Amelia

AMELIA

“I don’t understand. If Henry died two years ago, wouldn’t we have known about it?” I ask.

Adam doesn’t answer. We stand side by side in silence, staring at the granite headstone, as if doing so might make the words engraved on it disappear. No matter how many times I rearrange the pieces of this puzzle inside my head, they just don’t fit. I can see the confusion and fear and grief on my husband’s face. I know he thought everything we have was a result of Henry Winter giving him his big break, and trusting him with his novels. A silly falling-out didn’t change that. The man dying when they weren’t even on speaking terms is going to hit him hard. But Adam must realize we have bigger problems right now: if Henry didn’t trick us into coming here, then who did?

“We should get back inside,” Adam says.

He’s still looking at the headstone, like he can’t believe what he’s seeing.

“What about Bob?” I ask.

“Bob didn’t take off his own collar and leave it here for us to find. Someone else did that. I don’t know what’s going on, but we’re not safe.”

His words sound so melodramatic, but I agree.

As soon as we are back inside the chapel, Adam locks the doors, and pushes the large wooden church bench in front of them.

“Whoever we saw letting themselves in earlier must have had a key. This will stop them getting back in without us hearing,” he says, heading toward the kitchen. “Can you show me the email you were sent about winning a weekend in this place again?”

I feel for my phone inside my pocket, but find my inhaler instead. Now that my breathing has returned to normal, I don’t need it, but I feel better knowing it’s close at hand.

I find the email on my mobile and hand it to Adam.

“[email protected], that’s the email address they used?” he asks.

“Yes. It sounded like a genuine holiday rental.”

“Henry had a thing about the number three and the color black. A lot of his novels were set in Blackdown or Blacksand … I think there may have been a Blackwater too…”

“You never mentioned that before.”

“I didn’t realize there was a connection until now. But Henry can’t have sent this email—he doesn’t do emails, or the internet, doesn’t even have a mobile phone. He thinks they cause cancer. Thought.”

For a moment, I think Adam might cry.

I put my hand on his shoulder, “I’m sorry, I know how much you—”

“I’m fine. He hadn’t even been in touch since…”

Adam trails off and stares into space.

“What is it?” I ask.

“I hadn’t heard anything from or about him since last September, when his latest agent sent me a copy of his latest book. Luckily, this agent approves of screen adaptations, not like Henry’s first one. He’s a nice guy, we even joked about how Henry wasn’t speaking to him either, but the author had still sent his manuscript, three days before his deadline, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string just like usual.”

“So?”

“The headstone outside says he died two years ago. Dead people can’t write novels or send them to their agents.”

It takes me a few seconds to process this latest piece of information. “Are you saying that you think he isn’t really dead?”

“I don’t know what to think anymore.”

“Did he have any family? Surely someone would have known if he passed away. One of my old foster parents died last year, do you remember? Charlie, the guy who worked at the supermarket all his life, and always brought home free food that was about to go off. I hadn’t spoken to him for over a decade, but I still knew when he died. Henry Winter is a world-famous author; we would have read about his death in the newspapers or—”

Adam shakes his head. “There was nobody. He was a self-confessed hermit, and liked living his life that way … most of the time. Whenever he drank too much whiskey, Henry would get all teary-eyed about not having any children—nobody to look after his books when he was gone. That’s all he really cared about: the books. The man was stoic as a tree at all other times.”

“Well, someone must have been helping him. Henry was no spring chicken if he was born in 1937,” I say.

Adam’s eyes narrow. “That’s an odd detail to remember.”

“Not really. It was written on the headstone and Amelia Earhart went missing in 1937. I was named after her. Don’t you remember why you were called what you were? I think names are important.”

Adam stares at me as though my IQ has dropped to a dangerously low level. “Henry Winter didn’t have any children; he didn’t have any family at all. I think the only person he had left in his life other than his agent was me, and we weren’t even on speaking terms when he died…”

His voice wobbles and he looks away.

“The headstone outside said ‘Father of one.’ Someone had that made, and someone buried him. He couldn’t have done that by himself.”

The way Adam looks at me scares me a little. It’s hard not to say the wrong thing when nothing feels right. I sometimes think that his inability to recognize other people’s faces might make it harder for him to control the expressions on his own. The well-worn frown has gone, and it’s almost like he is … smiling. It vanishes as quickly as it appeared.

“We should get out of here while it’s still light,” he says, adopting a serious face once more to match his tone.

“What about Bob?”

“We’ll find a police station, explain the situation, and ask them to help.”

“The car is snowed in. The roads look dangerous—”

“I’m sure we can dig it out. I’d feel safer out there than I would do staying here for another night, wouldn’t you?”

He opens the door to the walk-in larder where we saw the wall of tools when we arrived. The industrial-sized chest freezer hums an eerie soundtrack, and I avoid looking at the trapdoor to the crypt. I’d rather forget what happened down there.

“Are you going to chop our way out?” I ask when Adam takes an axe off the wall.

“No, I just think having something for self-defense might not be a bad idea,” he replies, taking a shovel down off a rusty hook with his other hand.

The Morris Minor is covered in so much snow, it blends in with the scenery. I feel like a spare part as Adam begins to dig it away from the car’s wheels. It’s freezing cold, but he’s still sweating from the effort. Until he stops and stares at the front wheel as though it has offended him. He drops the shovel and bends down behind the front left-hand side of the car, so that I can no longer see what he is doing.

“I don’t believe it,” he says, sounding breathless.

“What?”

“We appear to have a flat tire.”

I hurry over. “It’s okay, on these roads in this car it’s to be expected. I have a repair kit in the boot, so long as we can find the hole and it’s small enough I can—”

I stop talking when I see it for myself. It won’t be a problem to find the hole because it’s the size of a fist. There is a smile-shaped gash in the rubber: the tire has clearly been slashed. I was already so cold that I could barely feel my hands or feet, but the chill I feel now spreads through my entire body.

“Maybe we drove over some glass?” he says.

I don’t answer. Adam’s knowledge of cars is very limited as a result of never owning one. I used to find it endearing, now not so much. He starts digging out the back wheel, then abruptly stops. Again.

“Have you ever had two flat tires at the same time?” he asks.

It looks like the back wheel has been slashed as well. It’s the same with the other two.

Someone really doesn’t want us to leave.