Escape - 1. Chapter 1

Andy stood on the edge of the cliff, his coat bellowing in the wind, his dark, un-kept hair swept back from his face. The waves crashed angrily against the rocks, some fifty feet below him, echoing around the cliff tops. There was a vast forest of trees on the far side of the bay but on his side there was nothing, nothing grew here other than the heather and moss. It was bare, empty and cold, like the house in front of which he stood. The house, he thought, the reason why he was at this god forsaken place in the most remote part of the world. When he had learnt that he had been left a house in his father’s will, he had been taken a back, not least because he had not had any contact with him in over twenty years, not since his mother had died and he had gone to live with his grandparents.

His father blamed him for her death, it was his fault that she had gone to the beach that day, his fault that she had gone into the water even though the currents were too strong and his fault that she had been swept up in an underling current and pulled underneath. It had taken four weeks for divers to recover her body and in that time his father had barely said three words to him, let alone looked him in the eye. He had known then that the love had gone, the joy and admiration he had once felt for his father had been lost, forever.

The fact that his father had left him anything at all in his will had shocked him, he was sure he would have found some young floozy and would have left it all to her. The house itself needed a lot of work; it didn’t look like anyone had done any work to it in a hundred years and his solicitor, Maurice Adams, hadn’t been wrong when he’d convinced Andy to stay in the hotel 20 miles down the road, not that it was much more liveable than the house, but at least it was clean and not falling apart! Annette, the elderly lad who owned the hotel had suggested talking to her son, Neil, who was apparently studying the history of the area and would be able to tell and everything he needed to know about his house and its history. The fact that And would be interested in the house’s history sparked his curiosity; he had planned on selling the house at the first opportunity he could and moving abroad, somewhere sunny, not that he could get much for the house, but, combined with his savings, it would be enough to put a down payment down on a house on the Spanish coast or a flat in the centre of his favourite city in the world, Vienna.

Two years previously he had found just the flat, just five minutes away from the Opera House, surrounded b parks and restaurants. He had sold everything he could, quit his job as head chef and said goodbye to all his friends, but on the morning he was signed the contract, Maurice had called and said the sale had fallen through. Andy had had to beg for his job back and find another flat; he had resigned himself to the fact that he was stuck there forever, but this house had changed all that; it had given him hope. He had an appointment that afternoon to meet with Neil and see whether there really was anything interesting to find out about the house and its grounds.