For God’s sake! They’re not thinking straight. We need to check the house thoroughly first. Look for clues as to what’s gone on here.
I stand, a strange sense of not being alone wrapping round my body. Is someone still in the house? I pick up one of the candles, my heartbeat quickening. I have to go back upstairs. What if one of them is hurt? Unconscious? Bleeding to death? My mind ticks over, trying to remember the first-aid course I did at work three months ago – how to do CPR. And now ‘Staying Alive’ plays in my head over and over, as I creep up the open-tread staircase, fearing someone will jump out when I reach the top, or step out of the shadows and attack me. The candle isn’t helping, casting dancing shapes around me. There’s no doubt my body is on high alert. Pulses, I didn’t even know I had, warn me of danger. Telling me to go back downstairs. To wait for Dad.
I’m halfway up when the wood under my feet creaks. I hear a cry, and within nanoseconds realise it came from me. I’m scaring myself half to death. I need to get a grip.
I grasp the banister, trying to stop myself shaking, the flame zigzagging across the landing ahead of me, picking out the blood we saw earlier.
I take a deep breath and head into the main bedroom, noticing a case on the floor. I guess this is Rosamund’s room, from the aroma of her perfume, and the sleeve of a silk blouse spilling from the case. The wardrobe stands open and empty. She hasn’t unpacked. The curtains are pulled across the window. The bed is made.
I crouch down, and with the help of the candle, peer under the bed. Nothing. I was wrong. There’s nobody here.
Then I spot it – the scan of Rosamund’s baby – and my mind takes a jump to the past, and suddenly my emotions take control, and a surge of tears fills my eyes.
A sudden noise: tap, tap, tap.
I freeze, trying to work out where it’s coming from, dashing the tears away with my sleeve.
I rise, heart thudding, a whir of anxiety in my ears.
Tap, tap, tap.
As my mind adjusts, I realise someone is tapping on the front door. Dad?
I hurry down the stairs, and race across the lounge. ‘Dad?’ I call through the door.
‘Yes, let me in, Amelia, it’s bloody freezing out here.’
I put down the candle, and fling open the door.
‘Jesus,’ he says pushing past me, bringing a gust of wind and snow with him. There isn’t a part of him that isn’t white. ‘The signal is terrible. It must be this awful weather. I finally got a connection up near the gate, and my phone packed up before I could call the cops. Pretty sure the cold has sucked the life out of it.’
I pull my phone from my pocket. There’s no signal, and only forty per cent left on the battery.
Dad crouches down in front of the wood burner, picks up a couple of logs and places them on the glowing embers, before rubbing his hands together in front of it. He looks up at me. ‘No power again, I see,’ he says. There’s a tremble in his voice, as though the cold and fear are strangling his vocal cords. ‘Where are Rosamund and Finn?’
‘Out searching for Elise; Ruth is missing too. Where could they be, Dad? And all the blood … it’s so scary.’ I sound almost childlike, as though I expect him to have the answers like he did when I was young. ‘This is freaking me out,’ I go on. ‘Two people go missing on the anniversary of Lark and Jackson’s disappearance, from the same place. Another blonde, teenage girl vanishes.’
He pulls off his woollen hat and runs his fingers through his hair. ‘We have to find them, but it’s so cold out there. None of us should be roaming around in these conditions, particularly Rosamund.’
I look up towards the landing. ‘I was upstairs when you came to the door. It’s awful up there.’
He buries his head in his hands, as though in denial.
‘We need to know what went on up here, Dad,’ I say, turning on my phone torch and heading up the stairs, leaving him crouched by the fire. This time I reach the top within moments, the thought of Dad in the cottage too calming some of my jangled nerves.
I glance into the shower room, my eyes falling on the pool of blood once more, before I carry on into Elise’s room. I crouch down bringing the torch to floor level – looking at the bloodstains on the carpet. I rise, spotting a rom-com paperback and Elise’s phone on the dresser, before heading towards the wardrobe, and yanking the doors open. A couple of pink jumpers, her pink padded jacket, a black jacket that looks more like something Lark would wear, and a pair of jeans hang inside. But there’s no sign of Elise.
I move towards the window where the curtains are pulled across, and take a deep breath before dragging them open, steeling myself, ready to jump back if a body should fall.
There’s nobody behind them – dead or alive.
But what I do see sends my head reeling. I fall backwards, dropping onto the bed. ‘Dad!’ I yell. ‘Dad, come here. Now! Please! Oh God, you need to see this.’
Chapter 26
Present Day
Me
Sometimes you come to me. Want sex. Other times, like now, you don’t look in on me at all.
Sometimes I think of ways I might kill you. But there’s nothing here that could do the job. You don’t even give me a knife to cut the food. You’re far too clever for that.
When I’ve finished eating chicken nuggets, and an apple – I quite like apples –
