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Surely, he was fine. Tom Cruise held his breath for six minutes in a Mission Impossible movie. Ryan could definitely beat that. Right? Ten minutes, he’d said. She shouldn’t worry before then.

“How exactly are you going to stop yourself?” she asked the silence.

There was no response.

Sarah glanced at the clock again. Seven minutes and thirty-one seconds.

“He’s capable, and calm, and absolutely confident that he can do this. There’s no reason to freak out.”

If they ever got a minute when they weren’t trying to escape danger, she was going to give him a questionnaire on his skills and abilities. That way, she’d know exactly what he could do under any given circumstance. Knowledge meant control. Control meant safety. Safety made her feel secure.

She let out a long breath, feeling better now she had a plan.

Seven minutes and forty-three seconds…

Sarah caught herself rocking back and forth, a leftover behavior from the anxiety of her childhood, and forced herself to stop. Rubbing her arms, she scanned the darkness around her. Staring into the blackness made it feel endless. Like the flat black color that sculptor Anish Kapoor used to make his audience feel like they were falling into his work.

There was no way to get her bearings in the old mine. Every wall looked the same. The color never changed from beige. Even the air had the same musty smell in every room and tunnel. They could have been going around in circles since she’d first opened her eyes, and she would never know.

“Ryan would know, wouldn’t he?” Her heartbeat slowed at the thought.

Swallowing hard, she checked the phone again.

Eight minutes and five seconds.

A noise startled her, and she spun to face the wall behind her, straining for the slightest sound, peering into nothing. When there was no movement, or noise, she turned back to the pool. Her heart raced, her hands shook, her stomach was one huge knot.

Instantly, she was transported back to her childhood. Jumping at every sound in the dark. Waiting in the bottom of her wardrobe for her parents to come home. Even drunk and useless, they were still more comforting than being alone in their run-down council flat.

She hated the dark. It brought back the fear she’d felt when her parents had been unable to pay their electricity bill. The stark terror of nights spent alone and forgotten, while they were off drinking. The memory of being hungry and afraid was far too close for comfort. And the box inside her mind, where she stored everything she was helpless to change, cracked open.

She saw herself as a child. Small, scrawny, with dirty brown hair and eyes that were far too big for her face. Curled in a ball in the corner of the old wooden wardrobe. A thin blanket covering her and a death grip on Fuzzy, her ratty stuffed bear. She’d taken a knife from the kitchen to protect herself and clutched it tight as she startled at every creak and groan the old building made. She still remembered the smell—stale sweat, damp, and a mustiness that could have come from the mine she sat in now.

“That isn’t now,” she muttered. “It isn’t here. I’m not that person. I’m stronger. I can pay my bills. My home is warm. My fridge is full. The past is gone.”

There was no doubt a therapist would rub their hands together in glee at the thought of dealing with Sarah’s head. Unfortunately, she was too cheap to pay for one. Plus, what could they tell her that a Cosmo quiz couldn’t? She’d endured a crappy childhood. So what? Millions of people went through the same or worse. No, she wasn’t one of those folk who had to dig up their inner child and give it love and attention, or a stern talking-to, or whatever you were supposed to do with it. Her childhood was what it was. Her adult life was pretty darn awesome.

Usually.

When she wasn’t stuck in a cave with an ex who couldn’t remember her. Not to mention the dead bodies and the rats.

She looked at the water.

She didn’t even want to think about going in there.

Eight minutes and forty-six seconds.

The surface of the pool remained calm.

There was no sign of Ryan.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Surely ten minutes didn’t actually last this long? Maybe there was something wrong with her phone and the clock wasn’t working?

Around four hundred people drowned in the UK every year, most of them men. She cocked her head. Why more men than women? She shrugged. Probably because women were more sensible. Drownings were less common in pits or wells, which was as close as she’d ever seen to a statistic for a mine. So, if she followed the facts, the chances of Ryan drowning in the rocky pool were very low compared to other places he could drown.

Then again, she didn’t know the overall number of people who went into rocky pools and didn’t drown. It could be two out of ten, which would make Ryan’s chances of drowning as high as eighty percent.