CHAPTER THREE







Troy looked up. His one good eye sensed that the light coming down through
cracks in the wooden doors was starting to fade. By his calculation they’d been
in the cellar for eighteen hours. They’d had a couple of visits from boys coming
through the small metal side door to take up buckets of coal, and one of the
cooks had brought them a tin of water and a paper bag filled with vegetable
scraps.
‘Stop rubbing your eyes,’ Troy warned, speaking in French. ‘You’ll make it
worse.’
Mason took his blackened hand out of his eye and was apparently close to
tears again. ‘I can’t help it,’ he whined. ‘It hurts.’
The dust from the coal tickled throats and burned eyes. It crept inside
their clothes making everything itch and sharp fragments on the floor had cut
their feet.
‘How much longer?’ Mason groaned, as he threw a piece of coal against
the metal door.
‘I don’t know,’ Troy said.
19

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