by Emma Rous
“I’m just—” I peered again toward the island, but dusk was rapidly giving way to night, and it was impossible to see more than hazy shapes. There was no gleam from a torch, no sign of Jonas.
“Did you start the fire?” Nina said. Her face was a smudge in the gloom, her dark eyes glittering. “Did you put something in my food to make me sick? Was it you?”
“No!” I stared at her, aghast. “How can you even say that?”
“Well, you think it was my mum—how can you even say that?”
“I don’t know, Nina. I don’t know!” I stepped onto the ice in the brand-new pixie boots I’d been so proud of yesterday. “Please. Just go back.”
Nina’s tone changed as she followed me onto the slippery surface. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to think. Don’t leave me, Beth, please. I need you.”
I turned to face her, skidding a little. “No, Nina. Go back to your parents.”
“I’m not supposed to show my face to my grandfather, remember?” She sounded close to tears. “Where are you going? You can’t leave me here.”
I shook my head and half walked, half slid away from her as fast as I could. A new, thin layer of powdery snow covered the ice, and I swung my arms as I plowed ahead, trying to generate some speed to widen the gap between us. But it wasn’t long before I realized she was still following me.
“Beth,” she sobbed, “please don’t go. I need you.” Her voice rose in pitch. “Take me with you.”
I almost laughed at that, and I swung around, unable to see her expression in the darkness now, even from just a few meters away.
“I can’t even look after myself,” I said. “Just look behind you.” I waved an arm at the glow from the upstairs window in the distance. The faint wail of sirens reached us across the fields.
“But where are you going?” Her voice was a wail. “You’re going to see Jonas, aren’t you?”
My heart squeezed with sympathy for her, but what choice did I have? “You know you can’t come with me, Nina.” I began to slip-slide away from her again. “Go back to your parents.”
This time, there was no sound of her attempting to follow, and for once I was grateful for Leonora’s rules. I veered away from the island slightly, no longer believing Jonas might be there waiting for me—he’d have joined me by now. Instead, I planned to skirt around the island, cross the lake, and walk up past Milner’s Drain to the main road. I’d lived at Raven Hall for eighteen months; I felt confident I could find my way in the dark—perhaps Markus was right about me becoming a proper Fenland girl. While the fire engines battled the blaze in my Raven Hall bedroom, I’d be marching down to the village to seek refuge with Jonas.
But then a shout flew across the frozen lake. “Girls!” It was Markus’s voice from somewhere near the dock. “Nina! Beth! Where are you?”
I hesitated, and in that moment, I heard Nina’s breaths, short and sharp, moving toward me again. I swung around, trying to make out her shape in the darkness.
“Go back, Nina!”
“No!” She crashed into me and grabbed my hands in her icy fingers. “I’m coming with you.”
Markus’s voice boomed out again, and it sounded closer. “Girls! Please! Where are you? Come back!”
“Let go of me.” I freed my hands from her grip and stumbled away, no longer sure of my bearings.
“Wait!” she called out. “Hang on. Dad drilled his holes on this side. He said we mustn’t skate beyond the island.”
Nice try, Nina, I thought. “I’m not skating.”
She was still coming closer. “But it might not be strong enough . . .”
“Well, go back, then!” I turned in a circle and caught her outline in my peripheral vision. “I’m trying to get away from you too—can’t you understand that?”
And that’s when it happened. A loud snap, like the crack of a whip. A strange, slow-motion shift of the ice beneath my feet. And we were both slipping and tipping. And no matter how far I clawed my fingers onto the ice in front of me, my feet and calves and thighs slid down, down, down into the cold, deadly water. I couldn’t breathe. And I couldn’t move. The world closed in around me.
Sadie
January 2019
What’s your mother’s name?”
Joe’s question hangs in the frosty air between them, and Sadie stares at him as if not understanding it. Eventually, she clears her throat.
“Perhaps you could tell me exactly who you are, first.”
Joe looks startled, but he gives her a small apologetic nod. “Yes, of course. I’m Jonas Blake. I grew up in the village. My mum still runs the B and B there. I used to be friends with—” His gaze slides toward the lake, as if the rest of his sentence has been sucked away across the black water.
She waits for a couple of seconds. “Friends with who?”
“There were two girls who used to live here. Nina and Beth.”
Sadie’s heart is a drum. Is she finally going to hear the story her mother would never tell her?
“What happened to them?” she whispers.
He eyes her warily. “Surely you’d know that if you’re Beth’s daughter?”
She shakes her head. “Mum never told me anything about her childhood. Seriously, virtually nothing. I mean, I know she had a brother, Ricky, and he and her parents were killed in a road accident, but apart from that . . .”
Joe’s pupils are enormous in the torchlight. “You didn’t know she lived here?”
“No. How old was she then?”
“Fourteen, fifteen. Didn’t she mention the family, even? Leonora and Markus and Nina?”
“No, I told you. I wasn’t allowed to ask her anything. Little things could set her off. If she was reminded of the past, she’d withdraw from everything, shut herself away, didn’t want to talk about it. So in the end, I stopped asking.”
Joe looks horrified. “I tried to find her, afterward, but she literally”—he swings the torch in a helpless gesture—“disappeared.”
Sadie thinks of the charity her mother always insisted on supporting. “She was homeless for a while. I don’t know much more than that. She lived on the streets ’til she got pregnant with me, and then she got some support, and things got a bit better.”
“Good grief.” Joe shakes his head heavily. “I’m so sorry.”
“Just tell me what happened here. Please.”
“It was an accident,” he says slowly. “There was a fire, in the house. And while they were waiting for help to arrive, Beth and Nina went out onto the frozen lake, and they—”
“What?” Sadie says.
“The ice broke. They fell through. Into the water . . .”
Sadie hugs herself, thinking of all the times she complained of her mother’s heating being turned up too high, and her mother saying it was what her cold bones needed.
“The fire brigade had just got here,” Joe continues. “They managed to pull both girls out, but—”
Sadie remembers the line from the ramblers’ group blog: “Raven Hall has been abandoned and uncared for since a tragedy befell a local family in the late 1980s.” She takes a step backward and glances at the gentle glow from the drawing room window, no longer wanting to hear the rest of the story. What if her mother was responsible for the other girl’s death? Is that what happened? Beth and Nina went out onto the ice, but only Beth came back?
Joe catches at her sleeve, and his voice cracks. “It was my fault; that’s the trouble. I promised Beth I’d meet her on the island, but I wasn’t there—I was still at home. I hadn’t even set off. If I’d been here . . .” He gives Sadie a pleading look. “Where is she now? I’d love to see her again, to explain . . .”
Sadie gives a short laugh. “That’ll be tricky.”
“Why?” His eyes widen. “She’s not—”
“Dead?” Sadie pulls a face. “No, bu
t she’s not exactly easy to get hold of. She quit her job a few months ago, gave away all her stuff, left me to sort out the tedious bits while she went off to join some cult in the wilderness.”
“Cult?” Joe says.
“Well, they call it a retreat. It’s in the Scottish Highlands. They do talking therapies, that kind of thing, and she’s convinced it’ll help her, but they’re really strict. No phones allowed, no visitors for the first six months, only one letter a month, things like that. She just went and joined them. I couldn’t talk her out of it.”
“It does sound a bit cultish.”
“That’s what I told her.” Beth drops her gaze, and she sighs. “But she thought I’d be better off if she left for a while. She thought I was too dependent on her, that because we saw each other all the time, she was stopping me from taking responsibility for myself . . .”
Joe hesitates. “And was that true?”
“No!” Sadie looks out over the black water. “At least, well . . . I did use to go round there a lot and let her go through the job adverts for me, you know, and cook me meals and stuff, but—” She shakes her head. “I miss her.”
“So . . .” Joe sounds confused. “How did you get invited here tonight if . . .”
“I don’t know.” Sadie rubs her arms. She pictures her mother falling through the ice with that other girl, Nina, and a thought slams into her, sending a shiver from her fingertips all the way up to her neck. What if I wasn’t picked for this job at random? What if someone invited me here because of the connection between this house and my mother?
* * *
* * *
Back in the drawing room, Sadie and Joe describe the footprints they saw heading down the driveway. The relief in the remaining guests’ voices is clear.
“It makes sense,” Zach says. “It’s not that long a walk to the B and B. I’m quite tempted myself.”
“Thought she was too good for us,” Everett grumbles.
“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,” Nazleen says.
Sadie is still reeling from the discovery that her mother once lived in this house, and she eyes the other guests curiously. So, Joe was once a friend of her mother’s, but what about the others? Everett would have been in his forties back then, she guesses, and Zach just a small child.
“Have you been here before?” she asks Nazleen abruptly.
“To this house?” Nazleen frowns. “No. Why do you ask?”
Sadie shakes her head. “No reason.”
But if Sadie’s presence here isn’t a coincidence—if someone at the company knows that her mother used to live here—why did they invite her here without explaining the connection? And who are they, anyway? Sadie frowns, thinking of the other names Joe mentioned outside—Leonora and Markus. Could it be one of them?
“Well, I’m going to bed.” Zach hauls himself up off the sofa. “Remind me not to do this sort of thing again, Dad, won’t you?”
Sadie wanders across to the window, wanting one last look outside before she, too, heads up. She feels self-conscious as she parts the curtains—imagine if Genevieve was back out there on the dock, smoking another cigarette and laughing at them. But it’s something far stranger—Sadie blinks and turns her head from side to side, trying to catch it in her peripheral vision. Tiny bluish lights flicker and jump in the darkness; with nothing else visible, it’s impossible to judge how far away they are.
“There’s something—” she says, and she can hear the fear in her voice, but she can’t hide it. The others hurry toward her—even Everett, who a moment ago was heaving himself out of his chair as if he barely had the energy to stand. They crowd round her, peering into the black night.
“There are tiny lights—look.” She turns a stricken face to Joe. “You don’t think Genevieve—?”
The others watch for a moment, and then Zach laughs.
“They’re will-o’-the-wisps,” he says. “Have you never seen them before?”
“It’s just marsh gas,” Joe says to Sadie, more kindly. “It’s a natural phenomenon. Nothing to do with Genevieve.”
“Oh.” Sadie lets the curtain drop back.
“Perfectly normal to see them . . . ,” Everett begins.
“In the Fens.” Nazleen sounds weary. “We know; we know. Well, it’s lucky we’ve seen them tonight, ’cause I, for one, certainly won’t be coming back.”
Sadie grinds her teeth against the thought that she ever contemplated trying to get the hostess job here for herself. Certainly not one of her better ideas. Especially now she knows of the connection between this house and her mother’s painful past.
The guests exchange muted good-nights at the top of the stairs, and as soon as Sadie is alone in her room, she kicks off her shoes and collapses with a groan onto the bed. Her eyes close instantly, and she’s tempted to sleep where she is, fully dressed—but a worrisome thought gnaws at the edge of her consciousness. She shouldn’t be feeling this tired; it’s not even midnight yet . . .
She hauls herself up and prepares for bed properly, trudging down the corridor to the bathroom to brush her teeth, relieved to get back to her room without bumping into any of her fellow guests. Her thoughts are sluggish, as if her mind were operating underwater. What was she thinking as she climbed the stairs? Something about the job. The hostess job . . .
She flips back the sheet and blankets, and she frowns as a new idea occurs to her. What if Nazleen’s wrong? What if there is no long-term hostess job? What if . . . Sadie forces herself to stay on her feet, determined to think this through before she sinks onto the soft mattress and allows her head to touch that oh-so-tempting pillow. What if this evening’s event is a one-off, designed to gather the seven of us together?
Sadie sways, a hint of her earlier nausea returning. She should have left when she had the chance. She should have volunteered to follow Genevieve’s footsteps. She could be tucked up safely in the cozy B and B by now, instead of being stuck here in this huge house with five complete strangers . . .
She lifts her gaze to the door. There’s a keyhole, but she hasn’t seen a key. She plods barefoot to the big cheval mirror and drags it across to just in front of the door, then stands back to assess the effect. Anyone could force their way in, still, but at least she’d have a warning now.
When she finally falls into bed, she pulls the sheet and blankets right up to her chin and holds them there, while images slide through her kaleidoscope mind. Blue, looping handwriting: Hendrik will be grateful for your support. The fair-haired old man in the portrait, looming over them. That fish eye, dead like a circular stagnant pool. The black, ominous surface of the lake, rippling, rippling . . .
Sadie doesn’t so much fall into sleep; she’s sucked down under its surface.
* * *
* * *
She dreams of her mother. Arms crossed, warning frown. “I’ve told you, Sadie. It’s not something I can talk about.” A long sickly yellow hospital corridor, a playroom full of childish plastic toys while her mother talks to a little tortoise of a woman behind a blue door covered in peeling posters. “I’m okay, Sadie; I promise you.” “I don’t want you to go, Mum.”
She wakes cold and clammy, the blankets thrown aside. Her heart is pounding as if she’s just heard something terrifying. The lamp is still on, and she half sits, feeling dizzy. Her gaze jumps to the door; it’s still blocked by the mirror. She lets her head fall back to the pillow. Thank God. But there it is again—the noise that woke her: a sharp crack-crack on the window.
Perhaps she’s still dreaming. She slides out of the bed and curls her toes into the soft rug. It feels real.
Crack! Another rattle at the window. And it’s the strangest thing, but she really does think she can hear her mother’s voice calling her.
She drags back the curtains, and by the light from the outside lamps, she can just make out a car on the driveway—a mini. This i
s good news, isn’t it? Has someone come to check on them?
“Sadie!” There it is again—her name being called, and someone is down there. A woman in a huge coat, standing back, craning her neck to peer at the upstairs windows. Her arm jerks back and upward, and a flurry of stones—gravel?—hits the window of the room next door. Sadie tries to lift the sash window to get a better look at the woman, but it’s locked, so she presses her face closer to the glass and waits for the light to catch the woman full in the face.
It doesn’t seem possible. Sadie rubs her eyes and peers again. It really does look like her mother down there. And then two things happen at the same time. Sadie inhales through her nose and catches a faint scent of smoke. And the woman on the driveway shouts a single word that slices through the glass and sets Sadie’s heart pounding.
“Fire!”
PART 2
Beth
January 2019
Ihurl another handful of gravel at the window.
What am I doing here?
I vowed I’d never come back. It’s painful to remember what happened here thirty years ago. But when Sadie’s dutiful monthly letter arrived at the retreat earlier today, a string of words flew out at me like a flock of panicked geese: I’ve got an amazing job lined up, a sort of game, at a place called Raven Hall . . .
I’ve driven for hours. Too many to count. Red warning lights flashing on the dashboard of the hastily borrowed car, a dreadful grating noise from the engine for the last few miles. I thought Sadie might grow up a bit if I put some distance between us. I never dreamed that in my absence, she’d be in danger from my past.
The doors are locked, as are the downstairs windows. Flames glow menacingly behind the glass above the front door. There’s no response to my hammering. No signal on my phone. I think frantically: There are no other cars on the driveway—might the house be empty after all?
I can’t risk it.
I hurl more stones at the upstairs windows, and I work my way along, shouting my daughter’s name as loudly as I can.