Nora nods. “And you’ve still got some savings?”
“Of course.”
“Good. That’s important. And you’re not…” Nora trails off, biting her bottom lip, and Siobhan knows the exact conversation they’re about to have. She could recite it word by word. It hangs all around them in the air, a cloying smoke closing in.
“I’m not drinking, Mum,” says Siobhan.
“You know why I ask.”
Siobhan feels a hot flare of fury, as much as she tries to stop it. “Yeah, well, don’t. I’m nothing like him.”
The words are loud and sharp. Nora flinches, eyes darting away. Siobhan hates that look, that flash of unbearable vulnerability; a fleeting glimpse of long-hidden scars. She hates being the cause of it even more. She gets up and goes to stand behind Nora. Leaning over, she rests her chin on the top of her mum’s head and wraps both arms around her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
Nora clasps both of Siobhan’s wrists, pulling her in tighter. They stay like that for a while, one body concertinaed over the other, listening to the starting and stopping of the rain.
***
Back home, Siobhan decides against texting Owen. She’d rather drink alone tonight. She takes a cold bottle of winefrom the fridge and fills a pint glass, drinking half of it before she feels ready to open her laptop.
She restores Zara’s email from the trash and reads it a couple more times. In the quiet and still of the flat, she lets herself wonder, really wonder, what it could possibly mean that Haina is dead, and what that would mean for Hex House. HainawasHex House. She was the bricks and the mortar and the fire in the hearth. All of those women who idolised her – would they leave now, too? Where would they go?
Siobhan’s head feels full and loud, as if there’s a long-dead carcass inside being swarmed by flies. These kinds of images often appear to her when she’s drunk: once-living things in various stages of decay. Festering flesh. Rot.
She’s finished the full pint of wine before she starts typing a reply to Zara.
I need you to tell me who you’ve been speaking to and what happened to Haina. Then we can talk.
S
She fires off the email before she can talk herself out of it, then leans back like the air’s been knocked out of her. After about an hour, Zara’s response arrives.
Siobhan,
Thank you so much for getting back to me. I’m sure you’re busy, so I really appreciate your time.
Sorry, I can’t reveal my source, even if I wanted to. She signs her name ‘Willow’, but I know that’s not her real name.
In her last letter, she told me Haina was very unwell for a very long time. Over the last few years, apparently more and more of the guests lost faith in her, and they left the house (she used the word ‘escaped’), and it had a profound effect on her health. Willow seems to be tracing it all back to something that happened when you were still at the house. Hopefully you know what I mean, because honestly, I don’t know what to make of it all.
Hesitant to put any more in an email at this stage – I can explain everything when we meet. How does Tuesday, 11:30 at Black Medicine Coffee sound? I’m just so excited that you’ll consider talking to me.
Can I be frank? This is a huge story. I’ll do it with or without you, but together, I really believe we can blow this whole fucking thing apart.
Let me know if you’re in.
Zara x
Siobhan refills her glass from a fresh bottle of wine and shuts her email. She stares at the screen, vision beginning to blur.
Her fingertips are shaking on the touchpad as she finds the documents icon and navigates to the folder titled ‘Hex House’.
She hasn’t opened this file in four years, but tonight it’s a magnet, its pull too strong. Her stomach churns as she skims the video clips inside, hundreds of them, ranging from a couple of seconds to a full hour-long. The thumbnails are too small to decipher details, but she can still make out the looming shape of Hex House in some, ivy creeping up its walls, and the faces of some of the women in others, their expressions frozen as they talk directly to the camera. Siobhan knows that in many of these clips will be Haina, staring down the lens like there’s an enemy hidden in the machinery. There’ll be Elly, clear-eyed and meek, one arm wrapped protectively around her belly. Siobhan opens the first clip in the list before she can stop herself.
It’s the house, the first time she and Theo ever saw it. The camera glimpses it through a thicket of trees, the shot lingering over its warm honey stone, the heavy wooden door, the ornate windows. They were about to give up, Siobhan remembers. She and Theo had been searching the woods all morning and had half-convinced themselves it was all a hoax: the letter begging Siobhan to come, the cryptic directions that followed, all of it. But then a nearby tree had come crashing down and suddenly there it was, where it hadn’t been before, an impossible structure in all that greenery.
“Theo.”
