an engine.
Thea abandoned the beam and raced back upstairs, forgetting to be careful about where she put her feet, and hurried to the open window. She couldn’t see anything yet, there was no sign of a car. Maybe it wasn’t anyone: maybe it was a generator somewhere nearby, or a low-flying plane, or – no.No.The blue van appeared at the crest of the hill and then came, tyres screeching, into the space in front of the Old Post House.
The doors opened and there was a flurry of movement and noise, so different to the hours Thea had just spent by herself. She saw Meredith get out of the passenger side, Finn come out of the back of the van, and there was Ben, in a white cotton shirt and jeans, Scooter at his heels.
Ben went straight to the front door, but Meredith looked up, gasping when her eyes landed on Thea, who had stuckher head and shoulders out of the window and was trying very hard not to sob with relief.
‘You’re here!’ Meredith shouted.
Ben stepped back and looked up at her, and Thea felt a charge as their eyes met, almost as strong as when the building had vibrated.
‘Are you OK?’ he called up. ‘We’ve been calling and calling, but—’
‘I left my phone at Sunfish Cottage.’ It came out as a croak. ‘I came here to look around, to see my new—’ she swallowed. ‘The beam fell down.’
Ben put his hands in his hair. ‘Onyou?’
‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘I was upstairs. But you were right: it’s very unstable. Or itwas, anyway.’ She tried to laugh, but no sound came out.
‘We need to get you out,’ Ben said, approaching the building again.
‘The beam’s stuck in front of the door,’ Thea called down. ‘I can’t move it from in here, and the door won’t open wide enough for even a bat to get through.’ She heard the clunk as Ben pushed the door and it connected with the solid weight of the beam.
‘Fuck,’ he said.
Finn smiled up at her, his arm around Meredith, who was looking slightly panicked. Scooter was with Ben, barking and whining as his owner tried to make headway.
‘You doing OK, Thea?’ Finn asked. She frowned at him, unsure why he seemed so pleased about the situation.
‘I’m thirsty, and dusty, and there are some pretty humungous spiders in here.’
‘Finn, Meredith?’ Ben called. ‘A little help, please.’
The couple stopped staring at Thea and went to help, and she thought she should see if there was anything she could do from the inside. She went carefully down the stairs, wincing whenever Ben banged the door against the beam and bits of plaster fell from the ceiling.
‘This fucking thing,’ he said.
‘There’s no way it’s going to budge,’ Finn added. ‘Not like this.’
‘We need to get the door off,’ Ben said, and for the first time since she’d realised she was trapped, Thea’s heart skittered with relief. ‘Hang on.’
‘Ben’s going to take the door off!’ Finn called. ‘I was hoping he’d scale the ivy and rescue you that way, but we can’t always have a Disney ending.’
‘If he gets me out of here, it’ll be better than a Disney film,’ Thea called back, and Finn and Meredith both laughed. She waited for Ben to join in, to say something in response, but there was nothing, and her panic returned more forcefully than before. What if he was going to get her out and then walk away? His one act of kindness, then they would go back to being strangers.
She heard the whirr of an automatic drill, murmuring from Finn and Meredith, and pressed herself as close to the door as she could, which actually meant she was pressed up against the beam.
‘Ben?’ she called.
