by Ruth Ware
It’s some time later – I’m not sure how late – that I am jerked awake by the sound of voices in the room above. They are arguing, and there is something about the voices that prickles at the back of my neck.
I lie for a moment, dragging myself out of disturbing dreams of Kate and Ambrose and Luc, trying to orientate myself, and then my eyes adjust. Light is filtering through the gaps in the floorboards of the room above, flickering as someone prowls back and forth, voices rising and falling, and a thud that makes the water in my glass ripple, as of someone hitting a wall in barely contained frustration.
I reach out for the bedside light, but the switch clicks uselessly before I remember about the electricity. Damn. Fatima took the lamp to bed with her, but in any case, I have no matches. No means of lighting a candle.
I lie still, listening, trying to work out who is speaking. Is it Kate, ranting to herself, or has Fatima or Thea gone up to confront her for some reason?
‘I don’t understand, isn’t this what you wanted all along?’ I hear. It’s Kate, hoarse and ragged with weeping.
I sit up, holding my breath, trying to hear. Is she on the phone?
‘You wanted me to be punished, didn’t you?’ Her voice cracks.
And then the answer comes. But not in words, not at first.
It’s a sob, a low groan that filters through the darkness, making my heart leap into my throat.
‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this.’
The voice is Luc’s, and he sounds beside himself with grief.
I don’t think. I slip out of bed and go to Fatima’s door, rattling the handle. It’s locked, and I whisper through the keyhole, ‘Fati, wake up, wake up.’
She’s there in a moment, her dark eyes wide in the blackness, listening as I point to the creaking boards above. We hold our breath, trying to listen, trying to make out who’s speaking.
‘What did you want then?’ I can hardly understand Kate, she’s crying, her words blurred with tears. ‘What did you want if not this?’
Fatima’s fingers close on my arm, and I hear her intake of breath.
‘Luc’s up there?’ she whispers, and I nod, but I’m trying to hear Luc’s words, between the sobs.
‘I never hated you …’ I hear. ‘How can you say that? I love you … I’ve always loved you.’
‘What’s going on?’ Fatima whispers frantically.
I shake my head, trying to replay everything from last night in my mind. Oh God, oh Kate. Please tell me you weren’t …
Luc says something, Kate’s voice rises above in anger, and then there’s a crash, and a cry from Kate – of pain or alarm, I can’t tell – and I hear Luc’s voice, too choked for me to make out words. He sounds on the verge of losing it.
‘We need to help her,’ I whisper to Fatima. She nods.
‘Let’s get Thea, and we’ll go up together. Strength in numbers. He sounds drunk.’
I listen as I follow Fatima down the landing, and I think perhaps she’s right. Luc is beside himself.
‘It was only ever you,’ I hear as we run down the stairs. His words are anguished. ‘I wish to God it wasn’t, but it’s true. I would have done anything to be with you.’
‘I would have come for you!’ Kate sobs. ‘I would have waited, made him change his mind. Why couldn’t you have trusted him? Why couldn’t you have trusted me?’
‘I couldn’t –’ Luc chokes, and then his words come faintly as I run down the corridor to Thea’s room. ‘I couldn’t let him do it. I couldn’t let him send me back.’
Thea starts up from bed as we burst in, her face wild with fear, changing to shock as she sees Fatima and me standing there.
‘What’s going on?’ she gasps.
‘It’s Luc,’ I manage. ‘He’s here. We think – oh God, I don’t know. I think we might have got it all wrong, Thea.’
‘What?’ She’s out of bed in an instant, pulling her T-shirt over her head. ‘Fuck. Is Kate OK?’
‘I don’t know. He’s up there now. It sounds like they’re fighting. I think one of them just threw something.’
But she’s already out of the room, running towards the stairs.
She’s barely reached the bottom step when there is another crash – this one much louder. It sounds like someone pulling over a piece of furniture and we all freeze, just for a moment. Then there is a scream, and the sound of a door opening, running footsteps.
And then I smell something. Something that makes my heart seem to clench in my chest. It’s the smell of paraffin. And there’s a strange, alien noise as well. A noise I can’t place, but it fills me with a dread I can’t explain.
It’s only when Kate comes running down the stairs, her face full of horror, that I realise what I can hear. It’s the crackle of flames.
‘KATE?’ FATIMA SAYS. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Get out!’ Kate pushes past her to the front door, flings it open. And then, when we don’t move, she shouts it again. ‘Didn’t you hear me? Get out, now! There’s a lamp broken – there’s paraffin everywhere.’
Fuck. Freya.
I bolt for the stairs, but Kate grabs my wrist, yanking me back.
‘Didn’t you hear me? Get out, now, Isa! You can’t go up there, it’s dripping through the floorboards.’
‘Let me go!’ I snarl, twisting my wrist out of her grip. Somewhere, Shadow has begun barking, a high repetitive sound of fear and alarm. ‘Freya’s up there.’
Kate goes white, and she lets me go.
I’m halfway up the stairs, coughing already at the smoke. Burning drops of paraffin are falling through the gaps in the boards above, and I cover my head with my arms, though I can hardly feel the pain in comparison with the stinging in my eyes and throat. The smoke is already thick and acrid, and it hurts to breathe – but I can’t think about that – all I can think of is getting to Freya.
I’m almost at the landing, when a figure appears above me, blocking my route.
Luc. His hands are burnt and bleeding, and he is bare-chested where he has ripped off his shirt to smother the flames on his skin.
His face changes as he sees me, shock and horror twisting his features.
‘What are you doing here?’ he shouts hoarsely, coughing against the fumes.
There’s the sound of breaking glass from above, and I smell the raw, volatile stink of turps. My stomach turns over, thinking of the rows of bottles in the attic, the vat of linseed oil, the white spirit. All of them dripping through the boards into the bedrooms below.
‘Get out of my way,’ I pant. ‘I’ve got to get Freya.’
His face changes at that.
‘She’s in the house?’
‘She’s in your room. Get out of my way!’
There is a corridor of flame behind him now, between me and Freya, and I’m sobbing as I try to push past him, but he’s too strong. ‘Luc, please, what are you doing?’
And then, he pushes me. Not gently, but a proper shove that sends me stumbling down the staircase, my knees and elbows raw and scraped.
‘Go,’ he shouts. ‘Go outside. Stand beneath the window.’
And then he turns, puts his bloodied shirt over his head, and he runs back down the corridor towards Freya’s room.
I scramble up, about to go after him, when a floorboard from the attic above falls with a crash, blocking the corridor. I am looking around for something, anything, to wrap around my hands, or something I can use to push the burning wood out of the way, when I hear a noise. It is the sound of Freya crying.
‘Isa, the goddamn window!’ I hear, above the roaring sound of the flames, and then I realise. He can’t get Freya back through that inferno. He is going to drop her into the Reach.
I run, hoping I am right. Hoping I will be fast enough.
OUTSIDE THEA, FATIMA and Shadow have retreated to the bank, but I don’t follow them across the little bridge, instead I splash into the water, gasping at the coldness, feeling the heat coming from the Mill against my face and the fr
eezing chill of the Reach against my thighs.
‘Luc!’ I scream, wading through the water until I am waist-deep, beneath his window. My clothes drag against the current. ‘Luc, I’m here!’
I see his face, lit by flames behind the glass. He’s struggling with the little window, warped by damp from the recent rain and stuck fast. My heart is in my mouth as he thumps his shoulder against the frame.
‘Break it!’ Kate shouts. She is struggling through the water towards me, but just as she says it, the window flies open with a bang, and Luc disappears back into the smoky darkness of the room.
For a minute I think he’s changed his mind, but then I hear a sobbing, bubbling cry, and I see his silhouette, and he’s holding something, and it’s Freya – Freya screaming and bucking against him, coughing and screaming and choking.
‘Now!’ I’m shouting. ‘Drop her now, Luc, hurry.’ His shoulders barely fit through the narrow frame, but he forces one arm and then his head out, and then somehow squeezes the other arm through the narrow space. And then he is leaning out as far as he can, holding Freya precariously at arm’s length as she flails.
‘Drop her!’ I scream.
And Luc lets go.
In the moment of falling, Freya is completely silent – mute with shock as she feels herself go.
There is the flutter of garments, and a brief flash of a round startled face – and then an almighty splash as she hits my arms and we both fall into the water.
I am scrabbling for her beneath the surface of the Reach, my fingers hooking on her face, her hair, her clutching arms … my feet slipping beneath me as the waters tug.
And then Kate is hauling me upright with Freya in my arms, and we are both choking and spluttering, and Freya’s thin scream of fury pierces the night, a choking shriek of outrage at the cold and the salt water stinging her eyes and her lungs – but her fury and pain is beautiful: she is alive, alive, alive – and that is all that matters.
I stagger to the bank, my feet sinking into the sucking mud, and Fatima snatches Freya from my arms while Thea hauls me up, my clothes dripping water and mud, and I am laughing or sobbing, I am not sure which.
‘Freya,’ I’m saying, ‘is she OK? Fatima, is she OK?’
Fatima is checking her as best she can, between Freya’s steam-engine shrieks.
‘She’s OK,’ I hear. ‘I think she’s OK. Thea, take my phone, call 999, quick.’
She hands me back my near-hysterical baby, and then turns to help Kate up the bank.
But she is not there. She is still standing in the water, beneath Luc’s window, and holding her arms up.
‘Jump!’
Luc looks at her, and at the water. For a minute I think he is about to do it, about to leap. But then he shakes his head, his expression is peaceful, resigned.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘For everything.’
And he takes a step back, a step away from the window, into the smoky depths of the room.
‘Luc!’ Kate bellows. She splashes along the shore, looking from window to window, desperately seeking the shape of Luc’s silhouette against the flames as he runs the gauntlet of the flaming corridor. But there is nothing there. He is not moving.
I picture him – curling on his bed, closing his eyes. Home at last …
‘Luc!’ Kate screams.
And then, before I realise what is happening, before any of us can stop her, she splashes through the water towards the door of the Mill, and hauls herself up.
‘Yes, the old Tide Mill,’ Thea is saying. ‘Please hurry. Fire and ambulance.’
‘Kate?’ Fatima cries. ‘Kate, what are you –’
But Kate has reached the door of the mill. She wraps her wet sleeves around her hands to protect them from the heat of the doorknob, and then she disappears inside, closing the door behind her.
Fatima darts forward, and for a second I think she is going after her. I make a grab at her wrist with my free hand, but she stops at the edge of the jetty, and we stand, all three of us, Shadow whining at Thea’s heels, barely breathing as the smoke from the Mill billows out across the Reach.
I see a shadow flash past one of the tall windows – Kate on the stairs, hunched against the heat – and then nothing – until Thea points up at the window of Luc’s old room.
‘Look!’ she says, her voice strangled with fear, and we see, against a sudden burst of flame, two figures, dark against the red-gold of the inferno.
‘Kate!’ I cry, my voice hoarse with smoke. But I know it’s no use. I know she can’t hear me. ‘Kate, please!’
And then there is a sound like an avalanche – a roaring crash that makes us all cover our ears, and cover our eyes against the blast of sparks, broken glass and burning wood that bursts from every window of the Mill.
Some vital beam in the roof has given way, and the whole thing tumbles in on itself, a bonfire collapsing under its own weight, shards of glass and flaming splinters spattering the shore as we hunch against the explosion. I feel the heat of cinders scalding my back, as I huddle over Freya in an effort to protect her.
When the noise subsides and we stand at last, the Mill is a shell, with burning beams poking like ribs into the sky. There is no roof, no floors, no staircase any more. There are only the tongues of flames, lapping from broken window frames, consuming everything.
The Mill is destroyed, utterly destroyed.
And Kate is gone.
I WAKE WITH a start, and for a long minute I have no idea where I am – the room is dimly lit and filled with the bleep of equipment and the sound of low voices and there is a smell of disinfectant and soap and smoke in my nostrils.
Then it comes back to me.
I am in hospital, on the paediatric ward. Freya is slumbering in the cot in front of me, her small fingers wrapped tightly around mine.
I rub my free hand across my eyes, raw with tears and smoke, and try to make sense of the last twelve hours. There are pictures in my head – Thea throwing herself across the narrow slip of water to try to make it to the Mill, Fatima holding her back. The huddle of police and firemen who arrived to try to deal with the blaze, and their faces when we told them there were people still inside.
The image of Freya, her chubby face smudged with ash and soot, her eyes wide and filled with the reflection of flickering flames as she watched the blaze, hypnotised by its beauty.
And, most of all, that last glimpse of Kate and Luc, silhouetted against the flames.
She went back for him.
‘Why?’ Thea kept asking hoarsely, as we waited for the ambulance, her arms wrapped tightly around a shaking, bewildered Shadow. ‘Why?’
I shook my head. But in truth, I think I know. And at last I understand Ambrose’s letter, really understand it.
It’s strange, but in the last few days and hours I have begun to realise that I never really knew Ambrose at all. I have spent so long trapped inside my fifteen-year-old self, seeing him with the uncrit-ical eyes of a child. But I am an adult myself now, approaching the age Ambrose was when we first met him, and for the first time I have been forced to consider him as an adult – equal to equal – and he seems suddenly very different: flawed, full of human faults, and wrestling with demons I never even noticed, though his struggle was written, quite literally, upon the wall.
His addictions, his drinking, his dreams and fears – I realise now, with a kind of shame, that I never even thought about them. None of us did, except for maybe Kate. We were too wrapped up in our own story to see his. I never noticed the sacrifices he had made for Kate and Luc, the career he had given up to be an art master at Salten, for her sake. I never thought about what it had taken to kick his addiction, and stay clean – I was, quite simply, not interested.
Even when his problems were shoved under our noses – that agonised conversation Thea reported to us in the cafe – we only saw them through the lens of our own concerns. We wanted to stay together, we wanted to keep using the Mill as our private refuge and playground – and so
we heard his words only as far as they threatened our happiness.
The truth is, I did not know Ambrose, not really. Our lives collided for a summer, that’s all, and I loved him for what he gave me; affection, freedom, a moment’s escape from the nightmare that had become my home life. Not for who he was. I know this now. And yet, in this same moment, I think I finally understand him, and I understand what he did.
I was right, in a way. It was the letter of a man who had been poisoned by his own child, and was doing the only thing he could to spare his child the consequences. But the child wasn’t Kate. It was Luc.
We had it all backwards, that is what I have realised at last. Not just the letter, but everything. It wasn’t Kate that Ambrose was sending away. It was Luc. Why didn’t you trust him? Kate had said. But Luc had had his trust broken too many times. He thought, I suppose, that what he had always feared was coming true – that Ambrose had repented of his generosity in taking this boy into his home, loving him, caring for him. He had tested Ambrose’s love so many times – pushing him away, trying, desperately, to make sure that this person would not betray him, that this person’s love wouldn’t waver.
Mary was not the only person who overheard Kate fighting with Ambrose. Luc must have heard them too, and he must have understood what Thea and I had not – that he was the one to be sent away, not Kate. I don’t know where – to boarding school most likely, from what Ambrose said to Thea. But Luc, betrayed too many times, must have jumped to the conclusion he had always feared. He thought Ambrose was sending him back to his mother.
And he did something utterly, utterly stupid – the act of a fifteen-year-old, painfully in love, and desperate not to be sent back to the hell he had escaped from.
Did he mean to kill Ambrose? I don’t know. As I sit there, my eyes locked on Freya’s cherubic, sleeping face, I wonder, and I can believe both scenarios. Perhaps he did want to kill Ambrose – a moment’s fury, bitterly regretted when it was too late to undo. Perhaps he just wanted to punish him, disgrace him. Or perhaps he wasn’t thinking at all – just acting out the anger and despair burning inside him.