67

Ella remained beside the great hound she had named Gellert for a short while, gently stroking his back and tracing the lines of its ribs with her index finger. Conor had made his way into the hounds room. All that was in there was a fireplace. An old, ornate thing. He wandered over to it, wondering when it had last been lit. If there had been ashes they’d all been washed far away. The only other thing to rush out when the door had burst its hinges along with the dog had been those bones left as food. There weren’t many. Conor ran his hand along the top of the mantelpiece of the fire. He sat down in front of it and leant in to look up the chimney. He suspected that to be where the bones were thrown down. As he leant in the cove he felt the end of his fingers run over a ridge. He felt to the corner, sat back and lifted. The metal plate in the fireplace came up. He grabbed the other side and lifted the whole block and set it down behind him. There were stairs leading down. Narrow, twisting stairs like he’d seen in turrets of Welsh castles. He called out to his sister. He heard her gently say some last rites for the dog before slowly making her way through to him. She glanced around the empty room before taking in her little brother, who was standing beside the only other way out of the hounds cage.

He had stepped back from it, waiting for her. She could see he was masking poorly his unwillingness to go first. He felt like a wimp, she knew it, but at this moment she didn’t judge him for it. She bent low into the fireplace and crept a foot down to the next step as she spiralled further inwards. Her brother followed close behind. She reminded him of Mr Armitage in that narrowing tunnel - bumping her arms and head more as they delved deeper.