The Girl Below(14)

“We need a torch,” said Dad, flicking Mum an expectant glance.

“Do we have one?”

“In the laundry,” he said, looking down into the hole.

She went inside to fetch it.

Gripping Dad’s hand, I sidled closer to the hole. I wanted to peer over the edge, to see inside the bunker, but the thought of going down there made my stomach pitch. I was imagining how dark and cold it was when the path went out from under me and I was jerked upward and swung out over the hole. I felt myself falling and screamed, and fell some more, and screamed again before my father returned me to solid ground, and I stood next to Jean Luc, who was laughing.

“Boo!” he said, his French accent cartoonish. “The little one is afraid, n’est-ce pas?”

Henri slapped him on the back. “Ben oui!” Of course.

I glared at my father and let go of his hand. His foot hovered above the hole. Was he going to jump in? “Dad! No!”

“Don’t worry, there’s a staircase. Stone steps leading down.”

“Wait for the torch,” I pleaded. “Mum won’t be long.”

A bank of clouds unfurled, turning the garden gray. Mum appeared from the back door carrying a small cardboard box, and held it up to show us. “Candles,” she said. “I couldn’t find the torch.”

Dad opened his mouth to speak but frowned instead. Henri handed him a lighter and Mum opened the box of candles and gave one to each of the men, who passed around the flame and cupped it with their hands.

Mum passed me a candle, but I didn’t take it. “Are you really going down there?”

“It’ll be fun,” she said, as though trying to convince herself. Then her expression changed. “Maybe you should wait up here?”

Being left on my own was the only thing worse than going down there, and I took the candle from Mum’s hand.

“It’s the last one,” she said. “We’ll have to share.”

Dad went down first, with Jean Luc and Henri behind him. I insisted that Mum follow behind me with the candle, which meant that I was next in line. The staircase was narrow and steep, and we edged down it in single file, my knees wobbling more with each step. By candlelight, it was hard to see much, but the walls on either side were wet and slime grew in the gaps between stones. As we got farther down, the air became dank and wintry and my feet splashed in shallow puddles. I was wearing my school shoes, round toed, with a buckled strap, and the water quickly breached their leather sides and seeped between my toes.

In front of me, Henri turned around and pulled a face, but even with some daylight filtering down from behind me, his features were murky, indistinct. Only he must have seen how scared I was because he didn’t try to tickle me or make any more wisecracks—he just turned around and kept going forward. It was very quiet on the stairs, quiet enough to hear the flickering of candle flames and my own breath. I’d counted nine steps when Dad’s voice called up from below.

“Bottom!” he said.

“Anything down there?” Henri called to him.

Dad didn’t answer straightaway. In front of Henri, I heard Jean Luc land on the bottom of the shelter and splash about in water. I could just make out their candle flames, disjointed from their bodies, fireflies flitting around in the dark.

“Fucking hell!” It was Dad, his voice booming in the echo chamber. “It’s like a swimming pool down here.”

“Pardon your French,” said Mum, tut-tutting behind me.

“You probably shouldn’t come any farther,” called Dad. “The bottoms of my jeans are soaked.”

“Hold my hand,” said Mum, and I reached out but couldn’t find her.

Jean Luc exclaimed something in French, but it was lost in a long, groaning, scraping noise coming from above, the sound of iron grating against concrete, followed by a dull metallic clang. On the clang, a thick cloak of darkness settled over us. I blinked furiously, willing my eyes to find light, but there was none, only the faint orange bruise of a candle flame deep in the chamber.

Mum called out first, to let the others know the hatch had been shut, and a terrible racket followed, the grown-ups shouting a torrent of rude words and abuse, whatever they could think of to will the hatch open. When that didn’t work, there was a scramble of limbs on the narrow staircase as the men swapped places with the women. Dad pushed past me to get to the top, followed by Jean Luc and Henri, which left Mum and me to shuffle backward, and downward, farther into the hole. Someone shoved a candle in my direction and told me to hold on to it, and though a spray of hot wax scalded my fingers I didn’t dare let go.