The Retreat

  ‘You should stay here,’ I said. ‘You’re injured.’

  ‘What? Fuck that.’

  ‘But Julia—’

  From somewhere below us we heard a child’s cry.

  ‘Hurry up or get out of my way!’

  There was no point arguing. I climbed down into the tunnel, Julia right behind me, and ran back the way we’d come. Our footsteps echoed around us, making it hard to hear how far ahead of us Carys and Lily were. What did Carys intend to do to her? I didn’t have time to think about it. I stuck out an arm and stopped Julia, so we could listen.

  Lily cried out, ‘Mummy!’

  They were just ahead of us. We ran, side by side, around a slight bend, past all the equipment that had been left here to rust. I held the flashlight in front of me, the beam bouncing wildly around the enclosed space. I slowed a little, concentrating on shining the light into the tunnel. And there they were.

  Carys must have heard our gaining footsteps as she stopped and turned, realising she couldn’t outrun us, not with a child in tow. She was holding Lily by the wrist. There was something in her other hand, but it was too dark to see.

  Julia called Lily’s name and Lily tried to run towards us, but Carys held tight. We had slowed to a walking pace now and were just seven or eight metres away from them.

  Carys pulled Lily closer and grabbed hold of her from behind, so they were both facing us.

  ‘Keep back!’ Carys screeched.

  She had black hair and, in the flashlight, was as pale as a vampire. It was hardly surprising: she had spent most of her life underground. I imagined her eyes would be attuned to the gloom, far better than mine were anyway. She was thin too, with bulbous, sunken eyes and a face like a skull. She was repugnant, but I felt terribly sorry for her.

  Between them – Rhodri and Shirley, and the Pattersons – they had stolen Carys’s life from her. They had turned her into this creature. This creature who had raised her hand to reveal what she was holding. A long, thin kitchen knife.

  She held it against Lily’s throat. ‘Keep back,’ she hissed. ‘She’s mine. You can’t take her!’

  I took a cautious step forward. ‘Carys. That’s your name, isn’t it?’

  Her shoulders flinched with surprise.

  ‘We know what happened to you, Carys,’ I said, taking another step towards them. Lily was crying now, her young face shining with tears. ‘We know about the people who took you from the children’s home. One of them is dead and the other is going to go to prison. You don’t need to hide any more.’

  She was silent, watching me, but the knife didn’t move from Lily’s throat.

  ‘We know you helped us at the chapel. You saved us, and we’re so grateful. But we need you to let Lily go.’

  ‘No. She’s mine. Aren’t you, Lily? I saved her, so she belongs to me.’

  I took another baby step towards her. ‘It was Albert, wasn’t it? He found you in the woods and brought you here. He and his wife couldn’t have children, so they brought you up as their daughter. I understand that. But it’s no life for a child, is it, Carys? Children need to live in the sun, to be free. They need friends. They need to go to school and explore the world.’ I could hear Julia just behind me, breathing heavily. ‘Most of all, Carys, they need their parents. Lily needs her mum.’

  ‘She needs me.’

  ‘She’s not yours!’

  It was Julia. She stepped forward, both arms held out before her. ‘It’s okay, Lily, Mummy’s here. It’s okay.’

  ‘Shut up!’ Carys hissed. ‘Get back or I’ll cut her. I swear, I swear on my daddy’s grave.’

  ‘We’ll get you help,’ I said in a soft voice. ‘Find you somewhere to live. A house of your own.’

  She stared at me.

  ‘I want my house,’ she said.

  I thought I understood. ‘Nyth Bran? Okay, you can have it, can’t she, Julia?’

  Julia’s eyes darted between Lily and me. ‘Yes, of course. You can have anything, Carys. Just let Lily go, please. Don’t hurt her.’

  ‘You don’t want to hurt her, do you?’ I said.

  She shook her head, but still didn’t lower the knife.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘We’re not angry with you. We’re happy you’ve been looking after Lily, aren’t we, Julia?’

  Julia forced herself to say, ‘That’s right.’

  Carys looked at me, then at Julia. I could see her thinking, trying to make a decision. I waited, holding my breath, and then Carys relaxed her grip on Lily. Immediately, Lily ducked and scuttled away, towards the wall of the tunnel. And in that moment, Carys appeared to have a change of heart. She darted towards Lily and tried to grab her.

  Julia threw herself at Carys.

  Terrified she was going to be stabbed, I jumped between them, just as Carys lashed out with the knife. It swept in an arc across my body, slashing my belly just below my rib cage. I cried out with shock and pain, clutching my stomach, blood soaking the front of my shirt. The flashlight fell to the ground but didn’t go out.

  Carys turned, pointing the knife at Julia, who stood crouched like a cage fighter, fingers outstretched, her own wound weeping blood. No, I realised – not like a cage fighter, like an animal. Mama bear. Claws out. Teeth bared. The two women faced each other, frozen, while Lily watched, eyes wide, mouth open.

  There was a rock on the floor by my feet. Still clutching my bleeding stomach, I fell onto my haunches, doubling over as if about to collapse.

  I snatched up the rock and threw it with all my remaining strength at Carys.

  I had been aiming for her face but it struck her on the chest. She flinched, lowered the hand holding the knife for a split second, but it was enough. Julia leapt at her, pushing her back, slamming Carys’s head against the wall. Carys dropped the knife and Julia grabbed her by the throat, holding her, her face inches from Carys’s.

  ‘She’s not yours,’ she hissed. ‘She belongs with me.’

  She grabbed Carys’s hair and pulled her head forward before pushing it back, hard, so it smacked against the wall. Carys crumpled to the ground and lay still.

  Panting, Julia turned towards her daughter, who stood a metre away, hunched in the shadows. She was so pale, so thin.

  But she was alive.

  ‘Lily.’

  ‘Mummy.’

  They both sobbed, clutching each other, holding each other so tight I feared their bones might break. I took a step back, wanting to give them space, and watched from a short distance as they held each other, touched each other, repeating one another’s names until they ran out of breath.

  Chapter 48

  Julia came in from the garden, wearing a T-shirt and shorts. Not for the first time I was struck by how beautiful she was, and how lucky I was to have her. Summer sun had lightened her hair a little and she had the first signs of a tan. She’d gained a little weight too, and the circles beneath her eyes were less dark. The past week, I’d noticed she’d been sleeping better, not waking with a gasp from terrible dreams. Her therapist, who was helping her deal with the anger issues that still affected her – sometimes I would see her eyes narrow, jaw muscles clenching, and I knew she was picturing herself hurting Carys – said those emotions might always be inside her. But she was able to cope. In her darkest moments, all she needed to do was hug Lily, smell her hair. Or just look at her. It was important, the therapist said, not to smother her.

  ‘What’s she doing?’ I asked.

  ‘Playing with Chesney.’ She smiled. ‘Sometimes I think she missed him more than she missed me.’

  ‘I doubt that.’

  She filled a glass with water from the tap. When she turned her arm over I saw the scar from that day four months ago. I had a matching one across my belly. Sometimes, in bed, we would trace our fingers over each other’s scars and remind ourselves how fortunate we were.

  Julia sat down at the breakfast bar, keeping an eye on Lily through the window as she chased the cat around the garden. Lily was due to start school
again soon. Julia was nervous about this, about the idea of Lily being out of her sight, but Lily had insisted that she wanted to go back.

  ‘I want to see my friends again, Mum.’

  It had taken weeks to get the full story out of Lily about what had happened. She said she’d been trying to scare her parents, throwing Big Cat into the river and then running away into the woods. That was where Carys had grabbed her. Lily said she’d intended to hide for half an hour, that was all.

  The police, and the psychiatrists who’d interviewed Carys extensively, said that she genuinely believed in the Red Widow and that she thought she was protecting Lily. Carys said she’d found Lily tied to a tree, but Lily denied that. The police were sure Carys was getting it all mixed up in her head. Her own abduction, and finding Lily in the woods.

  Carys had told the police everything she could remember. How Shirley and Rhodri had taken her from St Mary’s children’s home into the woods. How she had been convinced the Widow was going to kill and eat her – until Albert, the man she soon called Daddy, ‘rescued’ her and took her to his nearby house. She described her life there in great detail. According to DI Snaith, she cried when she recounted the death of her ‘Daddy’, though seemed less upset about the death of Bethan, her ‘Mummy’.

  People who’d known Albert and Bethan – including my mum and a few older people who still lived in town – talked about a quiet couple who had, for a long time, seemed sad that they couldn’t have children. ‘But then they seemed to get over it; they were happier, more relaxed.’ That was the testimony of the elderly proprietor of Rhiannon’s Café, which the couple frequented. ‘That would have been in around 1980.’

  The year when they finally ‘got’ the child they’d always yearned for.

  It turned out they hadn’t been able to adopt through official channels because Albert had a criminal record (he stole a car when he was a young man and crashed it into a shop, leading to a few years in jail). The police theory was that the couple knew they wouldn’t be allowed to keep Carys, so they let everyone think the Widow had taken her. Neither Shirley nor Rhodri knew what had happened to the girl they left in the woods. They never knew that Albert had seen them while out walking by the river; that he’d followed them, watching as they tied Carys to a tree. He let them go on thinking the Widow had taken her. It suited Albert and Bethan if the whole world thought Carys was dead.

  DI Snaith told me the police psychiatrist had tried to find out if Albert had abused Carys, if they’d had a sexual relationship – either while she was still a child or as an adult. She denied it, but the police weren’t sure if she was telling the truth. Perhaps one day she’ll reveal all, but now she continues to talk about her ‘Daddy’ as if he were a saint.

  Carys went on to describe how, after the deaths of Albert and Bethan Patterson, she’d continued to ‘visit’ the house upstairs. She was angry when the Marshes moved into ‘her’ house, but then learned to like them; she even began to see them as her new family. She liked to listen to Julia and Lily and Michael. After Michael drowned, and while Lily was locked up under the house, Carys was happy with the state of things. She came into the house and took what she needed. She watched Julia as she mourned the loss of her husband and child. Carys said Nyth Bran was her home, but she was happy to share it with Julia . . . until she opened the writers’ retreat.

  Suddenly, there were strangers traipsing through the house, invading Carys’s space. Carys had to get rid of them. She tried to scare them off by making it look as if the house was haunted. I was one of the people she wanted to get rid of. And when she overheard me talking about how I was investigating Lily’s disappearance, it became even more imperative to dispose of me.

  The rest, we pieced together from both Carys and Heledd’s testimonies.

  Carys didn’t know that Heledd was assisting her in this. Heledd was trying to shut down the investigation into Lily’s disappearance because she was worried it would lead to the truth coming out about what had happened with the last little girl who disappeared. And so past and present were coming together to create a perfect storm.

  When Carys overheard Ursula talking about spirit guides, her twisted mind came up with what she saw as a good plan: she wanted to convince Julia that Lily was dead. She spoke through the walls and told Ursula that Lily was ‘with Jesus’, wanting us to believe she had died in the chapel. She told Ursula that Lily had gone to a better place and was happy with her dad. She hoped then that we would stop searching for the truth. She wanted me to leave, and Julia to give up hope of finding Lily alive.

  But when we didn’t stop, she used Ursula again. She retrieved Little Cat from the hut where she’d hidden it after Lily’s escape attempt, made Lily bleed onto its fur and left it in the chapel. Then, through Ursula, she directed us to the chapel, hoping the toy, stained with Lily’s blood, would convince us Lily was dead.

  She followed us from the house, keen to see if her plan worked. She had no idea Zara’s body was in the crypt. And she had no idea Heledd was on her way there too. But when she saw Heledd push Julia down the stairs she was horrified. She attacked Heledd. Carys, in her red coat, sprinting into the chapel. Heledd, already in a state of heightened emotion, was petrified. The Red Widow – in the flesh! Heledd fell to her knees and began to babble, terrified the witch was going to kill her, all these years after her parents had sacrificed another little girl to save her.

  And Carys knew who Heledd was. Years before, when Heledd was a teenager, Shirley had brought her to Nyth Bran to visit her old friends Albert and Bethan. When Carys encountered Heledd at the chapel, she flipped.

  She had saved our lives and, inadvertently, given herself away.

  And that was the end of the story. The police interviewed Rhodri Wallace and he finally confessed to abducting Carys back in 1980 with the help of Shirley Roberts. Rhodri, it turned out, had done some work in the garden of the children’s home, which gave him the idea of where to find a child who ‘wouldn’t be missed’. Rhodri doted on his secret daughter, seeing her as often as he could. Her happiness and well-being made everything he’d done worthwhile. In his mind, it absolved him of all his sins.

  Glynn Collins had nothing to do with any of it – apart from scaring Shirley with the story of the Red Widow. He had also told Shirley that someone new – Zara Sullivan – was in town, asking questions, a conversation that Heledd overheard.

  So Glynn was indirectly responsible, but not guilty of any crime. I still wondered why he had refused to let me talk to Jake. There was something not quite right about that . . . But after thinking about it for a while I decided he was most likely just being a protective grandfather.

  And Heledd? She was in prison, having pleaded guilty to the murders of Zara Sullivan and Max Lake, and the manslaughter of her mother, Shirley Roberts. She denied causing the death of Malcolm Jones, and the CPS had decided to drop that charge, as it was impossible to prove.

  All the guilty parties were either dead or locked up. Carys was currently in a secure psychiatric hospital. Nobody yet seemed to know what was going to happen to her.

  Personally, despite what she’d done to Lily, I thought Carys deserved to be free, as long as she was kept under observation and was a long way from us. She was a victim herself. She’d spent her whole life living in that dark hole beneath this house, believing wholeheartedly in the Widow. When she took Lily, she genuinely seemed to believe she was harbouring her from the Widow. I imagine that, after a while, she got used to having Lily around, like a pet. And she couldn’t let her go because then Carys’s secret home beneath Nyth Bran would be revealed.

  Didn’t Carys deserve to spend some time in the light? I thought about the paragraph Carys had written on my laptop, the words I thought I’d drunk-typed. She had a fascinating story to tell. Maybe, with encouragement and help, she could tell it. She would need a ghostwriter, of course . . .

  I didn’t think Julia would be too happy about this idea.

  ‘I’m going to see if Lily
wants some lunch,’ Julia said, kissing me before she left the kitchen.

  I looked around. I had fallen on my feet here. Julia and I had decided to make a go of the writers’ retreat together. We had our first new intake of guests due at the start of September. I was going to act as a tutor and organise courses for the guests. That would be my job for now. I had abandoned the novel about the family living in the forest. The contract with my publisher had been cancelled – or, at least, put on hold. I would write something again when I was ready. I was thinking about writing something lighter next time. A romantic comedy, perhaps.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Julia said when I told her that.

  She was looking for illustrating work again too – she had a meeting coming up with an old contact at Jackdaw Books – and was seeing a grief counsellor. Now Lily was home, Julia was finally able to confront Michael’s death. There had been a lot of tears shed during the nights. I think it helped that I had lost someone too – we could share our feelings, talk about our former partners without either of us worrying we had to compete with the dead. I knew there were going to be bumps ahead, but I felt confident we could cope with that.

  It was worth trying, anyway.

  My phone beeped. It was a message from Karen, who I’d been in regular touch with over the past few months. She’d kicked her heavy weed habit but had been hugely relieved to discover she hadn’t been imagining the voices in the walls.

  Her message contained a link to a story on the Bookseller website: Suzi Hastings had signed a six-figure deal for her debut novel, which was described as ‘a highly erotic thriller about an affair between a married writer and a young ingénue, set in a writers’ retreat in Wales’.

  Looks like they were at it after all! Karen texted.

  Either that or Suzi was making it up. Max had sounded so sincere . . . but I guessed we’d never know for certain. It didn’t matter anyway, did it? Though I didn’t think Max’s widow would be too happy about Suzi’s book.

  As well as Karen, I’d kept in touch with Olly Jones, meeting up with him a few times for a drink. He wasn’t driving a taxi any more. Instead, he’d used the money from the sale of his dad’s house to set up his own minicab firm. He was the boss now. He told me running his business kept his mind off Heledd and how she’d broken his heart. He insisted he was over her now, but I wasn’t fully convinced.