Page 70 of The Path to the Last House Before the Sea

Together, they began to move the bricks and stones to one side. Cold damp earth wedged itself under Alyssa’s fingernails as they carefully shifted the rubble, keeping an eye on the roof above, until there was a gap just wide enough for a human body to fit through.

Jack scrambled through the hole first and Alyssa followed, thanking her lucky stars that they had found a way out. They would both live, and she could apologise to Magda and to Jack and start to turn her life around.

There was something about being in mortal danger far below ground, she realised, that brought one’s existence into sharp focus and shone a spotlight on everything that was wrong with it.

She’d run away. She’d made a terrible mistake and run away. But the mistake would always follow her, however far she ran. She could see that now. And it was time to take a different path. Being trapped down here had been traumatic but it would turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

Alyssa got to her feet and brushed dirt from her knees as Jack arced his torch around them. ‘What the hell?’ he said, his deep voice echoing as he illuminated their surroundings.

Alyssa blinked as she followed the light with her eyes – and her heart sank: it turned out that there would be no second chances at life after all.

‘Where are we?’ she asked dully, squinting to see through the gloom.

They were in some kind of enclosed room. There was rotting wood on the floor, and the place smelled of damp and something Alyssa couldn’t place at first. Then it hit her. Alcohol. Down here, far beneath Heaven’s Cove, it smelled faintly of the Smugglers Haunt on a Saturday night.

‘We can’t get out this way,’ said Jack, the beam of his torch showing up nothing but brick walls. ‘This must have been where they kept smuggled goods before they were moved on… We’ve basically gone sideways out of the tunnel into a storeroom.’

‘Which means the way ahead, the way out, is still blocked.’

‘That’s about the size of it.’ He sighed. ‘Let’s see if there’s anything in here that might help us.’

Alyssa wasn’t sure what they were looking for, but she began to circle the storeroom, until her torch beam caught a flash of white in a corner.

‘What the hell is that?’ she muttered, moving towards it. Then she realised. ‘Oh my God!’ Her phone fell from her hand and slapped down onto the dirt floor.

‘What have you found?’ Jack came to join her, and she heard his sharp intake of breath.

What Alyssa had found was bones. Lots of bones, gleaming white in the light of Jack’s torch.

‘Is it an animal?’she whispered.

Jack moved to stand over the bones, training the light directly on them. ‘I’m afraid not. I think they’re human remains.’

‘It must be another person who got trapped.’

‘People,’ said Jack quietly. ‘Two people.’

When two illuminated skulls suddenly yawned out of the gloom, Alyssa gasped and stumbled backwards.

She and Jack were trapped in a tomb.

‘Are you all right?’ Jack’s voice sounded odd, as if he could hardly get the words out.

‘I think so,’ said Alyssa, trying to slow down her breathing. She was hyperventilating and her head was swimming. ‘It’s bones. Just bones,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Bones, just bones.’

Jack had squatted down beside the remains and Alyssa forced herself to kneel beside him. She could see it was two people now. Some of the smaller bones had become displaced over time and lay alone on the dirt. But where the long arm and leg bones intertwined, two people had become one jumble of collagen and calcium.

‘Poor things,’ murmured Alyssa. ‘Do you know anything about… about—?’

‘—about dead bodies?’ Jack swallowed. ‘Not much. I work in a lab analysing data from living, breathing people. But if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that these two have been here for quite a while.’ He pointed at a thigh bone that was pitted and marked, but shone white as chalk. ‘I’d also guess that one skeleton is male and the other female. Her bones are much shorter than his. And what’s that in her hand?’

Alyssa leaned in closer to take a look and suddenly she knew.

‘It’s Charity and Josiah,’ she whispered, her heart hammering.

‘That’s a stretch,’ said Jack, getting to his feet.‘I know I’m lobbing in a few guesses but at least mine are based on reasoned deduction.’

‘So is mine.’ Alyssa reached across the bones and, with only the slightest of hesitations, gently moved the woman’s hand. ‘Sorry,’ she whispered to the dead as she picked up the sparkling object that had lain partially hidden beneath the woman’s fingers.

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