Reeling from what Roderick has just dropped on me, I frowned at him.

“How come you’re telling me all this now?” I whispered harshly.

Roderick shrugged, looking defeated.

“I just needed to share it with you, I didn’t really want to, but I think you should know. It's a heavy burden to bear knowing that people think our father was an eccentric flake.”

My heart panged, not just for our father, but for the weight of the whole situation that Roderick had been dealing with unbeknownst to me.

I flung my arms around him and cried, my tears flowing freely down my cheeks and onto Roderick’s shoulder. Surprised, he jumped back slightly but then relaxed into the hug and we just sat there for a few moments holding each other.

Roderick leaned back, letting go and looked at me.

“By telling you that information Ariah, I thought that with the knowledge Dad gave you over the years that we might be able to figure something out together. You know? About the way he disappeared and everything.”

I nodded gently with tears still running down my cheeks and a newfound determination to get us safely out of our current situation, growing in my heart.

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Jumping to his feet, Roderick pulled the sleeves of his sweatshirt over his hands. He then tentatively reached out and touched the cardboard of the boxes next to him.

“Interesting, the cardboard isn’t hot.” He said as he hurriedly began moving boxes away from the walls. “Maybe it was protected because it was in here with us and not touching the outside, like the door and door handle?”

“Maybe.” I murmured, still trying to rationalise how the door and door handle had got hot in the first place. “So everything else like the shelves and cabinets should be safe too then.”

Roderick nodded and went over to one of the fallen cabinets that lay on the floor.

“Help me with these, I think there’s a small window to the outside here somewhere.” Roderick said as he pushed a cabinet to the side. We all went over to help him and moved a larger cabinet out of the way to reveal a tiny window high up on the wall.

Roderick moved a few boxes underneath it and climbed up, carefully holding the concrete walls as he did so. The window had been boarded shut to the outside so he ripped the old rotten wooden planks away with his hands inside his sweatshirt to protect them from any more burns, exposing the window underneath. Using the sleeve of his sweatshirt he wiped the dust and dirt off the glass.

“What can you see?” I asked as I moved towards him.

“Stay back," he said forcefully. I ignored him and tried to move forward to take a look too. Overwhelming curiosity had taken a hold of me and I wanted to know what was out there and what we were dealing with.

“I said stay back!” Roderick yelled. I stopped and my lip quivered, it was really unlike Roderick to get angry.

When he finally turned and looked at us he had tears in his eyes.