I turn to face her. ‘You’ve already asked her, haven’t you?’
Mum dips her head, her perfectly coiffed hair doesn’t move. There is a slight flush on her cheeks that reveals I’m right.
‘She was thrilled to be asked, actually. She said yes.’
‘She said yes?’ The room tilts. ‘But that makes no sense.’ Why would she? After everything?
Mum bristles. ‘I don’t know why you’re so surprised. You were inseparable growing up. It’s sad, how you lost touch. She’s family. And she’s vulnerable right now. She has no one else.’
‘What about Aunt Bess?’
My mum whistles through her teeth. ‘She’s a waste of space, that one.’ Aunt Bess is an alcoholic. There was a time when I thought Selena might turn out the same way. But from the snippets of news passed down over the years it seems that Selena did all right for herself in the end, marrying, as my mum put it, ‘into wealth’ and devoting herself to her daughter, who was born with health problems, although I don’t know all the details. I had to distance myself from Selena after what happened. It was the only way.
But before all that, before the secrets and the lies and the anger, we were close. More like sisters than cousins. I put it down to the fact there was only nine months between us, but really we just got on. We had the same sense of humour and, despite me being the older one, I looked up to her. She had this courage that I lacked back then. She threw herself into everything. She had no inhibitions and no fears, whereas I was shyer, more cautious. She brought me out of myself. She made me do things that I’d never have done otherwise, like smoke my first cigarette, drink cider in the park when we were much too young to do so and getting chucked out of a department store for putting knickers on our heads. Our dads were brothers and we were always in and out of each other’s houses, living just streets away from one another in Cardiff. Happy. Content. Naïve. Or at least I was.
And then, in just one night, everything changed.
I’m not proud of how I acted afterwards, but shock made me flee. To university. To London. To Adrian.
Mum bustles from the room in her smart blouse and slacks. She always dresses like she’s about to go to the office, despite having not worked for decades. She still has a good figure, I concede. Trim and tidy, as my dad would have said. I follow her as she weaves her compact frame into the small study off the hallway. It’s the only room we haven’t decorated yet and it’s very 1980s, with yellow striped wallpaper and navy blue borders.
Mum leans over the desk and opens an A4 leather-bound diary with gold edged pages. My diary. The diary that I’d bought with such excitement only a few weeks ago from a little boutique, thinking of all the potential guests’ names that would hopefully fill it. She flicks through it now, a tight smile on her face. ‘Okay,’ she says when she finds the right date. She picks up a scratchy blue biro and my heart sinks a little. I’d bought a fountain pen to use especially and had done so for the others that were booked in for next week, taking care to write neatly, so that we could look back in years to come and remember our first guests; the excitement, the nerves. Adrian calls me a perfectionist, a high achiever. And it’s a good job I am because my husband is disorganised and messy. ‘I’ll stick Selena and Ruby in here then, shall I? It’s the day before the first guest arrives. I think her daughter has a wheelchair so best to use Room Two.’ She doesn’t wait for an answer as she scribbles on the page.
‘I don’t want her here,’ I shout, shocked by my strength of feeling, that the anger and resentment is still within me, even after all this time.
She jumps and breathes in sharply, sucking her cheeks in and holding her chest theatrically. ‘Kirsty! There’s no need for that. It’s my home too and she’s more than welcome to come and stay.’
It’s happening already. She’s taking over, just like I knew she would.
We hadn’t planned on moving back to Wales. Not yet anyhow. Buying a guest house in the Brecon Beacons had been a long-held ambition of mine. Something to daydream about while I toiled away at my dead-end job in marketing, or when I was on maternity leave, surrounded by nappies and wet wipes. The Brecons held great memories for me, of picnics in the foothills, of family days out, my brother, Nathan, and I bickering in the back seat of the car, my dad barking at us good-naturedly. Of homemade egg sandwiches and milky tea. Of Frisbees. Of those endless hills and mountains that seemed to go on for ever. Adrian’s parents had owned a guest house in Devon for a while when I was pregnant with Amelia, and the idea of doing the same, but in my beloved Beacons, took root and grew. It was something we imagined we’d do in the future, when both girls were at university, when we were in our late forties or early fifties and had had enough of our terraced house in Twickenham and the frantic London life. Then Adrian had his break-down and suddenly the idea of the mountains, the fresh air, the peace, became more appealing, more urgent than ever before.
It had been a dank February day during half term when we first saw the house.
We were staying in Brecon, driving through those same mountains that I had so admired as a child. Adrian sat shrivelled up in the passenger seat, quieter than he used to be, still shell shocked from all the torment that had happened, as if he were a war veteran or disaster survivor. The mist was like dry ice, nudging the hills and draping itself over the mountains in the distance. The land was spread out in front of us in varying shades of green, some of the grass in the fields was tufty so that it looked like wheat blowing in the breeze, our one solitary road zig-zagging through it all. There wasn’t another soul for miles.
The girls were in the back seat, all elbows and knees as they fidgeted and fought over what DVD to watch on the iPad. I could see them in the rear-view mirror: our eldest, Amelia, sleek and dark like her dad, and Evie, with her rounded cheeks and mass of bushy blonde hair like mine. Five years between them and I could already sense that Amelia, at eleven, was moving away from her sister emotionally. She wanted to watch The Hunger Games (even though I wouldn’t allow it) whereas Evie still loved Sofia The First. Every time they bickered I inwardly winced, as Adrian’s shoulders hunched even further up his neck.
‘Amelia, just let Evie watch Sofia. Please.’
She huffed from behind me. ‘It’s not fair. She always gets her own way.’ I tried to shoot her a conspiratorial look in the mirror but she just glowered at me, her arms folded across her skinny chest, her bottom lip sticking out. But she relented, thankfully, and I was relieved to see them fasten their headphones over their ears and concentrate on the screen. I could sense Adrian uncoiling, his body relaxing with every beat of silence that followed.
‘I can see why you love it here so much,’ he said eventually. ‘I feel like I can breathe properly.’ He reached out and touched my knee. It was the most affection he’d showed me for months. His depression had turned up like a bully, pushing his bubbly personality, as well as his sex drive, into the cold. ‘It must remind you of your dad.’
I nodded, my throat tight. It was my dad’s favourite place.
Suddenly Amelia shot forward, straining against her seat belt and squealing. ‘Look! Mum, look!’ she cried. I nearly slammed the brakes on, but then I noticed what she was pointing at. Half a dozen ponies grazing by the side of the road. ‘Oh, they’re so cute!’
‘They are, but sit back in your seat, honey,’ I said. ‘It’s dangerous.’
‘There’s nobody else on the road,’ grumbled Adrian. ‘It’s not dangerous. You’re going twenty miles an hour.’
I ignored him.
Evie removed her headphones too and I slowed right down so they could get a better view of the ponies.
‘Wow, this is a magical place,’ proclaimed Evie seriously, watching a chestnut pony hoovering up the grass.
I laughed. Evie has a thing for fairies and magic. She lives in a dream world half the time. Normally, Adrian would have laughed too but he continued to stare ahead morosely. I shot him a sideways glance. I missed the easy, happy-go-lucky man he used to be.
It was when we were on the edge of a little market town that we saw it. Set back from the road, it stood alone amongst the overgrown foliage, ivy scrambling up the walls. A double-fronted Victorian detached; part white-washed, part stone, with a gabled roof and mullioned windows. It had a ‘For Sale’ sign propped up in the driveway. The tiles were falling off of the roof and the paint was flaking in places, but I could see the beauty in it even then. With a bit of TLC it could be magnificent.
I pulled over to get a better look. Adrian must have been thinking along similar lines, because he turned to me, his eyes bright. For the first time in a long time he looked excited.
We arranged a viewing for the next day, and as the four of us followed the estate agent through the crumbling, neglected house, the excitement hummed between us. I was convinced it was what we needed. A project. A change of direction for Adrian. A distraction. For all of us.
Our enthusiasm quickly turned to disappointment as we realised we didn’t have as much money as we initially thought due to the fact that Adrian hadn’t worked for months. Most of our savings had dwindled in the interim, and even if we sold our four-bedroom terraced house in Twickenham, we’d still be short of cash to complete the work that was needed.
So my mum stepped in. Despite my reservations, I’d fallen so deeply in love with the house that I found myself saying yes to her offer of help. She sold the 1930s semi that we’d grown up in, and divided the proceeds between Nathan and me, with the proviso that she moved in with us. I convinced myself we would get along fine – after all, I was the child who never really gave her much trouble. I left that up to Nathan. But since leaving home and only seeing her every few months when we were both on our best behaviour, I’d forgotten how strong-willed my mother could be.
I glare at her now, standing imperiously over the diary, her mouth set in a stubborn line. It’s been less than two weeks since she moved in and already I could throttle her. I bite back a retort and walk from the room before I say something I’ll regret. I can feel her eyes boring into my back. I can’t bother Adrian with this, not after everything, so to take my mind off of it I go and find the girls. They’re in the garden playing with their new lop-eared rabbits and my heart lifts at the sight of them. I stand at the back door and watch them as they sit on the grass, not caring that it’s damp, both with a bunny on their laps and chattering away to each other. All this space, I think, surveying the vast garden. Now they have a trampoline and a swing set, things our postage stamp of a garden in London could never accommodate.
This is supposed to be our get-away from the stresses and strains of city life. Our new start. And I’m not about to let Selena swan in like the evil fairy in Sleeping Beauty, with her resentment over the past and her lies, messing things up for us. We’ve been through too much as a family. And I’ll do anything – anything – to protect them.
THE BEGINNING
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PENGUIN BOOKS
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First published in Penguin Books 2017
Text copyright © Claire Douglas, 2017
Cover images © Image Source/ Getty Images, © Westend61/ Getty Images and © Marta Bevacqua/Arcangel.
The moral right of the author has been asserted
ISBN: 978-1-405-92641-6
Last Seen Alive Page 28