Here, in this house, the ghosts of our former selves are real – as real as the women sleeping around and above me. And I feel their presence, and I understand why Kate can’t leave.
I am almost asleep now, my eyes heavy, and I pick up my phone one last time, checking the clock, before I surrender to sleep. It is as I am putting it down that the light from the screen slants across the gapped, uneven floorboards, and something catches my eye. It is the corner of a piece of paper, sticking up between the boards, with something written on it. Is it a letter? Something written by Luc and lost, or hidden there?
My heart beats as though I am intruding on his privacy, which I am, in a way, but I tug gently at the corner and the dusty, cobwebbed piece of paper slides out.
The page is covered with lines, and seems to be a drawing, but in the dim light from my phone’s screen, I can’t quite make it out. I don’t want to turn on the light and wake Freya, so I take it to the open window, where the curtains flutter in the breeze from the sea, and I hold it up, angling it so the moonlight falls on the page.
It’s a watercolour sketch of a girl, of Kate, I think, and it looks like one of Ambrose’s, though I can’t be sure. The reason I cannot tell for certain is this: the drawing is crossed and slashed again and again with thick black lines, scoring out the face of the girl with lines so thick and vicious that they have torn the paper in places. Pencil holes have been stabbed through where her eyes would have been, if they weren’t obscured by the thicket of scribbles. She has been erased, scratched out, utterly destroyed.
For a minute I just stand there, the piece of paper shivering in the sea breeze, trying to understand what this means. Was it Luc? But I can’t believe that he would do such a thing, he loved Kate. Was it Kate herself? Impossible though it seems, I can believe that more easily.
I am still standing there, trying to work out the mystery of this hate-filled little thing, when there is a gust of wind, and the curtain flaps, and the piece of paper falls from my fingers. I snatch for it, but the wind has caught it, and all I can do is watch as it flutters towards the Reach and sinks into the milky, muddy water.
Whatever it was, whatever it meant, it’s gone. And as I turn for bed, shivering a little in spite of the warm night, I can’t help thinking – perhaps it’s for the best.
I SHOULD BE tired enough to sleep well, but I don’t. I fall asleep with the scratched-out face in my mind, but when I dream, it’s of Salten House, of the long corridors and winding stairs, and the endless search for rooms I couldn’t find, places that didn’t exist. In my dreams I’m following the others down corridor after corridor, and I hear Kate’s voice up ahead, It’s this way … nearly there! And Fatima’s plaintive cry after her: You’re lying again …
At some point Shadow wakes and barks, and I hear a shushing voice, footsteps, the sound of a door – Kate is putting the dog out.
And then, silence. Or as near to silence as this old, ghost-ridden house ever gets, with its restless creaking resistance against the forces of winds and tides.
When I wake again, it’s to the sound of voices outside, sharp whispers of concern, and I sit up, bleary and confused. It’s morning, the sun filtering through the thin curtains, and Freya is stirring sleepily in a pool of sunshine next to me. When she squawks I pick her up and feed her, but the voices outside are distracting both of us. She keeps raising her head to look around, wondering at the strange room and the strange quality of light – so different to the dusty yellow sunshine that streams into our London flat on summer afternoons. This is a clear, bright light – painful on the eyes and full of movement from the river, and it dances on the ceiling and walls in little pools and patches.
And all the time the voices … quiet, worried voices, with Shadow whining unhappily beneath like a musical counterpoint.
At last I give up, and I wrap Freya in her comforter, and me in my dressing gown, and head downstairs, my bare feet gripping the worn wooden slats of the stairs. The door to the shore side of the Mill is open, and sunlight streams in, but I know before I have even turned the corner of the stairs that something is wrong. There is blood on the stone floor.
I stop at the curve of the stairs, holding Freya hard against my thumping heart, as if she can still the painful banging. I don’t realise how hard I am holding her, until she gives a squeak of protest, and I realise that my fingers are digging into her soft, chubby thighs. I force my fingers to relax, and my feet to follow the staircase to the flagged ground floor, where the bloodstains are.
As I get closer I can see they aren’t random droplets, as I’d thought from the top of the stairs, but paw prints. Shadow’s paw prints. They come inside the front door, circle, and then go swiftly out again as if someone had shooed the dog back outside.
The voices are coming from the land side of the Mill, and I shove my feet into my sandals and walk, blinking into the sunshine.
Outside, Kate and Fatima are standing with their backs to me, Shadow sitting at Kate’s side, still whimpering unhappily. He is on a lead, for the first time since I got here, a very short lead, held tightly in Kate’s lean hand.
‘What’s happened?’ I say nervously, and they turn to look at me, and then Kate stands back, and I see what their bodies have sheltered from my gaze until now.
I inhale sharply, and I clap my free hand over my mouth. When I do manage to speak, my voice shakes a little.
‘Oh my God. Is it … dead?’
It’s not just the sight – I’ve seen death before – it’s the shock, the unexpectedness, the contrast of the bloody mess before us with the blue-and-gold glory of the summer morning. The wool is wet, the high tide must have soaked the body, and now the blood drips slowly through the black slats of the walkway into the muddy shallows. The tide is out, and only puddles of water remain, and the blood is enough to stain them rustred.
Fatima nods grimly. She has put her headscarf on again to go outside, and she looks like the thirty-something doctor she is, not the schoolgirl of last night.
‘Very dead.’
‘Is it – was it …’ I trail off, not sure how to put it, but my eyes go to Shadow. There is blood on his muzzle, and he whines again as a fly settles on it, and he shivers it off and then licks at the stickiness with his long pink tongue.
Kate shrugs. Her face is grim.
‘I don’t know. I can’t believe it – he’s never harmed a fly, but he is … well, capable. He’s strong enough.’
‘But how?’ But even as the words leave my mouth, my gaze travels across the wooden walkway to the fenced-off section of shore that marks the entrance to the Mill. The gate is open. ‘Shit.’
‘Quite. I’d never have let him out if I’d realised.’
‘Oh God, Kate, I’m so sorry. Thea must have –’
‘Thea must have what?’ There’s a sleepy voice from behind us, and I turn to see Thea squinting in the bright sunlight, her hair tousled, an unlit Sobranie in her fingers.