Under His Influence

“I don’t know. You should invite Liam over some evening. Are you two, y’know, seeing each other now?”

“We’ve got eyes,” Mimi teased. “We’ve always seen each other. But yes. I suppose. In a way. A no-strings kind of way.”

“Aww, I think he wants a proper girlfriend. He needs a woman. He’s such a great big boy, isn’t he?”

“He certainly is,” Mimi said with a dirty laugh, and Anna lobbed a cushion at Mimi’s head.

“I didn’t mean that.”

“What does John do when he doesn’t sleep at night?” Mimi hoped the quick change of tack would catch Anna off guard.

“I’ve no idea. Works on his project.”

“Is it quiet? Doesn’t it keep you awake?”

“What, in this house? It’s practically got its own postcode, Mimi. I don’t hear a thing. Besides, that basement is completely soundproof.”

Mimi felt a burn of sudden excitement, her throat constricting.

“Is five storeys not enough? What does he need a basement for?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been down there. John’s very protective of his workspace.” She laughed indulgently. “Oh God, I really miss him. It’s only been a day. That’s so pathetic, isn’t it?”

“You’re newlyweds. Honeymoon phase and all that,” Mimi replied, trying to sound calmly philosophical while her heart raced. There must be another way into that basement. A door? An exterior entrance? I’m looking in the garden tomorrow.

For a man who loved order and everything in its right place, John Stone kept an astonishingly untidy garden. Or perhaps it was deliberate styling—the artfully overgrown look, Mimi mused, her legs battered by rain-wetted stalks as she tried to negotiate the almost-invisible stone path through the jungle of rhododendron bushes and foxgloves. Anna was napping again, and Mimi had the whole of Sunday afternoon to kill before Liam arrived for dinner and more. Mimi was particularly looking forward to the “more.” But first, she had her mission. She wrenched thickets apart with her gloved hands, peering through them to find only more thicket or, for variation, the bark of a tree. Fat raindrops dropped from overhanging leaves, frizzing her hair and dampening her clothes, but Mimi was undaunted, determined to find a way into John’s secret recess. After an hour of painstaking foraging, the rain began again, and Mimi heaved a sigh, deciding to call off the search for now, but on her way back to the house, she heard echoey dripping underneath a pile of leaves and, on pushing the wet mulch aside with the toe of her ruined suede shoe, she saw a metal grille set into the uneven paving. And beneath the grille lay steps, leading to a wooden door with a large old-fashioned keyhole.

The key had to be in John’s office. It was Sunday, so Luana was not working. Now was her chance. She had to take it.

After racing up to the office, Mimi used every one of the tricks she had learned from investigative journalist friends to pick the lock. The one that finally worked was the good old hairgrip manoeuvre, and Mimi gave a silent cheer when the door eased noiselessly open, revealing cupboard and filing cabinets, a desk and computer, and very little else. So many places to look. But she would have to be methodical. Ransacking the place would be bound to lead to trouble.

It turned out to be stupidly easy. The very first drawer she opened—in the computer desk—revealed a range of different keys. Most of them were small silver filing cabinet keys, but at the back was a heavy brass number with an ornate four-petalled handle. This had to be the one.

She moved to grab it, but before she reached it, she found herself distracted by a dog-eared paperback book at the very back of the drawer. She held it aloft and squinted at the cover, which depicted a windswept woman with half her upper bodice missing, the torn fabric clenched in the fist of a very dark-browed and stormy-looking man.

“Her Errant Lord,” she read. “Oh, John Stone, I can’t believe you’re a fan of the old-school bodice ripper.” She flicked through the pages, noticing that several paragraphs had been annotated, the sharp, angular pencil strokes matching John’s handwriting on other documents on the desk. He seemed to have made a list on the back cover. “Sweep girl off feet, blind with riches/affection, marry as soon as poss, get pregnant.”

Mimi gasped. Had John copied his courtship style from the unreconstructed alpha jerk in the book? She found one of the highlighted passages and read it aloud.

“I don’t know much, but I do know that life is short, love is rare and happiness has to be caught and caged when you find it.” She wondered if Anna had heard those very words from John’s lips. Weirder and weirder.

She shuddered, put the book aside with an effort and turned her mind back to the key. She picked it up and kissed it before tiptoeing back down and out into the pouring rain.

The grille needed a lot of jiggling and wrenching before it would shift, but eventually Mimi managed to drag it aside, revealing the small set of well-worn steps. She took the key from her jeans pocket and set forth, feeling like an explorer in ancient realms, her heart thudding and exultant. This was the real draw of journalism, she thought, this sense of discovery, of finding something that tilts the world on its axis, even if it is the relatively small-scale domestic world of her friend’s marriage. But with John’s research interests, this could be so much more…

The key fitted the lock just as Mimi had hoped, and it took a matter of seconds to turn it and push open the creaking old wood. What lay beyond was…darkness.

Profound and silent darkness, and cold. But not damp. Not at all damp. Mimi held the door open for a while, squinting into the relentless black, but she could make nothing out. It didn’t smell musty though, which was interesting. It was clear that it was a fully converted space, in frequent use, even if nothing could be seen.

Mimi told herself that fear was unhelpful. Then she told herself the same thing again. If only her bumping heart and sweating palms would listen. She let the door swing to on its unoiled hinges and stood there for a moment, walled up in blackness, considering the next move. Feeling behind her for light switches, she came into contact only with smooth plastered wall. Her feet trod on cold flagstones and she dripped a small puddle around her as she shuffled about, feeling her way along the wall, trying to get a sense of the size and shape of the room, praying for a light switch that never came. Such silence. What does he do in here?

Her toe bumped against something hard and flat and smooth—the side of a metal object, perhaps a cabinet, albeit a big one. It made a crashing sound so deafening in the vast bunker of quietness that Mimi cried out. When the last echoes died away, she took a shuddering breath. What kind of journalist am I? Why didn’t I bring a torch?

“Yes, why didn’t you?”

Mimi screamed and leapt into the air, clutching the metal object for support. She hadn’t imagined that voice. It was clear, low and absolutely real. It was John Stone, in here, somewhere.

She dropped to her hands and knees and began scrabbling around the metal object, looking for a niche of some kind in which to conceal herself.