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“I suspect you didn’t even know where he was overnight. Let me put your mind at rest and tell you that he’s here at Seaglass with me. Which is where he is going to stay until I can reach social services and have him taken away from you forever.”
She was quiet again. I wished I could hear what was being said on the other end of the line.
“He’s a child. It’s not his fault your wife died. You are supposed to be his father. You’re supposed to protect him from all that is bad and wrong about the world, not constantly hurt him and let him down. Doing your best? Well, your best isn’t good enough. You’re depressed? Aren’t we all. It doesn’t give you the right to do what you did. You are a disgrace to depression, and you don’t deserve to call yourself that child’s father. Either you get yourself some help or you will lose your son. I never met your wife, but I can only imagine that if she could see what you have become, she would be deeply ashamed and wish she’d never met you. He’s her son, all that is left of her; think of that next time you take your shitty existence out on your child.”
Then she hung up, and I was both scared and in awe of her all at once.
Nana never stopped looking out for Conor from that day on. His father went to AA, was in rehab for a while, and although there were months, sometimes years, when things would be okay, she always kept a close eye on Conor back then, trying to protect him.
Back in the present, I get up and leave the lounge to find out where he has disappeared to. I immediately feel the slap of cold air, andthe sound of the sea is louder than before. Almost as though it is inside the house. When I step out into the hallway, I can hear the back door banging in the wind. Conor must have left it open when he went in search of wood. The quickest way to get to the log store is via the kitchen, but I don’t really want to go in there. I don’t want to see Nana’s body on the floor again, or the unkind chalk poem on the wall, so I avert my eyes as I hurry to the back door.
Conor walks through it before I get there, carrying a basket full of logs. He looks completely drenched, and I don’t understand what took him so long. I’m about to ask when I notice him staring at something behind me. I think I know what it is—Nana—but when I turn to look for myself, I see that her body has gone. Conor puts the logs down and stares at the kitchen table. There is a VHS tape on it. One of the ones I’m sure I saw on the shelf in the lounge last night. Someone has stuck Scrabble letters to the front of its white cardboard case, spelling out the words: WATCH ME. Next to the tape, there is a torn piece of paper. When I read the words that have been written on it, in handwriting I do not recognize, my whole body turns icy cold.
Trick-or-treat the children hear,
Before they scream and disappear.
13
October 31, 1 a.m.
five hours until low tide
The clocks in the hallway all start to chime. Thankfully just once, as it’s one a.m., but they are a little out of sync, as usual. Conor stares at the space on the floor where Nana used to be, but there’s no body and no blood, as though what we saw before might just have been a bad dream. Then he looks at the VHS and note on the kitchen table. He turns to look in my direction, but doesn’t say anything, almost as if he suspectsmeof putting them there. I can still hear my dad’s piano in the music room; he hasn’t stopped playing since he locked himself away from the rest of us. The men in my life have never been good at using their words, so I find a few of my own.
“I understand why you’ve refused to see me for years, and why you still don’t want to talk to me now, and that’s fine, but can we please put what happened withusto one side, just for tonight? I’d really like to know what you think is going on here, because I’m scared,” I say, quietly enough so that the others won’t hear. I usedto think of Conor like a big brother, and I miss him playing that role in my life.
The look on his face is opaque; there is no reflection or even an acknowledgment of what I just said. I hate that things have gotten so awkward between us, but I have never managed to find the right words to fix things. I don’t understand why we can’t move on. Especially now. Everything we’ve just seen confirms that Nana’s death was not an accident.
I’m not naive. I know that everyone was upset about Nana’s will last night, and I do have a hunch about what might be going on here. But hunches aren’t just there to be had; they’re there to be thought about, analyzed, agonized over—and, most important, should rarely be shared. Conor stares at the words written on the piece of paper on the kitchen table, then at the VHS tape, then again at the place on the floor where Nana’s body was earlier. I just stare at Conor.
He grabs a red-checkered tea towel from the kitchen worktop and does his best to dry himself off from the rain; then he reaches inside his pocket and takes out a mobile phone. It’s a dark blue Nokia, the best that 2004 has to offer, just like Lily’s, but Conor seems to have forgotten that there is no signal here. He holds it high up in the air, as though that will make it work, but of course it doesn’t. I watch as he strides out to the little table in the hallway where the landline used to live. The old pink rotary phone is still there, on a doily, but Nana wasn’t joking when she said she stopped paying the bill. She wanted peace and quiet, and I guess she got her wish because the phone is dead. I find the fact that Conor so clearlywantsto call the police reassuring, despite knowing that he can’t.
There is a picture of me and my sisters by the phone, which used to ring all the time when they were here. Most calls were for them—friends from school wanting to catch up in the holidays,study partners for Rose, boyfriends for Lily—but occasionally it was my dad, calling from one city or another, between rehearsals and performances. He could never talk for more than a few minutes—long-distance calls cost a small fortune in those days—and it never took him too much time to ask Nana for more money. Sometimes publishers called for Nana, and her agent always called to wish her a happy birthday. But I can remember one Halloween when I was the only person here to help her celebrate, and the phone rang. The person calling was Conor. I suppose I must have been five or six. Nana had just blown out all of her candles—there were a lot, even back then—and we were about to eat upside-down pineapple cake with whipped cream. The memory of that phone call is as clear now as if it had happened yesterday, not over twenty years ago.
“Hello,” Nana said, answering the phone with a big smile, expecting it to be someone calling to wish her a happy birthday. The smile slid straight off her face. “It’s going to be okay. You did the right thing calling me. Stay exactly where you are and I’ll be there soon.”
“Who was it?” I asked.
“Conor. Something’s wrong, I need to go over there,” Nana said, looking for her handbag. She could never seem to find it, even though it was both brightly colored and enormous. The bag was made from pink and purple patches and was older than me. Nana shook her head while searching for it, and her curly white hair seemed to dance. I wondered if mine would look like that when I was older. Then I remembered that I would never be old enough to have white hair, and it made me feel so sad. It’s odd, the little things that used to upset me. Most people don’t want gray or white hair, but in that moment, I did. Maybe people wouldn’t complain aboutgetting old all the time if they were scared that they never would. When Nana found her handbag, she slipped a wooden rolling pin inside it.
“What shouldIdo?” I asked, a little scared of being left on my own at Seaglass.
Nana stared at me as though I had said something wrong. “Daisy Darker, do you care about Conor?” I nodded. “Good, I’m glad to hear it. Caring about other people is more important than being curious about them. When someone you care about is in trouble, you do everything you can to help. Which means you are coming with me. Now find your shoes and let’s skedaddle.”
“What about your birthday cake?” I asked.
“We’ll take it with us. Conor sounds like he needs cheering up.”
Ten minutes later, having crossed the causeway when the tide was already fast coming in, the two of us climbed the rocky path with wet shoes and socks. At the top of the cliff, behind the sand dunes, there was an old shed where Nana kept her only form of transport. It was an ancient bicycle with a large wicker trailer attached to the back, which, now that I think about it, can’t have been legal. I climbed into the wicker trailer and Nana climbed onto the saddle, dangling her handbag on the handlebars.
Nana pedaled faster than I knew she could along the coastal road until we reached Conor’s cottage, a mile or so away on the other side of Blacksand Bay. The place was really nothing more than a dilapidated two-bedroom bungalow on a rocky stretch of the coast. One of the windows was cracked, and the blue paint on the front door was peeling right off. They’d moved there when Conor’s mum died, and the building was as abandoned and unloved as the two people who lived in it.
We didn’t knock. There was no need; the door was open.
I’d never been inside before—Conor always came to visit us,never the other way round—and I was shocked by what I saw. I think we both were. The front door opened straight into a little lounge, and there was mess everywhere. The previously white net curtains were a grubby gray, and when Nana switched on the light, the place looked even worse than it had in the gloom. The old green sofa in the middle of the room had sunken seats and holes in some of the cushions. There were dirty cups and plates stacked on the coffee table, and empty pizza boxes and crushed beer cans all over the stained carpet. Picture frames—which presumably used to hang on the rusty hooks on the walls—were smashed all over the floor. They were all of Conor with his parents, before his mum died. A broken happy family. There were bits of glass and rubbish almost everywhere I looked. Conor was sitting in the corner of the room, hugging his knees to his chest.
“Where is he?” Nana asked.
