‘A total nightmare.’
‘And now Lark has taken off, and Rosamund Green and her add-ons have turned up.’ He dragged fingers through his hair. ‘Why the hell your mum got back in touch with that woman is a mystery.’ He kicked a large pebble. ‘She hurt her, Amelia.’
‘That was a long time ago, Dad. People change.’
‘Do they? Do they really? In my experience people rarely change – just the masks they wear.’
‘Well Mum seems happy she’s here. Surely that’s the most important thing right now.’
He said no more, and they continued on in silence, not seeing a soul for almost half a mile. And as the darkness thickened, Amelia’s anger that her sister had taken off turned to worry.
‘Where the hell is she?’ she said, her feet heavy in the sand. ‘Why would she take off like this?’
‘She’s not herself.’
She swallowed. ‘None of us are, Dad.’
‘No. But she’s just a kid, Amelia.’ His voice cracked with emotion. ‘A teenager.’
It was as they rounded a bend, and the view of jagged rocks against sand and sea swooped in front of them for miles, Amelia spotted the silhouette of a young woman perched on a rock, looking out to sea, hair blowing in the breeze. She looked like a mermaid.
‘Lark!’ she called, as they ran towards her. ‘Thank God.’
Lark looked down at them as they reached the foot of the rock, the moonlight catching her wet cheeks telling them she’d been crying.
‘What’s wrong?’ Amelia called up to her, as her dad grabbed Lark’s hand, and helped her climb down.
She shrugged. ‘Mum’s dying, is all. Do I need another reason to feel like crap?’
Amelia opened her arms instinctively as Lark stepped onto the sand, and as her sister fell into them, any residual anger dissipated. Lark was only seventeen, after all.
Chapter 22
Present Day
Ruth
It’s almost dark, and snow tumbles from heavy clouds. I can’t push my trolley along the path in this weather, so distribute the towels a few at a time to my guests.
Maddie took hers from me at the door, with a polite thank you a few moments ago.
So did Robert.
Now, I’m on my way to Primrose Cottage, soft white towels pressed against my chest as I attempt to shield them from the falling snow. My steps are quick and short along the slippery path. The heavy torch Finn bought a few months back unbalancing me slightly. I preferred the small one I used for years, but he insisted it wasn’t bright enough. My foot skids across the icy pavement, and I grab the ornamental fence surrounding the cottage veranda, eyes falling on the snowman. As my eyes focus on its face, I let out a yelp.
‘Jesus!’ A creepy mask of a young boy’s smiling face has been put on the snowman. My stomach knots. I’ve seen masks like this before – the face too pink, too bright; the smile too wide – and yet eyes so lifeless, dead. After a beat, I take a breath; consoling myself that Elise must have put it there.
I tap on the door, and peer through the glass. The power is still out and no candles flicker inside. I knock again. Rosamund mentioned earlier, when she bought some bread, that she was going to go for a walk, saying she hoped to take some photos of the ruins in the snow by moonlight to put on her Instagram. That’s where she must be. Elise must be with her.
Deciding nobody is home, I push my key in the lock, turn it, and shove the door open a few inches.
‘Rosamund,’ I call into the cottage, just to be sure. ‘Elise? I’ve brought clean towels.’ I push the door open further and step inside. ‘Rosamund?’
I shine the torch around. Caress the room with its beam. Despite a game of Monopoly set out on the coffee table, ready to play, and two unlit candles standing either side of the board, there doesn’t seem to be anybody in.
I make my way up the stairs towards the dappled greyness of the landing and pass the open door to the shower room. It’s a stunning room – the best on the site, with its double sink and ivory tiles. Finn revamped it back in the spring. He did a wonderful job.
I continue along the landing, and try the handle of Elise’s room, but it’s locked. ‘Elise, are you in there?’
‘Yep!’ comes the reply.
‘It’s only me, lass. Ruth. I’ve brought towels.’
‘OK.’
I step into Rosamund’s room, and shine the torch towards the bed, catching sight of a scan of Rosamund’s baby propped against the lamp on the bedside unit. On the bottom of the bed is an orange hooded fur bed jacket. After laying the torch down, I pick it up. Within moments I’ve put the jacket on and zipped it up. It’s freakishly soft, and my body tingles as I run my hands over, it and pull up the hood.
I pick up the torch once more, and dip the beam towards the floor, spotting Rosamund’s case. I reach behind me and with the quietest of clicks close the door. I crouch down and open the case. The clothes inside are expensive; silk blouses and cashmere are packed neatly. If things had turned out differently with Michael, these are the kind of things I would have worn.
Suddenly the room fills with light. The power has returned. I dart a panicked look about me, feeling as though I’ve been caught out, and bolt to my feet. The shower starts up with a shudder through the pipes, and the sound of water cascading reaches my ears. I freeze for a moment, before willing myself to move.
It’s OK. I’ve done nothing wrong.
I place two towels on Rosamund’s bed, open the door and dash from the room, and onto the landing.
Elise’s door stands open. The shower-room door closed. I lean my head against the wood, listen to the flowing water.
‘I’m off now, love,’ I call, but there’s no reply.
There’s a noise downstairs. Rosamund’s back?
It’s OK. I’ve done nothing wrong.
Someone is coming up the stairs – slow and steady.
‘It’s only me, Rosamund,’ I call out, knowing I shouldn’t really be here, recalling how angry she’d been when she found me trying on her coat last time she was here. ‘I’m dropping off a couple of towels, that’s all.’
It’s OK. I’ve done nothing wrong.
I quickly tap on the shower-room door, and open it. I cover my eyes as I step inside, and place two towels on the rack. ‘Clean towels for you, Elise,’ I say.
I turn to leave, my body tensing as panic surges through me. Before me is a figure in black. I barely have time to register they’re wearing the creepy mask. Barely have a moment for the scream inside my chest to reach my throat.
The pain in my head sends me reeling.
Everything goes black as I hit the floor with a thud.
Chapter 23
Present Day
Me
You’ve left the bedroom door open, and I can see it hanging on the kitchen curtain rail. I don’t know why it haunts me. It’s only a piece of plastic, after all. But it does.
It’s been there since the day you brought me here. Do you leave it there to torment me? Or have you simply forgotten it’s there?
I close my eyes, my mind sifting through the same old questions, and I wonder how many times I will ask myself them.
Why hasn’t anyone found me?
Will I ever be free?
Will I live to see tomorrow?
I listen for your return. I want to ask you again why you are holding me here. Hope that I will find a part of you that isn’t consumed by evil. But outside there’s an unbearable silence.
I sit on the edge of the bed, and pour a glass of water from the jug, lift it with weak arms to my dry lips, and swallow.
I turn as Misty clatters in through the cat flap. He’s free, and yet he chooses to return each day. I wonder if he knows how much he’s helping me through this. Thank God I’ve got Misty.
Chapter 24
Present Day
Amelia
It was dark as I clambered, breathless, to the top of Vine Hill, doubling over with exhaustion. I kept going off course
, and the route was hazardous. It’s taken me over an hour to get back. I was stupid, shouldn’t have gone out alone in these freezing conditions.
My bladder aches from needing the loo, and every part of my body hurts, as though icy fingers touch my bones, freezing soft tissue. My ears burn, and even the inside of my nose is crystallised.
I’m relieved to see the cottages have power once more, each window alight with an orange glow.
I’m about to step onwards, desperate to warm myself by the wood burner, and maybe sneak a hug from Dad if he’s in a better mood, when I hear a scream. My mind shoots back to a year ago. I stop calf-deep in snow, filled with dread.
The scream came from Primrose Cottage, and Rosamund flings open her front door and almost falls through it, gripping the doorframe and bending over as though trying to catch her breath. ‘Elise!’ she cries. ‘Elise!’
As if a fire alarm has gone off, Dad appears through the darkness, hurrying towards Rosamund, and Finn races from the other direction.
I make my way towards Rosamund, and startle at the sight of the snowman Elise and Rosamund had so lovingly built that morning destroyed – broken, scattered. By the time I reach the cottage, Finn has taken Rosamund in his arms, and she’s sobbing into his chest, and he’s asking her what’s wrong.
‘What is it?’ yells Dad, reaching them. ‘What’s happened?’
Rosamund lifts her head, her face streaming with tears. ‘She’s gone!’ She pauses briefly. ‘Like last time. Like Lark. Elise has disappeared. And there’s so much blood.’ She gasps, as though her words have punctured her heart, before turning and racing back into the cottage.
We follow, and my eyes scan the room, falling on a Monopoly board, before moving on to Rosamund’s red, tearful face.
She takes a deep breath. ‘I left Elise reading in her room. I wanted to photograph the ruins. I asked her to come, but she wouldn’t. Oh God, why didn’t she come with me?’ She swallows, wipes tears from her cheeks. ‘I shouldn’t have left her on her own. Not after the message.’
‘Message?’
She pulls her phone from her pocket, fumbles shaking fingers across the screen. ‘Here,’ she says, passing it to me. I read the words:
Why bring your stepdaughter to Drummondale House? You know what happened to Lark.
‘Oh my God. Do you know who sent it?’ I say, passing her phone back to her, and she takes it with shaking hands.
‘I’ve no idea. It’s from an unknown sender.’
‘You mentioned blood?’ Finn says.
‘Yes. Upstairs in the shower room.’
He turns and bolts up the stairs two at a time. I follow, to see him crouched in front of a pool of congealing blood on the shower-room floor. He looks up at me. ‘Christ. What the hell’s happened here?’
I turn to see Rosamund and Dad behind me. ‘Call the police,’ I say, my voice quivering. ‘And an ambulance – Elise must be hurt somewhere.’ But I’m doubtful she’s even alive. Anyone losing this amount of blood …
Dad takes out his phone, and looks at the screen. ‘No signal … I’ll try outside.’ He descends the stairs, as though he’s glad to escape. Within moments the front door slams, and he’s gone.
Elise’s bedroom door stands open. It’s in darkness, but the landing light allows me to pick out the double bed, the ruffled quilt, and a book open like a butterfly on her bedside unit. Floor-length curtains are pulled closed across the window. Her pink holdall is propped against the wall.
I turn to see Rosamund behind me – so close. Shaking. Unable to keep her limbs still. She brushes her cheeks with her anorak sleeve, and I notice most of her make-up has been washed away by tears. She looks vulnerable – not something I thought I would ever see. ‘I need Neil,’ she says trancelike, her body trembling. ‘I need Neil.’
Finn is silent, his head flopped back against the wall, a torch in his hand. ‘My mum was here,’ he says. ‘This is hers.’
Two white towels on the floor are soaked in blood. He takes a deep breath. ‘She was running late, not back from her towel deliveries, and I was getting worried. It’s not like her. She’s always punctual.’
There are more red smears on the wall tiles, and on the landing carpet too, as though something – or someone – has been dragged across the floor. My stomach flips as I see the streaks of blood continue across the carpet and into Elise’s room.
I move gingerly into her room, and flick on the light. Finn and Rosamund are right behind me. A shudder runs through the length of my body, as we take in the streaks of blood that lead to the far wall.
Is there a body behind the bed? I want to know, but cannot move for fear.
Finn takes a gulp of air, walks across the room, and heads past the bed. He glances down at the floor, his mind clearly working the same as mine.
‘What is it?’ Rosamund shrieks.
‘Finn?’ I say through my fingers.
He looks up, white with anguish, and shakes his head. ‘There’s nothing here.’
Rosamund and I grab our chests in tandem, and my heart thumps under my fingers. ‘Let’s get some tea,’ I say, turning to leave the room. It’s what they always say on TV, when everything goes tragically wrong. ‘We can wait downstairs for Dad, and hopefully the police will get to us soon.’
Rosamund nods. ‘This is what happened a year ago, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘What if it’s the same person? What if they’ve returned?’
‘It’s different,’ I say, leading the way downstairs.
‘How is it different, Amelia?’ Rosamund says. ‘The disappearance of a teenage girl, the blood.’ She buries her head in her hands.
I wander into the kitchen, fill the kettle, and flick it on.
It’s as it reaches boiling point the power goes off once more, and the cottage plunges into darkness.
Chapter 25
Present Day
Amelia
My eyes, now adjusted to the sudden loss of light, are drawn to the window. The blind is up, and the full moon filters through snow-heavy trees that bend and sway in the wind. A chill runs down my spine. I’m petrified.
I turn, and make my way towards the lounge, gripping the worktops as I go. The dying embers in the wood burner cast a dim glow over the lounge. Rosamund is kneeling next to the coffee table, lighting candles with a shaking hand. And as the wicks flicker and burn I watch Finn switching his mother’s torch on and off.
Suddenly he jumps to his feet, agitated. ‘We need to look for them. Now.’
‘Finn’s right,’ Rosamund says, rising too. ‘Surely they can’t be far. Especially if one of them is injured.’ The words catch in her throat.
‘But it doesn’t make sense. If they left through the front door, there would be a trail of blood, wouldn’t there?’ My words make me shudder. There’s no blood down here or on the stairs. ‘We should check upstairs again before you go outside. It’s freezing out there, Rosamund. Think of your baby.’
Finn opens the front door, and within seconds they are both out in the cold night, where the wind is whipping up snow into mini blizzards. Finn pushes the door closed behind them without another word.
For God’s sake! They’re not thinking straight. We need to check the house thoroughly first. Look for clues as to what’s gone on here.
I stand, a strange sense of not being alone wrapping round my body. Is someone still in the house? I pick up one of the candles, my heartbeat quickening. I have to go back upstairs. What if one of them is hurt? Unconscious? Bleeding to death? My mind ticks over, trying to remember the first-aid course I did at work three months ago – how to do CPR. And now ‘Staying Alive’ plays in my head over and over, as I creep up the open-tread staircase, fearing someone will jump out when I reach the top, or step out of the shadows and attack me. The candle isn’t helping, casting dancing shapes around me. There’s no doubt my body is on high alert. Pulses, I didn’t even know I had, warn me of danger. Telling me to go back downstairs. To wait for Dad.
I’m halfway up wh
en the wood under my feet creaks. I hear a cry, and within nanoseconds realise it came from me. I’m scaring myself half to death. I need to get a grip.
I grasp the banister, trying to stop myself shaking, the flame zigzagging across the landing ahead of me, picking out the blood we saw earlier.
I take a deep breath and head into the main bedroom, noticing a case on the floor. I guess this is Rosamund’s room, from the aroma of her perfume, and the sleeve of a silk blouse spilling from the case. The wardrobe stands open and empty. She hasn’t unpacked. The curtains are pulled across the window. The bed is made.
I crouch down, and with the help of the candle, peer under the bed. Nothing. I was wrong. There’s nobody here.
Then I spot it – the scan of Rosamund’s baby – and my mind takes a jump to the past, and suddenly my emotions take control, and a surge of tears fills my eyes.
A sudden noise: tap, tap, tap.
I freeze, trying to work out where it’s coming from, dashing the tears away with my sleeve.
I rise, heart thudding, a whir of anxiety in my ears.
Tap, tap, tap.
As my mind adjusts, I realise someone is tapping on the front door. Dad?
I hurry down the stairs, and race across the lounge. ‘Dad?’ I call through the door.
‘Yes, let me in, Amelia, it’s bloody freezing out here.’
I put down the candle, and fling open the door.
‘Jesus,’ he says pushing past me, bringing a gust of wind and snow with him. There isn’t a part of him that isn’t white. ‘The signal is terrible. It must be this awful weather. I finally got a connection up near the gate, and my phone packed up before I could call the cops. Pretty sure the cold has sucked the life out of it.’
I pull my phone from my pocket. There’s no signal, and only forty per cent left on the battery.
Dad crouches down in front of the wood burner, picks up a couple of logs and places them on the glowing embers, before rubbing his hands together in front of it. He looks up at me. ‘No power again, I see,’ he says. There’s a tremble in his voice, as though the cold and fear are strangling his vocal cords. ‘Where are Rosamund and Finn?’
I Lie in Wait: A gripping new psychological crime thriller perfect for fans of Ruth Ware! Page 10