Nancy & Colin Drew shared similar pasts & perhaps this had helped to bring them together as a couple in the first place. Both were orphans & therefore, once they had become parents, they tried to share as much time as possible together as a family; something that neither of them had experienced whilst growing up. Normally they took the children away on trips together. However, there was one particular occasion that was different. Nancy & the children had traveled to the seaside, for the weekend, leaving Colin alone in the house. He had decided to tackle the kitchen. It needed redecorating & they had agreed that it would be easier if there were less people around at the start. So the laborious work began. It wasn’t long before Colin felt it again. “Where does that draught come from?” he uttered to himself aloud. It had plagued him immensely for some time. Even after he’d installed draught excluders around all the doors he could still feel it every now & then. He wasn’t absolutely certain, but he had thought, that the kitchen seemed to be the main source, more recently. Originally he’s suspected it came in from under a door, or through a gap in a window frame somewhere, but now he’d had another idea. He’d started to believe that it was coming up through the small cracks in the old wooden floor, just in front of the fridge.
Still puzzled by the finding, with trembling hands, Colin placed the last piece of the wooden floor back into its original position, ensuring that there were no gaps. Vomit tasted in his mouth, but he managed, somehow, to hold it down. The more he thought of it, the more he filled with dread. Had he found something sinister, something that had been hidden for a long time? He really could not explain why he felt so disturbed, so sick. Nancy would be
frightened if he told her. They had always understood that the house would be difficult to resell anyway, but they loved the area & had no intention of moving. Besides all the work, all their money that they had invested, would be lost if what he’d found turned out to be bad. Maybe it was nothing. Perhaps after a week of so a plausible explanation would spring to mind, but the obvious answers all pointed the wrong way. It would be better if he said nothing. If he waited a while until he’d mulled it over in this mind a little more. He’d feel better in the morning,....but he didn’t. No matter how he tried to bury it the nightmares still resurfaced. He could hide it.. Nancy & the children would never know. However, as much as he tried the guilt of concealing such a thing slowly gnawed away inside.
Two more happy years slipped by for the Drews, though Colin was a little different on odd days Nancy noticed. It wasn’t something that she could put her finger on - she would say later- & he never mentioned anything. She’d put it down to stress at work. Over the proceeding 18 months there had been a dip in the market for rotary valves & Colin’s normally excellent sales figures were going to be poor this year! No matter how bad he really felt he hid his fear with smiles, whenever he remembered what lay beneath their kitchen floor. Afterwards Nancy would often cry, proclaiming that she could have done more. When it came it was massive & without warning, one lunch time in work. He was only 42 years old & there had been no family history of heart failure. The life insurance cover, which was built into the endowment policy, paid off the mortgage, but with him went the secret.
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Written by T.R.Vinnicombe (aka Dr. Peter Hodgkins) ©2009 all rights reserved & none of the contents of this site can be copied or used in any way without the written consent of the author. Published online by MicroHotStar 2009.
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