The Wake: an absolutely gripping psychological suspense

by Vikki Patis

  ‘Take her out, will you? Skye needs to rest,’ Mum said to Dad, her voice low so I wouldn’t hear and get jealous, but all I wanted to do was sleep. I had tonsillitis, my mother bringing me chicken soup and ice lollies and reading to me, and Saffy had been restless, as she often was, desperate for me to play with her. I remember the hurt in her eyes when I snapped at her, and although my throat was raw, my whole body aching with fatigue, I reached out to her, clasping her hand in mine.

  Find me a seashell, Saffy. Find me a pink one, with yellow stripes. Just like your bracelet. It will make me feel better.

  She smiled then, her eyes lighting up. I’ll make you better, Skye.

  After a muffled argument with Mum in the hallway, Dad bundled Saffy and Nala, our three-year-old beagle, into the car and drove down to Perranporth. My parents had moved from my mother’s native Scotland to where my father had grown up in Cornwall just before I was born, so he could set up his new business. We lived in a house he built, a house that was custom-made to his exact specifications, and he loved it, but I know Mum always felt anxious in Cornwall. Lonely, homesick.

  The weather had forecast rain that day, but Saffy, unlike me, was never afraid to get muddy. She loved splashing in puddles or running through fields with Nala, and we often lost her in the forest, only to find her hidden in the branches, leaves in her hair. She was an escape artist, Mum used to say, always managing to get out of her cot as a toddler without help, wandering off in the supermarket in pursuit of another child or to steal from the pick ’n’ mix. You had to keep an eye on her, we all knew it, even me, just one year older than my little sister. But he didn’t keep his eye on her. He turned away, distracted by the call from his mistress, the woman he had been seeing for five years behind Mum’s back, with all those extended ‘business trips’ down to Cornwall. The secret family he kept not ten miles away in Newquay.

  Ten-year-old Saffy was throwing a stick for Nala, laughing as the dog splashed through the waves, ears flying, to retrieve it. Saffy had on blue wellies and a yellow jacket, her red hair tied back in a braid. I remember this vividly, the image burned into my mind ever since that day. When I’d turned away from her, frustrated and run-down, I’d had no idea it would be the last time I saw her. When Dad finished his call, he looked down to see Nala sitting beside him, one of Saffy’s boots in her mouth, Saffy nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Ça va?’

  My eyes open at the sound of her voice from behind me, her warm hand on my arm. I turn to Fleur and smile. ‘Ça va.’ She squeezes my arm, her eyes focused on the water beneath us. ‘Thank you for coming. You didn’t have to.’

  She shakes her head, still staring out to sea. ‘Of course I did.’ As if it is that simple. But it is, for her at least. There is no greyness for Fleur, no hesitation. She knows what to do and she does it. A busy day is merely a checklist for her, as easy as breathing, and for the past few years she has been my steadying hand, the rock to which I have chained myself, my life raft in the middle of the ocean.

  I kiss her cheek, breathing in her strawberry scent, and we watch, hand in hand, as the city comes into view. Plymouth, where we will disembark and get into the hire car, driving across the Tamar and into Cornwall, where my father lies dead.

  ‘Will your maman come?’ Fleur asks, brushing her damp hair back from her forehead. ‘I would like to meet her.’

  I shake my head. She hasn’t set foot in Cornwall in almost twenty years. She has always blamed my father for Saffy’s disappearance, him and his mistress, now wife, and the children she bore while he was still married to my mother. Felix and Tobias, the brothers I wouldn’t recognise if I walked past them on the street. When it all became too painful for her, Mum moved us back to Scotland, where we lived with my grandparents in their house just outside Edinburgh. I went to school nearby, and watched my mum sink further and further into depression as the years went by without so much as a sighting of Saffy. My sister, who had disappeared into thin air, haunted that house. I saw her in my mother’s eyes whenever she looked at me, and I knew she saw Saffy in me too. We were so alike, with long red curls and skin as pale as milk, and I soon realised that I would never be enough, that my mum would always be looking beyond me, searching for her lost daughter.

  I studied English Literature at university, escaping that house and the ghost of my sister to live in a poky flat with four other girls, a flat that was always full of noise and laughter. I welcomed it, after the years of silence with my mother and grandparents, the grief pressing in on us from every angle. I basked in it, those three years of chaos, full of parties and drinking and drama. There were arguments, one which resulted in one of the girls moving out halfway through the year, and the house was always a mess, the sink full of dirty dishes, discarded shoes lying in the hallway, coats thrown over the banister. But I loved it. I loved those girls, with their loudness and untidiness, and the way they would drop everything at the last minute to spend the day at the beach or hit the shops to spend their student loan. They were chaotic, and they were exactly what I needed.

  I first visited France on a trip with the university. We spent two days in Paris, soaking up the culture, eating croissants and drinking coffee in the bright sun. Paris was even busier than Edinburgh, the bustle and the noise drawing me in like a moth to a flame. After graduation, I found a job that paid just enough and took my one suitcase on the Eurostar, moving into a shared apartment in the middle of the city. The two French women I lived with refused to speak English, but the Belgian woman, Eline, was kinder. She helped me with my pronunciation, laughing when I made mistakes, her eyes crinkling in the corners. I quickly realised I was in love with her, my sexuality suddenly becoming crystal clear, and I felt free to explore it. We split our time between our two rooms, and the French women slowly warmed to me. Paris was beautiful and wild, and I was finally discovering who I was, beyond the sister of a missing girl.

  Eline went back to Belgium after a couple of years and we drifted apart, she marrying and having three children who she now posts about frequently on Instagram. I stayed in France, taking jobs at various magazines and newspapers, never staying long in one place. Until I met Fleur four years ago, and we moved into our small house in Brittany, where we keep chickens and grow our own vegetables. We work for the same online media company, the second bedroom turned into an office with two desks and bookshelves crammed with books, and we spend our weekends doing beach cleans or travelling to protests. We were in Paris last week, joining the gilets jaunes as they protested against the government’s tax reforms and general inequality among the working class. I look at her now, remembering the photo I took that day, Fleur’s lips parted in a battle cry, one arm raised as she marched towards the police barrier. She looked like a warrior princess, a force of energy that burned bright enough to blind.

  Usually, Fleur is steady and pragmatic, almost immune to emotional outbursts. She analyses every situation, always making plans and sticking to them. She gets up at the same time every day – seven on a weekday, nine on weekends and bank holidays – and she eats the same wholegrain toast with Nutella and sliced banana every morning except Sunday. She washes her hair twice a week, cleans the bathroom on a Saturday, and never has chipped nail polish. But she is anything but predictable. Outside of her routine, she is spontaneous, waking me with a cup of coffee and whisking me out of the house for a hike through Monts d’Arrée or a swim with the dolphins at Port-Mer. We walk to the bakery at the end of the road and pick up fresh bread and croissants for Sunday breakfast, and she surprises me with fresh wild flowers picked from the field beyond our back garden, placing them in an old milk bottle on the kitchen table. She makes her own soaps, wrapping them in brown paper and giving them as gifts on Christmas, forever striving to do better by the environment, to care for the planet. She is inspiring and full of life, and I have never been so intoxicated.

  I watch her wrestle with her long dark hair as the wind drives the ferry on towards the port, and I wonder how she will cope with s
eeing this other side of me, the side I have learned to control, to bury beneath the me I have been creating since I left England. I wonder if she will still look at me the same way when she learns my secrets.

  3

  The Daughter-in-Law

  I turn the letter over in my hands, the afternoon sun glinting off the shimmering sea before me. It is beautiful here, with stunning views of an endless ocean. But it is not enough to distract me now. I recognise the writing on the envelope, the small, block capitals I could never forget. He has found me.

  Lexi Hearn

  Asquith & Son

  Perranporth

  Cornwall

  I haven’t been Lexi Hearn for almost eight years now, shedding my name like an old skin and becoming Lexi Forrest. But my past isn’t so easy to shake off, and I can feel it coming for me, like a wave rising up, casting a long shadow over the sand.

  ‘Mummy!’ I whirl around at the sound of my son’s voice, and smile as he runs towards me, his arms outstretched. Felix comes up behind him, one hand shading his eyes from the low winter sun as I pick Leo up and bury my face into his hair. The letter is shoved into my back pocket, a corner digging in through my thin trousers as I smile at my fiancé.

  ‘How are you doing?’ I ask, reaching out to place a hand on his arm. ‘All set for tomorrow?’

  Felix sighs, dropping his hand from his eyes. ‘I suppose so. Mum seems to have everything under control. You know how she is.’

  I don’t say anything. I do know how she is, this woman who will one day be my mother-in-law. Fiona is… difficult. Difficult to get on with, difficult to please, difficult to like. I breathed a sigh of relief when the annexe was finally finished and we could move out of Felix’s bedroom and into our own space. I know how lucky we are, living rent-free in a purpose-built annexe on his parents’ land, but I had no idea what I was signing up for when I moved in almost four years ago.

  ‘I’m finished here,’ I say instead, turning to step back into the office to grab my bag. The sun is setting now, the sea beyond the window tinted pink and gold. I set Leo down on the big desk in reception, giving him a packet of dried raisins to nibble on, and stand for a moment, my eyes closed, trying to calm my breathing as I remember Richard. Felix’s father gave me a slightly warmer welcome than Fiona when they found out I was pregnant. He let me move in, gave me a job, and even opened a trust fund for Leo. I’ve been here ever since, working with my fiancé and my father-in-law, living with my mother-in-law. Never out of reach of any of them.

  Until now, I realise with a jolt, my eyes snapping open to find Felix picking Leo up off the desk. Three weeks ago, on a stormy November night, Richard took a corner too fast and drove his car off the road, smashing into a tree and flipping over. Apparently, he’d been three times over the limit and had died on impact.

  I follow Felix out of the office, turning off the lights and locking the front door behind me. We walk past the shops, towards the Wetherspoons where Felix has parked the car. He took Leo to the beach today, despite the chill in the air, and had lunch with his brother, who is now leaning against the car as we approach. Neither of them have been back to work since Richard died, though as the boss’s sons, and now the bosses themselves, I suppose they don’t have to worry about not getting paid. Meanwhile, I’ve kept the office ticking over, trying to manage Richard’s clients while the rest of the family grieves. It’s the least I can do, after all.

  ‘Hello, little lion.’ Tobias grins, reaching out to ruffle Leo’s wild curls.

  ‘Uncle Toby!’ Leo squeals, wriggling as Felix puts him down, and running towards his uncle as if he hasn’t seen him in years. My son is dark-skinned like me, his dirty blonde curls almost the exact same as mine, though my hair is straightened and smoothed when I’m in the office. There is little of his father in him, I realise with a jolt. He is all me. Felix and Toby are a mixture of their parents. Their blue eyes are from Richard, and their aquiline noses from Fiona. I remember the first time I met her, the obligatory meet-the-parents Sunday lunch after Felix and I had been together for six months. I was already three months pregnant, after a drunken ‘just this once’, and he was going to announce it at lunch. I overheard her talking to Felix in the kitchen, her words just audible above the potatoes boiling on the hob.

  ‘Is she… Indian?’ she asked her son as I peered through a gap in the door. Her short blonde hair was expertly styled, her nails painted a light shade of coral, with lipstick to match. Her natural, I-spent-three-hours-to-look-like-I-just-rolled-out-of-bed look. I know she immediately thought I was too much; still thinks I am too much, actually. And yet, I am not enough in so many aspects. Not good enough for her son, not good enough to live in her house or to work for her husband. Not good enough to be a mother to her grandchild.

  ‘No, Mum.’ Felix sighed, rolling his eyes at the back of his mum’s head. I smiled, warmed by the way he was standing up for me. ‘Her dad was a Traveller, you know.’

  ‘A Gypsy?’ Fiona stared at Felix in horror, spitting the word out as if it had a bad taste, and I had to creep away then, shame burning my cheeks.

  My dad is also a murderer, I thought as I locked myself in the downstairs toilet, his green eyes staring back at me from the mirror. Imagine if I told you that.

  In the back of the car, Leo’s head resting on my shoulder, Toby clears his throat before speaking to his brother. ‘Skye is coming over on the ferry today,’ he says as Felix drives out of the car park. He glances back and smiles at the sleeping Leo beside me. ‘I haven’t seen her in years.’

  ‘I can barely remember what she looks like.’ Felix sniffs, turning left without indicating.

  Toby rolls his eyes. ‘You follow her on Instagram, don’t you?’ Felix doesn’t answer, his lips pursed in irritation. Toby is like a puppy, the younger brother who always gets away with being slightly naughty. A few pranks, some good-natured ribbing, that sort of thing. I like Toby, probably more than I like Felix if I’m completely honest. He accepted me as his new sister immediately, opened his then-teenaged arms and gave me a wedgie, and I knew we would get along.

  Leo loves him too, the uncle who is always up for a kick around in the back garden or to play dress-up while his father sits on the sofa with a glass of whisky, trying to emulate his father. Felix, the elder son, the heir to the Asquith throne, such as it is. I can almost see the weight of it pressing down on his shoulders as he drives us home, a muscle twitching in his neck. The stress of taking on the family business, of living up to Richard’s expectations, is taking its toll, and tomorrow is the day we will say goodbye to him, the patriarch of the family. I wonder if, beneath it all, Felix feels relieved.

  ‘She’s not staying with us,’ Felix says, and Toby looks up in surprise. ‘Mum wouldn’t have her in the house. I don’t want her there either, come to think of it.’

  ‘Where is she staying then?’ I ask, reaching out and patting Toby’s hand, a look passing between us. It’s a look that says don’t rise to it. I’m highly skilled at managing Felix, just as I was at managing Richard. Until the end.

  Felix shrugs. ‘Some Airbnb nearby.’

  ‘That’ll be nice. Some privacy,’ I say, smiling. ‘I can’t wait to meet her.’

  I see Felix’s fingers tighten on the wheel, and Toby’s face brightens again.

  ‘I remember one time, I can’t remember how old I was, maybe eight? It was before she moved to France. She came here, do you remember?’ Felix ignores the question, and Toby rolls his eyes again. ‘Anyway, I remember she had this long, red hair, it came down to her waist, and it was super curly. Like Leo’s, actually.’ He nods towards my son. ‘We were on the beach, and after asking at least two hundred times, she finally let me braid it.’ His gaze is unfocused as he tries to bring the memory back. ‘She had this lyrical voice, a soft Scottish accent, and she sang to me while I played with her hair.’

  ‘What’s your point?’ Felix snaps, and Toby frowns.

  ‘There is no point,’ he mutters. ‘Other than, w
ell, she’s our sister.’

  Felix scoffs. ‘She’s no sister of mine.’

  The car goes quiet, and I remember the letter stuffed into my back pocket. The letter that my brother will have encouraged my father to write, addressed to Lexi Hearn, daughter of Leonora Forrest and Joseph Hearn. But that’s not me anymore. That’s not who I am.

  4

  The Mistress

  I wipe my eyes, black mascara smudging across my face, as my thumb scrolls through his Facebook feed. It has been memorialised, by Fiona no doubt, and the messages are already pouring in.

  Taken too soon, never forgotten.

  I can’t believe this has happened. Our thoughts and prayers are with Fiona and the boys.

  Watched the footy earlier and thought of you, mate.

  Can’t believe we’ll never get a curry again or spend an evening in The Anchor. Missing you.

  I lock my phone, burying my face in my hands and letting the tears fall. I recognise almost all of those names, the people we spent so much time eating and drinking and laughing with. The people who knew who I was, who I was to Richard, and accepted me anyway. The people who preferred me to Fiona. But where are my messages? Where are my thoughts and prayers? The name Eleanor hasn’t been mentioned once. And so here I sit, alone at the kitchen table, buried in my grief.

  My phone vibrates and I press my thumb against the scanner, the screen lighting up to show a new Facebook message. The name causes my heart to lurch, and I feel a rock form in my stomach as I read the words.

  You are not welcome tomorrow. Don’t embarrass yourself further.

  Felix Asquith. Richard’s eldest son has never warmed to me. He’d recently taken to staring above my head whenever I spoke to him, never at my face. He’s a cold boy – man, I suppose – and I could understand it if he was angry on his mother’s behalf. If he shunned me, his father’s mistress, out of loyalty. But Felix is loyal to nobody but himself. He hates me purely because he believes I pose a threat to his inheritance. Richard and I were never going to have children – I’m almost sixty, for God’s sake – but he no doubt suspects that Richard would have left some of his money to me. And he would be right.