Antique carriage ride - A Quiet at the End of the World deleted scene

Part 1

[Context - Lowrie and Shen need a vehicle so they can go and pick up something large, but none of the cars are working]

"The carriages!" I say. "We'll hitch the horses up to one of the old carriages!"

The stables are full of coaches, some of them over two hundred years old. Lacquered with silver and lined in velvet, they're so delicate that I was never allowed to play with them as a child. But this is an emergency. We haven't got any other choice.

"How do we . . ?" Shen looks overwhelmed and helpless. This is not his strong suit.

I grab my rucksack of tools from the mudroom, just in case I'll need to fix anything broken to get the carriages moving. Then I sprint down the side path to the stable mews. The door groans on its rusty hinges when I unlatch the heavy bolt and pull it open. Dust moats stir when I walk inside, floating in the light streaming through the open door. I strain my eyes in the darkness, wishing I still had the torch of my interface.

The carriage nearest the entrance is the newest one, commissioned a century ago for someone's once-upon-a-time celebration. It's the one most likely to still be in working order – the carriages in the back look like a good kick would make them collapse into dust.

I push at the carriage experimentally, making the black and white wheels roll back and forth in their tracks. They are almost as tall as I am. Nothing squeals or collapses. Cobwebs cover every centimetre of the fretwork, but I think it's going to move.

As long as the axles haven't rusted through, and William and Elizabeth don't bolt at the prospect of being hitched to a carriage, and there's no woodworm making the wood weak, and, and, and, and . . .

Baby steps. Baby steps. Don't think about that. Not yet.

I pull the leather tack off the hooks on the wall and start attaching it to the front of the carriage, where it will loop over the horse's necks. Then I leave the bridles dangling in place and sprint to the meadow to fetch William and Elizabeth.

They aren't there. I stop in my tracks, panting. If the bots are all down, the horses will still be in their stalls. Nobody will have let them out yet. They won't have been fed, either.

I run back to the stables and use a bag of bran mash to lead William and Elizabeth to the carriage.

It takes me a few minutes to work out how to hitch up the complicated carriage reins, by which time the horses have eaten all of the food I scattered on the ground.

When I climb into the coachman's seat, it creaks loudly. The horses shift anxiously, looking back at the carriage behind them. There's a shining plaque on the inside of the wooden bench, informing me that the coach was built eighty years ago from wood taken from a ship which sailed at the Battle of Trafalgar. The information is not at all reassuring.

I imagine the carriage collapsing while I'm inside, and being trapped under the wood. A shiver rushes through me. I may be a little claustrophobic.

A few years ago, we were exploring the old dungeons under the mansion. The building is over four-hundred years old, so there are all sorts of long forgotten structures and hidden passage-ways. It's possibly the best place in the world to play hide and seek.

The dungeons are what really started our treasure-hunting – they were blocked up centuries ago, but the wall has collapsed enough that a small child can slither inside. We found a vault full of old tiaras down there, which became an essential part of our fancy-dress box. After that, we were determined to find more. I had a particular interest in obtaining a set of armour, and I thought the dungeons were the best bet, after the attics and stables turned up nothing.