From above her head Crae spoke softly. ‘When you lay against my trunk, I felt your heart beating too. And your breath against my skin.’
‘You could feel all that? Through bark?’ Holly moved her head upwards to find his eyes.
‘Bark is like skin.’ He very gently traced the side of her face with his fingertips. She reached up and touched his hair, and then his face.
He breathed her name again, ‘Holly…’
Then, with the worst timing possible, a hideous crack sounded, the house jolted.
Holly and Crae leapt apart.
She looked up at the ceiling, expecting it to be caving in, but it wasn’t.
She turned to Crae but he was already gone.
Chapter Ten
23rd December
Gone
Running after him, Holly yelled, ‘Wait! I’m coming!’
Crae stood on the drive, one hand over his face, shielding it from the fierce gusts. He peered up at the roof, the relentless rain had already soaked through his clothes. He looked back at Holly.
‘No, Holly. Stay inside! You are safe while you are in the house.’ With that he ran past her, between the house and the brook, and disappeared around the back of the building into the wild night. The floodlights showed twigs, dead leaves and other detritus being flung across the lawns; the brook had become a churning river, it slopped over the banks and into the garden. She edged nearer to the end of the porch and tried to step out of its shelter, wanting to see where Crae had gone. Immediately, the wind slammed into her body, she clung to the porch post to avoid being knocked down the driveway too. How was he able to run against the wind like that? Another vicious cracking noise emanated from the steep bank behind the house, it sounded like the entire cliff was collapsing. With fear squeezing her lungs, she knew that if that happened, Brookhill, along with her, would be crushed.
Back inside, Holly closed the front door on the storm and sprinted through to the rear window of the lounge. The security lights allowed her to see it straight away, one of the largest poplars was leaning towards her house, it was easily sixty feet high.
A tremendous gust of wind shook the house again, and she watched in horror as the immense trunk was ripped clear of the bank. The tree hurtled towards her. Holly screamed.
What she saw next was worse. Crae, had launched himself from the roof, somewhere above her head. He threw his body against the trunk, knocking it and himself into the river.
Holly ran the length of the lounge to the front window, just in time to see the massive tree smash into the driveway bridge; the force was enough to hurl chunks of stone through the air and onto her garden.
Crae was nowhere to be seen.
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