The Island House

by Amanda Brittany

  ‘Tiger,’ he says, looking over his shoulder at the door. ‘This … Rosie … you do know she is a real little girl, and not a puppet.’ His voice has gone all funny like his face. ‘Do you understand that?’

  I shake my head. Look down at my cuddly tiger in my hands. Fiddle with his ears.

  ‘Do you know where she came from? What she’s doing up here in the attic room?’ His voice is shaky now, and I don’t know why. I feel a bubble of tears inside me, but I don’t want to cry.

  ‘She’s a puppet,’ I say. ‘Not a girl.’

  ‘She’s a real little girl, Tiger. Can’t you see that? Can’t you see how she’s different to Paulo and Ralfie?’

  ‘No!’ I stamp my foot, and my hands hurt because I’m squeezing them tightly. Rosie is a puppet. She lives up here behind the red door, outside inside, with the other puppets. ‘Rosie isn’t real,’ I yell. ‘Rosie is my puppet friend.’

  ‘Oh, Tiger, we have to get Rosie out of here before Aunt Verity gets back.’ Daddy stands up straight. He’s so big and I’m so small, and I know I won’t be able to stop him taking Rosie. ‘We have to get you both out of here.’

  He picks Rosie up, and she flops her head on his shoulder, and he grabs my hand so tightly it hurts, and then he runs from the room dragging me with him. And I struggle to keep up in my rabbit slippers. And I cry and cry, but Rosie doesn’t cry. She’s droopy and quiet in his arms, because she is a puppet.

  We take the first stairs, and then the second stairs, and then the third stairs, and then we bump into Aunt Verity who is bringing carrier bags full of shopping from Tesco through the front door, puffing and panting.

  She drops them to the floor, and a tin of baked beans rolls away. ‘Hugh!’ she shouts. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  Chapter 37

  Halloween Weekend 2019

  Alice

  Faith appears in eyeshot, a wide, unnatural smile pinned to her face. Her ponytail is high – neat and tidy, as though she’s brushed her hair; made herself look presentable for Alice’s arrival.

  Alice steps in, bewildered, eyes roaming the room, but before she can fully absorb her surroundings, Faith darts past her, pushing her so she topples, almost falls.

  Faith slams the red door. ‘A-lice, A-lice.’ It’s the same creepy voice, but this time it’s clear it’s Faith. ‘Welcome home, lovely. Would you like a fairy cake?’

  Alice spins round to see the woman she thought was her friend locking the door, pocketing the key. Shock ricochets through her as she notices a knife in Faith’s hand.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re back,’ Faith says. ‘I almost thought you wouldn’t respond to my kind invitation. But I knew once I sent you the photo of your father’s portrait, you wouldn’t be able to resist.’

  ‘Cameron? You’re Cameron?’

  ‘Well no, obviously I’m not Cameron.’ Faith laughs. Shakes her head so her ponytail sways.

  Alice’s eyes leap around the room once more; the bars at the window, the huge magic box, shelves crammed with tricks, the puppet tea party, the muddy-brown walls, the grass-green carpet – outside, inside. She knows this place – she’s been here before. Suddenly, she’s five years old – helpless.

  ‘This is where she kept me,’ she whispers, memories flooding in unbidden, her stomach churning, as the recollections fill her head. ‘Verity. This is where Verity kept me.’

  ‘Mmm, outside inside.’ Faith glances about her, not losing her smile. ‘I loved coming up to see you when I was little.’

  Alice stares at Faith, an avalanche of memories the room has triggered crushing, impossible to take in, make sense of. ‘You visited me sometimes.’ She takes a step forward. ‘You made me tea, and fairy cakes. You called me Rosie.’

  Faith claps her hands like an excited child. ‘I’m so glad you remember.’ She screws up her nose. ‘It was only pretend tea.’

  ‘Yes. Only pretend,’ Alice whispers, reaching for more memories, catching the scary phantoms as they drift by, bile rising in her throat. And suddenly it’s all there, as if it was only yesterday.

  PART FOUR

  ‘It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.’

  Lewis Carroll

  Chapter 38

  1994

  Hugh

  ‘Who is this little girl, Verity?’ The child was lifeless in Hugh’s arms; her head flopped against his shoulder, the awful stench of the attic room still ripe in his nostrils, making him want to heave. ‘She’s so thin, for Christ’s sake. Who does she belong to?’

  ‘Calm down, Hugh, I can explain.’ Verity picked up a tin of beans, shoved it back into the carrier bag. ‘You’re over-reacting.’

  ‘But the kid hasn’t said a word since I found her; she’s so limp, lifeless.’ He was shaking, afraid of what his sister had done. ‘How long has she been up there? Who is she?’

  ‘It’s Rosie, Daddy,’ Tiger said, in her usual bright voice, as she tugged on the hem of his jacket, staring up at Hugh with wide blue eyes. ‘She’s my puppet friend. I told you that already.’

  It was obvious to Hugh that Tiger really believed that the helpless little girl in his arms was a puppet. What game had Verity been playing at Flynn House, while Hugh had hidden himself away from life at the cottage? Hugh’s pulse whooshed in his ears, and a swirl of guilt and fear whipped through his body. What had his sister done?

  Verity grabbed Tiger’s arm and tried to tug her away from Hugh. Hugh pulled back, determined to keep hold of her, his knuckles white as he gripped the child’s hand. Tiger let out a scream – ear-splitting. Their ridiculous game of tug-of-war was hurting her. Hugh released his grip, and Verity wrapped her arms around the child, pulling her close, as though her arms were chains, her hands padlocks.

  The strange little girl from the attic room, still flopped in Hugh’s arms, was around five or six, about the same age as Tiger, though tiny by comparison. ‘Who is she, Verity?’ he said again, pleading.

  ‘Just give me a minute, and I’ll explain.’ Leaving the bags in the hallway, she raced away, dragging Tiger with her into the kitchen. Hugh followed to see them standing by the Aga. Verity crying, loud, dramatic sobs; Tiger covering her ears. ‘Stop, Aunt Verity. Stop!’

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ Hugh cried.

  ‘You’ll never understand,’ Verity said, dashing her sleeve across her face, before grabbing a bottle of whisky from a cupboard, and filling a crystal glass.

  ‘Try me.’ It was all he could think of to say.

  She shook her head, before knocking back the amber liquid in one gulp.

  ‘Whoever this little girl is, she’s malnourished, Verity. For Christ’s sake.’

  ‘I can’t help it if she doesn’t want to eat.’ She sounds flippant, her face grim. ‘I gave her food every day.’

  ‘Tell me who she is, Verity,’ he yelled. ‘Where you got her from.’ Anger boiled inside him, and despite the weight of the child in his arms, he raced forward, lunged at his sister, and grabbed her by the throat.

  Chapter 39

  Halloween Weekend 2019

  Alice

  Faith’s face falls from smile to frown in a fragment of a second. ‘And then you were gone. Stolen away. And you never came back, and Verity – my mother – cried all the time. And I had to care for her all the time, and life was horrible all of the time.’ She places one hand against her hip, like a handle on a milk jug; the other grips the knife so hard her knuckles are white.

  Alice’s head aches with confusion, her heart thudding in her ears. ‘Why am I here, Faith?’

  ‘Because this is where you belong, Rosie – here with me – and this is where you must stay, forever and ever.’ She moves closer, runs her index finger down the flat of the blade, a peanut-size pulse thumping in her neck.

  A whiff of her body odour catches in Alice’s throat; a surge of nausea churns in her stomach. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘My mother hanged herself in the stairwell of this ho
use.’ A pause. ‘She’d given up, you see. Given up her search for her brother – for Hugh. Ironic really, as things turned out.’

  Alice feels a sudden surge of sorrow pushing through her fear, but stays silent.

  ‘We lived in the cottage for years. Rarely came to the house. One day I woke and she wasn’t there. Eventually I found her.’ She looks down at the knife. ‘She left a note saying she was sorry, along with the diaries she’d written over the years. I think she knew they would explain everything.’ She shakes her head. ‘There was so much pain on those pages, as though written with her blood.’ She darts her eyes upwards, traps Alice in a stare. ‘I had no idea what she’d been through.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Alice forces the words out.

  ‘It’s fine. All good.’ Faith looks away. ‘I’m making them all pay now, you see. Every last one of them.’

  ‘Who, Faith? Who are you making pay?’

  ‘Mitch—’

  ‘Mitch?’

  ‘He raped her when she was in her early twenties.’

  Alice covers her mouth, holding in a gasp, tears blurring her vision. ‘Mitch was a rapist?’

  Faith nods. ‘That’s exactly what he is. Mum had tried to convince herself it was a mistake, not rape. That’s what she wrote in her diary – but she’d said no, over and over – and still he forced himself on her.’ She swipes the back of her hand across her mouth. ‘You’ve no idea how sick to my stomach it made me having to be so close to that disgusting man. I was glad when it was over.’

  A flash of memory: Mitch propped against the bed – a puppet. ‘You killed him?’

  ‘I knew it wouldn’t be long before he drank the brandy – he loves, I mean loved his brandy – and that was a particularly decent brand. Shame to mix it with poison hemlock, really.’ She laughs. ‘It grows on the island all year round here. Ingested it attacks the nervous system, causes severe seizures and convulsions, cardiovascular collapse.’

  Shock pumps through Alice’s body. ‘You poisoned him?’ Her voice cracks, eyes drifting to the ventriloquist dolls. ‘You made him look like a puppet.’

  ‘Of course! I packed the brandy in his holdall, though I didn’t know when it would happen exactly. In fact, I was praying it would be sooner than it was, but hey ho.’ She pauses, examines Alice’s face. ‘Oh come on, you detested him.’

  ‘So when you went to check on him, after we’d been to the cottage, he was—’

  ‘Dead – yes.’ She taps the knife against her chin. ‘Mother didn’t even know his name, but she’d written in her diary that he owned a tattoo business in Bristol. It was a long shot, the chances of it still being there after all this time. But I travelled there, and there it was. Mum also drew his rose tattoo in her diary, wrote that it was on his lower arm. It meant I knew immediately when I’d found the right man.

  ‘Mitch’s rather naïve sister, who worked as a tattooist in the shop, pointed out his photo on the wall, told me her brother was a fan of LARPing. I went along to a festival she told me he would be attending.’ She bites down hard on her lower lip. ‘The rest is history.’ She wiggles her head, as though proud of herself, her ponytail swinging. ‘I admit I hadn’t factored in that I would want to heave my guts up each time he touched me. Though I think you’ll agree, I made a good job of masking my disgust.’

  ‘And the Winslows? You killed them too?’

  Faith’s lips curve into another smile. ‘They were nasty characters. They said it was a good thing Hugh was dead. Mother would have been devastated that they spoke of her precious brother that way.’

  ‘And that’s it?’ Alice pushes down thoughts of how upset she was when she heard them talk about her father, but nobody deserves to be murdered in cold blood. ‘You killed a young couple because they said that?’

  ‘Oh come on. They were ogres. Present-day monsters. Always pulling people’s lives apart on social media and YouTube, ruining reputations, small businesses. They had a huge following too.’ Her voice is joyous; there’s a manic gleam in her eyes. ‘When Mitch mentioned them in the pub, and I listened to their crap – how they tried to ruin your father’s reputation, how they’d destroyed so many people with their cruel words, while raking in money, I was so angry.’ She clenches her fist. ‘I thought why not invite them here too on the pretence of them reviewing the hotel, and kill them – in for a penny, that’s what they say, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh God, Faith.’

  ‘They jumped at the chance of a freebie weekend. They were leeches, sucking the happiness out of people with their cruelty. Apparently a woman committed suicide after they destroyed her debut film. They won’t be missed.’

  She smirks. ‘They were so easy to kill. Just stuffed their faces with free caviar and smoked salmon canapés, champagne – all laced with poison hemlock.’ She furrows her forehead. ‘Surely you of all people can see they deserved to die?’

  Alice glances over her shoulder at the door, then back at Faith – she barely recognises the woman in front of her as her caring, fun friend. This woman’s skin is pallid, her eyes dark, vacant, her body rigid. She’s a stranger.

  Faith darts forward, places the tip of the knife on Alice’s throat. ‘Nobody’s coming, sweetie – it’s just you and little ol’ me. I just want you to stay here with me. Is that so much to ask? This was where we were happiest, wasn’t it? You do remember those good times, don’t you, Rosie? Outside inside.’

  Leon

  ‘Leon!’

  His body jerks awake. Wet grass has soaked through his jeans; his bare feet are freezing. Through sore eyes he sees someone crouched down beside him.

  ‘Lori?’ He rubs the back of his throbbing head, shivering as he attempts to ease himself up. But his limbs are weak, and he drops back down onto the grass like a wounded animal. ‘Gabriela helped me,’ he says, his voice is husky. He shouldn’t have left the shed when he did. His injury is far worse than he thought.

  ‘I saw her,’ Lori says. ‘I saw her knock you out. She bashed your head with a boat oar. I wanted to help you, made my way down to the sea, but when I got there, you’d gone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Faith.’

  ‘Faith?’ Alice’s friend? His head spins. He left Alice with her – he tries to move once more, but he’s dizzy, incapable.

  Lori glances over her shoulder, then back to Leon. ‘She came out of nowhere, whacked you, and then she was gone.’

  ‘Why would she—?’

  ‘I had my suspicions. She asked me about my time here as a nanny.’ She shakes her head. ‘I hadn’t told her anything about it. She wasn’t there when I spoke to Alice about working here, being Hugh and Verity’s nanny. I knew there was something not right about her. I had to get away.’

  ‘So you left us to it – never said anything.’ His head throbs; he has to get up. Must get to Alice. ‘You climbed out of the window?’ He notices a gash on her hand. ‘Saved yourself.’

  ‘I was afraid.’

  ‘Not an excuse, Lori – we were all afraid.’

  ‘No you’re right.’ She lowers her head, her chest sounding wheezy. ‘I was a fool, selfish. But people don’t always act as they think they might in a crisis. You will always get heroes and cowards.’ She closes her eyes for a moment. ‘And it’s not the first time I’ve been a coward. Those children – Verity and little Hugh – needed me but I was too afraid to stand up for them. I was no more than a child myself, I suppose. That’s been my excuse all these years. And I had thought I was a better person now, that if I came back here it would give me some sort of redemption. But it seems not. In fact, I’m no better now than I ever was. At the first sniff of fear …’

  He stares at her for a long moment, the attractive woman of earlier windswept, exhausted, scared.

  ‘It’s Faith who’s brought us all here, Leon. She’s going to kill us all.’

  ‘But why?’ He attempts again to get to his feet, once more with no luck.

  ‘I don’t know.’ She glances about her. ‘I’ve no idea who
she is. All I know is I received an invitation from Cameron Patterson to stay here. He said he knew I was once a nanny at the house and asked if I would like to attend the opening weekend. I didn’t even question how he knew who I was.’

  ‘Help me up,’ Leon says, pushing on his haunches, fighting the pain, the dizziness. ‘Alice and Christine are in the house with Faith. We have to help them.’ Tears are close – pathetic helpless tears. He shouldn’t have left Alice. What had he been thinking with his heroic swim to the mainland? He tried so hard to do the right thing, but failed miserably. He has to make things right.

  Lori rises, pulls Leon to his feet. ‘I’m with you,’ she says.

  At a sudden noise behind them, he turns to see the shed door crashing open, banging hard against the wooden building.

  ‘Gabriela?’ Leon whispers, peering into the darkness, as the young woman in black heads towards them with determined strides.

  Alice

  ‘Sit down, Alice.’ Faith points the knife towards the vacant spot at the tea party. ‘Now.’

  Alice lowers herself to the floor, next to the puppets. She remembers. Her young life spent here. Here in this room. A tear rolls down her cheek, tastes salty on her lips, drips off her chin.

  ‘You of all people must understand the power of grief,’ Faith says, crouching down on her haunches in front of her. ‘Once I started reading my mother’s diaries, which were fascinating and heart-breaking in equal measure, I had to punish the people who ruined her life and mine. You can see that, right?’ She tilts her head, stares long and hard.

  Alice remains silent. She’s a little girl again. Trapped. Afraid.

  Faith drops down onto her bottom, dangles the knife between her legs. ‘I’m not going to lie; it was a shock to find out Hugh wasn’t my daddy.’

  Alice looks up, stares into those vacant eyes.

  ‘Oh don’t look like that. Even I realise incest isn’t the done thing. But when Hugh left with you, I thought he was my father. Mother never told me otherwise. She just said she wasn’t my aunt, that she was my mother. What else was I supposed to think? But her diaries corrected that.’