Page 63 of The Path to the Last House Before the Sea

‘I spent a lot of time down here,’ he said, scuffing his feet across the flagstones.

‘Why? You weren’t shut down here for bad behaviour, were you?’

‘Definitely not.’ Jack grinned at her. ‘One, I was a very well-behaved child, and two, my parents weren’t monsters. You know my dad. Can you imagine him doing such a thing?’

Alyssa couldn’t. Stan was so kind he didn’t always ring up the full price when Heaven’s Cove’s least well-off families came in to top up their larders. ‘No, sorry. But I don’t understand why you’d be in the cellar so much.’

‘It was quiet down here when John was ill,’ said Jack softly, his face in shadow. ‘Upstairs, there were always visitors or medical staff, and Mum and Dad were either busy looking after John or, when he was in hospital, trying to pretend they weren’t devastated. This cellar was peaceful, and somewhere I could be alone with my thoughts. That’s all.’

Alyssa could imagine young Jack down here in the gloom trying to make sense of an impending tragedy spinning out of his control. Her heart ached for the child he once was and the serious adult he’d become – an adult who still found refuge in cold, hard facts.‘I’m so sorry. That must have been awful to cope with.’

She stepped towards Jack and lifted her hand to touch his face. It was an automatic gesture, made, without thinking, in a bid to bring some comfort to the child she could still see in him.But he moved away before her fingers made contact with his skin.

‘It was a long time ago,’ he said, his voice suddenly brisk. ‘And at least being down here so much meant I noticed the mark on the wall.’

‘That’s true,’ said Alyssa, matching his brisk tone to mask her embarrassment. Had she really almost touched his face? The fall-out with Magda, followed by Jack’s display of vulnerability, must have really jangled her emotions. She ran her raised hand through her hair, as if she’d never meant to touch him at all, before tapping the torch icon on her phone. A beam of light spilled across the wall in front of her. ‘Do you think the bricks look a little unusual here, just below the marking?’ she asked. ‘They’re a slightly different shade.’

He looked closely at the wall. ‘Possibly.’

‘It’s as if the bricks don’t quite match. As if this bit of the wall was built, or rebuilt, later than the rest of the cellar,’ said Alyssa, her imagination beginning to run away with her.

Jack whistled softly through his teeth. ‘From what I’ve come to know about you, Alyssa, I assume you’re implying that there was once a gap here? Or the opening to a tunnel?’

‘You never know.’

‘And the symbol – what? Marks the spot?’

‘Perhaps in 1753 the bricks could be removed to reveal the tunnel.’ Alyssa gave them a gentle push to check her theory, but they didn’t budge. ‘What do you think the symbol means?’

‘I have no idea and I must admit that I’m curious. That’s why I wanted to show it to you but’ – Jack shook his head – ‘you’re leaping ahead again. Let’s look at the evidence. All we have is a piece of paper with some scrawled lines that look vaguely map-like, and a weird symbol that happens also to be on our cellar wall.’

‘The cellar of the cottage where Josiah, a smuggler, once lived.’

‘He might not have been a smuggler.’

‘OK, but he disappeared on the same night as a smuggling gang in Heaven’s Cove was rounded up. And then there’s the hair.’

Alyssa briefly screwed her eyes shut. She hadn’t meant to mention that particular piece of the puzzle, concerned it might prove to be a leap too far for Jack.

He leaned against the wall and folded his arms. ‘What hair?’

Alyssa took a deep breath. ‘The box that held the map –possible map,’ she corrected herself. ‘It also contained a lock of red hair in a piece of paper that had “beloved” written on it. And…’ She hesitated because Jack was staring at her as if she’d completely lost her marbles. ‘And red hair runs in your family,’ she said in a rush. ‘Your dad said.’

When Jack continued staring, without saying anything, Alyssa added: ‘So maybe that means Josiah gave the map to Charity.’

Jack pushed himself away from the wall, his arms still folded. ‘And I suppose he gave her a lock of his hair because it fits with your theory that he and Charity were lovers?’

‘Well, probably not lovers. Not in the seventeen hundreds, when sex before marriage was taboo. But they might have been in love.’

How had it come to this? wondered Alyssa. Talking about sex in a cellar with a man who made her feel… She shook her head, not knowing quite how she felt about this reserved, uptight man whose flashes of vulnerability touched her heart.

‘Hmm.’ Jack gave a wry smile. ‘It’s all totally circumstantial and would never stand up in a court of law, you know.’

‘But we’re not detectives making a case. We’re people trying to make sense of an ages-old mystery and I, for one, in light of the circumstantial evidence and adding a big dollop of wishful thinking, believe this cellar could have once housed the entrance to a smuggling tunnel. Those bricks close to the symbol definitely look a little lighter to me.’

She stopped to take a breath and looked expectantly at Jack, who was watching her from the gloom.

‘There’s not likely to be a tunnel behind that wall,’ he replied.

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