HOLD YOUR BREATH
B P Walter

Copyright

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Copyright © B P Walter 2020

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Cover photograph © Karina Vegas/Arcangel Images

B P Walter asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008309640

Ebook Edition © April 2020 ISBN: 9780008309657

Version: 2020-03-30

Dedication

For my sisters, Molly and Amy

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by B P Walter

About the Publisher

Prologue
January 2020

London passes me in a grey blur. I keep thinking it’s going to snow. Part of me would like that – to be stranded here on a train in a snow drift, unable to move forward or backward. Trapped in a vague sort of limbo; a physical manifestation of the state I’ve been in for most of my adult life. But I’ve shifted into an unsettling, uncharted realm since I got the phone call yesterday morning.

The voice of the woman at the other end of the line had cut through the dullness of my sleep-muffled brain. Part of me had been waiting for her call, and another part was sure that it would never come; that this sort of thing happened to other people, not me. How stupid that sounds, thinking about it now.

‘Am I speaking to Katherine Marchland?’ she’d asked in her businesslike tone. ‘Formerly known as Katherine Carlson?’ I’d told her she was, and she had continued as I’d sunk down onto my bed, clutching at the duvet, hoping it would protect me. ‘Ms Marchland, my name is Detective Inspector Cousins of Northumbria Police. I need to ask you to present yourself at Wickton Close Police Station, Newcastle tomorrow afternoon at 3 p.m. to be interviewed under police caution. You are not under arrest at this time, but I have to inform you that you may be liable to arrest if you fail to turn up at the appointed time. You are of course free to bring legal representation with you, or you can access free legal advice through a duty solicitor if you request one to be appointed for you. Please can you confirm you have understood this information?’

By some miracle, I’d managed to say, faintly, ‘Yes. I do.’ She’d ended the call after that.

Now that I’m on the train, hurtling north at an alarming speed, I’m filled with doubts about the choice I’ve made. I could have just not gone. Failed to turn up. Left my flat and gone into hiding. Left the country. I imagine myself in a court dock, and then being sentenced to spend time in prison. Being taken down those steps you see in TV dramas, police officers escorting me to a van to drive me to my place of incarceration. Everyone knowing what I did, and why I need to be punished for it.

I can’t help it. I begin to cry. The tears start light and slow, trickling gently down my cheeks, then grow louder and louder into constant sobs. Some of my fellow passengers begin to look around. Others try to ignore me, pulling their phone screens closer, surreptitiously edging their headphones into their ears so they can tell themselves that they can’t hear me; that I’m not their problem.

I don’t care. I don’t stop. The panic has settled in now, strong and thick and all-encompassing, the sobs developing into tight, fast breaths. The irregular oxygen supply causes my face to tingle, then to blaze. I’m not sure how many minutes pass before I stagger to the tiny bathroom cubicle and lock myself in, or how long I’m in there for before a kind woman’s voice speaks through the door: ‘Hello, are you OK in there? Is everything all right?’

I can barely get my answer out, but when it comes, between the quick breaths and the sobs, it’s stark and emphatic: ‘No.’

‘Do you want me to call for help? I can ring the passenger alarm?’

This elicits an angry response from some of the other passengers, clearly enraged by the prospect of major delays to their journey due to the mad woman in the toilets. Let her pass out. Let her hyperventilate. Let her die. I can’t really blame them.

‘Hello? Are you OK?’ The woman’s voice continues, sounding even more worried. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

I’ve started to focus on the sink in front of me now. The slow-dripping tap. The rock and tilt of the train causes the water to fall in a different direction with each drip. I feel the panic starting to lessen a little; enough for me to answer this Good Samaritan on the other side of the cubicle door: ‘No. There’s nothing anyone can do to help me. Not after what I’ve done.’

Chapter 1

To: KatherineMarchland@gmail.com

From: Susan.Douglas@DouglasEvansPR.co.uk

Date: 2 September 2018

Subject: The Cottage in the Forest Manuscript

Hi Katherine,

I hope you’re well.

Goodness. I’m not sure where to start. First, I’m sure you know, but I’m not really working in the book world any more. I’ve gone into more generalised PR (for my sins), but as I said before, I’m very happy to read anything you write. That aside, this manuscript is, to be frank, rather astonishing.

I’m sure everyone’s got something curious in their past, but your story has got me seriously hooked. I’m also so sorry to hear you had to deal with your mother’s breakdown so young (btw, I wasn’t sure how old you actually are in the book? Ten? Eleven?), and that your father’s solution was to take you all to live in the woods. The details you go into – being left to wander the forest alone; the two visitors who are clearly doing something very strange with your mum – is all of this true? Of course, I’m not doubting your word (as you mentioned), and I’m sorry to ask; it’s all just so shocking. Have you been burying all these experiences over the years without telling a soul? Are the names all real? And lastly, can I ask: was there ever a police investigation?

The ending truly shocked me – especially if what happened was covered up somehow. Try as I might, I can’t get some of the images you paint in those last few chapters out of my head. They’re going to haunt me for a long time, I think.

Thank you again for sending this. Let’s have a meetup sometime soon. I can advise you on your next steps and recommend some contacts you can approach.

Best,

Susan

Susan Douglas

Douglas & Evans PR

@SusanDouglasPR | 23 Howell Park Gardens, Hackney, London.

To: Susan.Douglas@DouglasEvansPR.co.uk

From: KatherineMarchland@gmail.com

Date: 3 September 2018

Subject: RE: The Cottage in the Forest Manuscript

Hi Susan,

Thanks so much for reading. I know life must be hectic at the moment, so I really am hugely grateful for this! And yes, it’s all true. Mostly. It all happened when I was ten, when my dad took me and my mother to Northumbria for a couple of weeks in the October half term (when the trip started to run into school time, I believe my father told the school I had flu). The names haven’t been changed, at least. I did think about altering them, but something always stopped me. Perhaps because it feels like I’d be doing it to protect the guilty – something I’d rather not do.

Even so, I’ve decided to present the book as a novel. I just couldn’t cope with the attention a memoir might bring, and at least as a novel it gives me a bit of room to string it together into a coherent story. I just wish it was only fiction. I’d be really keen to meet up some time soon and discuss it in more detail if you have the time. Would love to hear any other tips or suggestions you have before I begin submitting it to agents.

Thanks so much, once again,

Yours,

Katherine.

Chapter 2
1987

We’re leaving. Go and pack your things.

That’s what my father said to me, his suit crinkling as he knelt down onto the patio. I was in the middle of sorting out my ladybird colony and was rather cross about being interrupted. One of the dead members – Tiffany, who had been crushed earlier when I was building them a hut out of rocks – seemed not to be quite so dead after all, and I was enjoying watching her come back to life. Dad was interrupting.

‘Kitty, we need to go,’ he said, trying to get my attention. I kept looking at the ladybirds. ‘Leave that, please. We’re packing up the house. You need to come and help.’

‘Help?’

I said it as a question, but I didn’t really want to hear an answer. I said it like that to make it clear that the very idea was stupid. I wasn’t going to help us leave. My garden was my kingdom, even if it was a boring, straight, nearly-perfect square at the back of our house in Grays, Essex. Tidy, Dad called it. I measured it one Christmas, enjoying the crunch of my boots as the metre wheel I’d borrowed from our neighbour Mr Jeffers sliced through the snow drifts. Eight metres, then seven and a half, then eight, then the house taking up nine. So not quite a perfect square, but close.

‘Your help is required,’ he said, bluntly, before walking away. His blunt days used to be rare and not last long. But recently, he’d become like this more and more, telling me to do things more like a teacher at school. The rest of that afternoon and evening was spent packing up our things. One side of the lounge was for boxes of ‘rubbish’, the other for ‘keep’. Then we stopped for tea. Dad told Mum to order a pizza but she was crying too much to use the phone – her hand kept shaking and her tears went everywhere. He phoned them in the end. Three large pepperoni pizzas with extra cheese. We won’t eat it all, he explained. Just so we have some extra for the morning. For the journey.

I think he expected me to ask where we were going. Why we were going. What we were going to do when we got there. But I sometimes enjoyed doing the unexpected: it usually caused more interesting things to happen. Dad dropped a few hints: ‘You’ll need your wellington boots’ and ‘Bring your cassette tapes and your Walkman. It will be a long drive.’ I responded to all these instructions with my best blank face until he wandered away shaking his head.

The pizzas made us sleepy, but we hadn’t quite finished packing and Mum kept having her ‘moments’. The biggest came when Dad found her using a permanent marker to scribble over the faces of laughing women on the cover of a magazine. He was holding some wine glasses when he chose to confront her. ‘Put down the pen, Marjory,’ he said gently. Her reaction wasn’t gentle.

Once Dad had bandaged his hand and cleared up the blood, Mum had calmed enough to be settled down onto her bed. Sleep now, she was told, and she did, as if her off switch had been flipped. It wasn’t always that easy.

Once Mum had fallen asleep, Dad and I carried on packing in silence. I did it without making a fuss as I didn’t want to go to bed; he didn’t seem in any hurry to send me there. I think it was about one o’clock in the morning when he finally said we should stop. ‘We’ll be leaving at 5.30. Get some sleep.’

‘Why do we have to pack up and tidy the place? Are we never coming back?’

I didn’t think Dad was going to answer at first; he was staring at the floor, kicking the vacuum cleaner cord out of his way. ‘We will be, don’t worry. We’re just letting some people stay in our house for a bit.’

‘Who are these people?’ I asked.

‘People who will pay us money to stay here while we’re … away.’

I was about to tell him I didn’t understand, but he spoke again before I could: ‘Go to bed, now. We’ll load the car in the morning.’

I left him in the lounge. He was still wearing the suit he wore when he was at work selling his insurance stuff.

It would be the last time I saw him wearing it for quite a long time. But I didn’t know that then.

Chapter 3

‘Come near me and I’ll kill you.’

That’s what my mum said when I tried to wake her. Then she cried when she realised it was me and said she was sorry. ‘It wasn’t me who said that,’ she said. ‘It was him. It was him.’ She tapped her neck as she spoke and shook her head violently. I used to be scared. I still was, a little. But it was amazing what I managed to get used to.

Dad was sitting on the sofa in just his pants and a white t-shirt. He and Mum hadn’t slept in the same bed for a while. Not since she’d started to get more and more upset. I think Dad had tried, hoping it would make her calmer, having someone next to her during the dark hours of the night, but then I would hear shuffling around and then Dad going downstairs before the clock had even reached twelve.

‘Mum’s crying,’ I said to him. For a moment, I thought he was going to cry too, but then he just sat up. ‘It’s good you’re awake. You can start loading the car. The smaller bags and boxes. Not the big ones. I’ll do those once I’ve sorted out your mum.’ He wandered away, the light from the window turning him yellow-gold. I sat on the sofa for a bit, then did as I was told. Some of the bits we’d packed that night had been put in supermarket bags when we’d run out of the boxes Dad had brought home with him. I picked some of these up and went out to the car, which was already unlocked, and threw them in, not caring if anything broke. The day had only been new for a matter of minutes, and I was already starting to feel cross. It didn’t look like I’d be going to play in the garden, or to the library to get some more books. Nothing seemed certain any more.

The street was completely empty. The sun was still low, the ground untouched by its warming light. Although the summer weather had lasted into September, you could tell autumn wanted to break in and ruin the fun. Before Mum had become like she was now, early last year or the year before, she used to paint the autumn leaves on the trees. Browns and reds and golds. She’d sit outside and paint the trees in the neighbours’ garden. I used to sit with her sometimes, making little finger paintings of different plants or animals, often insects and squirrels. Then Mum would beam at me and tell me I’d created another masterpiece and how she’d phone up the Tate at once. Then we’d laugh, and she’d show me what she had created. Her pictures didn’t really look like the trees in the way I would sometimes paint them – she used to zoom in on a particular branch and just paint the leaves on that one. Then one day she painted this big, amazing tree – an oak tree, she said – one she remembered from when she was younger. Then, over the top of it, she painted flames. Big flames licking at its trunk, snaking up towards the leaves, and all of them were burning, smoke covering the sky. That was when things started to get bad.

Mum tried to help with the packing of the car but eventually Dad just told her to sit in the front passenger seat and we’d finish the job. She sat there working her way through a pack of garibaldi biscuits while we heaved and stuffed and pushed everything that would fit into the car. We weren’t taking that much – not as much as when my friend Melanie moved house back when we were both in playgroup and a huge lorry turned up to take all their things – but even so, by the time we were finished packing the car, there was just a small hole in the side for me to sit, all our stuff almost covering the seat. I liked being in there. It felt like I was a dormouse, settling in for hibernation.

‘Why are we going away?’ I asked. I had been thinking about asking the question since I’d woken up, but sometimes asking my dad questions sent him into a ‘flaming rage’. That’s what our old neighbour Mrs Slater used to call it. He used to have a go at her about her ‘bloody cat’ when it left us dead mice on the doorstep. ‘You in one of your flamin’ rages?’ she used to say when he’d try to hand her the corpse of a rodent as she left for the Quicksave to do her shopping. She would never take it from him. She’d wander off, leaving him holding it. Dad used to say ‘that woman is a bitch’ to himself whenever they had one of their disagreements. I didn’t think she was a bitch. She sometimes gave me books from the charity shop. Most of them were about posh girls at boarding schools – the type where they have stables and games they play with sticks – but sometimes a really naughty one would slip in. My favourite of the naughty ones had been a book called The Count Comes for What He’s Owed. It was about a count in a castle somewhere foreign and he’d been promised a young woman’s hand in marriage by her father. I tried to write a sequel myself, in an old notebook I found under the stairs, about when the count started forcing her to have so many babies her body starts to break in half, until she dies giving birth to their twelfth child. I submitted it at school as a part of my writing homework. Mrs Bolton just wrote on it ‘See me’ in red biro. When I did, she wasn’t very pleased. I had to sit outside while Mum had a whispered conversation with her about me. Mrs Bolton had used the words ‘unhinged’ and ‘depraved’. My mother just cried and advised her I was probably going to hell anyway and a ‘horrid little story about the sins of the flesh’ was the least of her worries at that moment in time. Even so, my paperback of The Count Comes for What He’s Owed was thrown onto the fire. Mrs Slater was forbidden to give me any more books after that.

‘You haven’t answered my question,’ I said, louder than necessary, as Dad packed stuff around me and I nestled up against one of my pillows.

‘Quiet,’ he said. ‘I really, really just need you to do as you’re told and not ask questions. I will explain when we get there.’ I saw, through the gaps in the boxes loaded around me, that he turned to look at Mum, as if he was scared she’d flip. She didn’t flip. She was staring into space and humming ‘The Lord is My Shepherd’ to herself.

‘Does Mum know where we’re going?’ I asked, ignoring his previous plea.

Dad glared at me. ‘She knows we’re going away for a peaceful break,’ he half-whispered to me, ‘and while she seems content with that, I ask you not to say anything that may make her upset again.’

After a tense pause, I nodded, and he moved away to get another bag.

I don’t know what time it was by the time we were packed – the boxes hid my view of the clock in the front of the car – but it was starting to get warmer. I think it was probably 8.30 or 9. ‘Will we be stopping for food on the way?’ I asked, ignoring Dad’s instruction again. I just got a short ‘Yes’ from him as a reply.

We set off eventually, driving away from the streets I’d always known and out into the big wide world. I’d only really been out of our town twice – once on a trip to London when I was really young, and another time to France to a place called Lourdes. The London trip was a disaster. A bomb went off somewhere near some soldiers’ barracks and everyone started screaming and crying. We didn’t see the bomb, but we heard it and saw the smoke. We were standing outside Buckingham Palace when it happened. I was on my dad’s shoulders, back before he was blunt and liable to ‘flamin’ rages’. Back when he’d pick me up and spin me around and tell me I was special and bright and clever. He’d been especially happy during our trip to London – he’d got some qualifications at his work that meant he could earn a bit more money, and he’d let me sit on his shoulders for ages, not once telling me to walk for a bit because his back was aching. When we’d reached the gates of the palace, I’d been trying to see in through the queen’s bedroom window – my friend Gwendolyn had told me she only ever wore knickers made of gold and I was desperate to have a look. Then there was a loud bang and everyone started running and Dad lifted me off his shoulders and shouted at Mum, ‘Christ, it’s the IRA. It’s the fucking IRA.’

The visit to France, a few years later, went a lot smoother. No bombs. No fucking IRA. Although by that time, Mum had started to change. She’d drifted around the place, touching things and crying silently, while Dad shook his head and moaned about the lack of food choices. ‘I can’t stand hunger,’ he had said. ‘I wish they had a cure for that, here.’

The food choices on the way to wherever we were going weren’t that amazing either. We’d eaten the last pieces of cold pizza early on during the drive, so ended up stopping at a café called Susan’s Sausages. Upon sitting down, we were told they’d run out of sausages. When I said to the woman taking our order (she wasn’t Susan; her badge said Janice) that they should change their name if there weren’t any sausages and it wasn’t even Susan talking to their customers, she glared at me and then said to Dad, ‘She fuckin’ retarded or something?’ Dad slammed his fist down on the table and said, ‘Just get the food,’ and she went off and started crashing things around in the kitchen while a little boy played with chewed Lego bricks on the filthy floor. We managed to get through most of our three portions of ham, egg and chips before Mum started to suspect the chips had been poisoned. ‘Marjory, please, just eat the damn chips,’ Dad hissed. ‘You’ll be starving.’ She hissed something back about preferring to starve than eat what he fed her.

‘Are we going to a hospital?’ I thought hazarding a guess might make Dad want to share some more details on where we were actually going.

‘Why would you ask that, Kitty?’ He was sprinkling a lot of salt onto his food – something I’d learned at school wasn’t a healthy thing to do.

‘Because that’s what Miss Reid said about Mum, after that time she came running into the playground to take me home before the devil could take me. She said “Christ, she needs to be in hospital.” So I thought that might be where—’

Dad, whose eyes had flared at the word ‘devil’, cut me off with another slam of his fist on the table. ‘We’re not going to a hospital. Nobody is going to any place like that.’ He glanced at Mum, who had flinched at the fist-slam, but she carried on moving her food around her plate nonetheless.

‘Why not? Miss Reid is a very sensible teacher, you know. If she said it would be a good idea, I think it probably would be.’

‘I won’t tell you again, Kitty,’ Dad said back, still hissing in a whispery voice. ‘People don’t come back from places like that. Unless you want your mum to end up like your grandmother—’

He stopped himself mid-sentence, as if he’d realised what he was about to say, then changed his mind. ‘Anyway,’ he said in a calmer voice, ‘hospitals like that won’t be around much longer. I heard them say so on the radio.’

Dad mentioning Granny had made me confused, since he couldn’t have been talking about Mum’s mum, since she had died in a car accident when I was younger. I could only really remember her a tiny bit. He must have been talking about his mother, my other Granny who I never met and neither him nor Mum spoke about much. I thought about asking more about her, but decided this might make his mood worse.

After the food, I asked to use the toilet. The moody Janice woman pointed to the back of the café without saying anything, so I found them by myself and peed in peace and quiet, until a little boy who looked around five wandered through the door.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Could you go away and close the door?’ Then Janice burst in and shouted, ‘Tyler, you nasty little pervert, get out,’ and he scurried away, giggling. ‘Sorry, it’s his dad’s fault,’ she said. ‘He lets him get away with murder.’ She said all this to me without looking at me. She was tired – I could tell from the dark rings around her eyes. And there was a purple bruise on her cheek that she’d tried and failed to cover with make-up. ‘How did you do that?’ I asked, pointing at her face. She looked at me as if I was something vile. ‘Piss off,’ she said, then slammed the toilet door.

I got myself together and washed my hands, then went out to find my parents. Dad was trying to stop Mum from making a scene. She’d become quite an expert at ‘scenes’ in the past few months. When she’d first started to get bad, a couple of years ago, she used to do it quietly, finding a corner to cry in or waiting until she got home. Then she stopped seeming to care where she was or who was around to see it. She had caused quite a few major scenes in Debenhams, at the swimming pool, in the park, at the newsagents run by the little man with no teeth, and at the theatre when Dad took us as a treat to see Grease on Ice. In each of these situations, Dad had shoved us all into the car and said, ‘I’m flaming mortified.’ He hadn’t said it yet, but we hadn’t made it to the car either, so there was time for it to come.

‘She fucking mental or something?’ Janice with the bruised face was saying to my dad.

‘No, she’s not fucking mental,’ he snapped at her, starting to sound stressed. ‘Can you just give us a minute?’

Mum was standing on her chair, staring at the floor and jabbing her finger at random areas of the stained tiles: ‘There! There! There!’ Shouts. Tears. Shrieking.

It was in moments like these I used to try to think of my perfect happy place. A nice little desk with lots of sheets of paper; colouring pens all in a rainbow line, which I could use to draw creatures; a tidy bedroom filled with lots of clean, folded things that would be slightly warm to the touch if you were to rest your cheek on them. I think I must have lived in a place like that once, when I was very small. Before Mum became … Mum.

‘There’s nothing there,’ my dad said. He sounded tired.

‘I swear it. I swear it upon … upon my sweet baby daughter’s life.’

It was as if I wasn’t there. She didn’t look at me. Just kept on with her pointing.

‘She thinks she’s seen a spider,’ my dad said.

I wasn’t properly listening. ‘A what?’

‘A spider!’ he snapped.

‘Where? Have you seen it?’ My mum shrieked.

‘There’s no bloody spider,’ he shouted at her.

‘They are the devil’s spies.’

‘They are harmless insects that are more afraid of you than you are of them!’

‘I’m not sure they are insects,’ I chipped in, but my dad sent me one of his looks and I sat back down at the table.

‘They listen and watch and tell their masters all our secrets.’ With this, she clasped her hands together, like she was praying, and began muttering something under her breath. ‘He’s coming. I can hear it. He’s rising. He’s rising. He’s rising.’

‘If she don’t come down from that chair and stop with this shouting,’ Janice with the bruised face said, ‘I’m calling the fucking police.’

‘Don’t call the police,’ he said. ‘We’re leaving. Marjory, come down, please. I promise you, you’ll be fine.’

My mother stared at him like he’d suddenly told her it was her birthday. ‘Nathan? Have you come to rescue me?’

‘Yes,’ he said, instantly. ‘Here we go, rescue in progress.’ Before she had time to argue, he’d taken her arm and helped her step down off the chair.

‘I was tested, just then, Nathan. And I resisted. He didn’t rise.’

‘I’m glad,’ he said, then turned to Janice. ‘Show’s over. How much do we owe you?’

She murmured something about how she should bloody charge extra for the stress, then totted up the bill and my dad gave her a banknote.

We didn’t talk as we left the restaurant, nor when we started driving. Only after we’d been travelling for half an hour did I ask again. ‘Dad. Where are we going?’

Chapter 4

Dad ignored me seven times. When he drew in a long, deep breath I thought I’d finally worn him down, but he didn’t say anything.

After a while, I said: ‘If it’s somewhere horrible – like Epping – I won’t be happy.’ We went on a camping trip to Epping Forest once. It rained. We were forced to either stay in our tent or go to a café near the service station filled with big bald men who drove lorries. I wasn’t able to go searching for little creatures once during the whole weekend.

‘It isn’t Epping,’ he said, shortly.

I was encouraged that he at least reacted to my statement, but then he went back to saying nothing again.

‘The Shepherd will soon be tempted to leave his flock and give in to his darkest temptations.’ My mother said this whilst staring out of the window, pressing her forehead to the glass.

‘That’s the spirit,’ Dad muttered. ‘We’ll be there soon, now.’

Dad didn’t seem to quite understand the meaning of the word ‘soon’. It took hours more, through the afternoon and into the night. We passed woodland, towns, and big signs saying ‘The North’ and ‘Newcastle’ and ‘Northumbria’. We stopped for tea at an old pub with growling dogs. Instead of making a scene at this one, Mum managed to go to the car to have her ‘moment’. After a while, though, she started to use the horn to attract our attention and Dad went out to calm her down. I stayed in my seat, picking at the chicken in a basket he’d bought me, but eventually I got unnerved by all the old men at the bar pointing to me, a child on her own in a pub, so I went out to the car too.

‘I need to tell you, Kitty,’ my dad said when we went back in to the pub to finish our food. ‘This holiday may not be like other holidays.’

I stared back at him, unsure of what he meant. ‘But we don’t really go on holidays. Not any more.’ I was tempted to add that even when we did go away, we didn’t usually take so much stuff or let people stay in our house, but I decided too many words might annoy him.

He nodded, thinking about what I’d said. ‘That’s true. But if we did, this wouldn’t be like them.’

I dipped one of my chips into the little pot of mayonnaise the waiter had brought. ‘Why is that?’ I asked.

He didn’t answer, just got up to go and pay at the bar. I looked out of the window and watched Mum talking to the steering wheel.

We travelled for an hour more. I know this because I watched the clock on the dashboard of the car turn from 20.00 to 21.00, which means nine o’clock, apparently. We journeyed deep into the thick countryside, through dark trees. They bent and twisted around us, as if they were inviting us into their strange world – though once we were admitted, I did wonder if we’d ever be let out. Mum seemed to have the same idea, because she kept up a steady wailing sound, like a radio signal going in and out, and murmured things like, ‘Oh no … not into the darkness … oh no … please.’ But she didn’t fully ‘kick off’, so things couldn’t have been that bad. I tried to ignore her and nestled my head on the pillow I was clutching. I’d been stealing them from other parts of the car along the journey and now I had a little nest of comfort in the back. It had almost caused a bit of an avalanche earlier, with some of the books Dad had allowed us to bring slipping from their bag, but he didn’t notice. He was too busy trying to navigate, glancing at a map in the gloom whilst driving with the other hand.

Finally, a little bit after nine, Dad announced, ‘We’ve arrived.’ He looked over at Mum. ‘Marjory. We’ve arrived. Remember. Our little holiday?’

She just nodded and looked at her hands. He sighed and got out of the car. I was sleepy – I’d been dozing on and off since the pub. ‘How far have we travelled?’ I asked.

‘Far,’ Dad said. He sounded tired and annoyed. The window to my left was completely dark. I tried to look past all the stuff into the front of the car, but I couldn’t see anything out there either.

‘We’ve fallen. And I don’t think we’ll be able to climb back out again.’ I heard Mum speaking in a flat voice, then saw the shape of my father move to the right and open the car door.

‘I’ll come round and get you out, Kitty,’ he said before he closed the door.

He did as he promised, half lifting me out of my little nest in the back, more gently than I expected. ‘I realise this might all be a bit strange. And it might get stranger. But it’s all for the best.’ He nodded as he spoke and didn’t look me right in the eyes. Just off over my shoulder, into the darkness.

‘Where are we?’ I said. I looked around, making out the outlines of trees. They surrounded us. I gasped. I couldn’t help it. We were in the woods. In the middle of the woods. I didn’t know what woods, or forest, it was, but we’d been driving for a whole day and a bit, so we could be anywhere. Then I looked directly ahead and saw a building type of thing. A house type of thing. It was like a cottage, only a little bit larger. You could tell it had an upstairs because of the windows.

‘Come on,’ Dad said. ‘Let’s go and wake the place up.’

‘Waking the place up’ wasn’t as nice as it sounded. The house, which had strange-looking plants crawling up its walls outside, and strange-looking wallpaper crawling up its walls inside, was like something in the old picture books I used to get out of the library. Ones that involved little children getting lost in woods. At least I had my dad with me. And my mum. Although, with each day that passed, she was becoming more of a child than I was.

‘There are spiders,’ I said as I looked eagerly around the living room.

‘The devil’s creatures!’ my mother shrieked.

Dad sent me one of his sharp looks and put his arm around Mum. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll get rid of them. Won’t we, Kitty?’

I frowned at him. ‘So long as I can keep them and make a spider colony.’

He huffed and puffed a bit and settled my mum on the sofa while he and I began to bring some of the boxes and bedding in from the car.

‘Prioritise the stuff we’ll need for tonight and the morning,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll bring the rest in tomorrow.’

I thought about telling him that it was hard to ‘prioritise’ stuff like that when we couldn’t really see what was in the bags unless we unpacked them, but I decided not to. He’d given me too many sharp looks already today. One more could be the final straw for the both of us. I did as I was told, even though I didn’t want to, and tried my best to bring in just the things I needed. Sometimes I got it wrong (‘Kitty, why the hell would we need our wellington boots for either bed or breakfast?’) but it all had to come in eventually, I said, so I didn’t know why he bothered complaining. While I did this, he took the majority of the bedding upstairs. I heard him rifling around up there, then a loud creaking noise. He must be moving the furniture, I thought. In the end, bored with bringing things in, I went up to have a look. The stairway groaned as I trod on it and I imagined how many wonderful animals must be living underneath it. Rats and mice with razor-sharp teeth and spiders the size of dogs.

There were three rooms upstairs. A big one, which Dad was in now, a smaller one and a bathroom. I thought about Ebenezer Scrooge, going about his house after seeing the face of Jacob Marley in his door knocker, and wondered if I too would see any apparitions. Part of me hoped I would. It was one of those things that seemed to only happen to people who wouldn’t enjoy it. They just screamed and spent the rest of their lives boring everyone with how they ran away instantly and would never go back in the room or house or hotel or museum or wherever they’d been ever again. I would try to talk to a ghost. I think I’d have a lot to say. Like whether all this was worth it, just to reach the other side, and if they had food in the afterlife. Mum and I played ghosts once on Halloween. My classmates at school were having a party, but I’d had flu that week and was still feeling tired and worn out by little things. So Mum made our own party: we had sheets with holes in and watched Casper cartoons on the TV. Later on in the evening, I said something that spoilt things a little. I said to Mum I’d like to have a little ghost as a pet, like Casper. He’d float around when I’d want him to, then when I didn’t he would be invisible and sit on my shoulder, so nobody else would know I had a little friend, but I could still talk to him and he could speak to me, like a voice inside my head. She’d gone quiet when I said this. Then she took off her ghost sheet and said she needed to have a lie down.

The sound of her crying lasted for most of the next three cartoons. After that, I started to understand Mum probably did have a little ghost on her shoulder, or inside her head. But it didn’t say nice things.

‘Kitty, come in here and take the other end of this sheet.’

I went into the room Dad was in and watched as he struggled with a large bed sheet, trying to wrap it over an ancient-looking mattress, only to have the ends ping off each time he tried to secure them. I held it still for him and he finally got it all secured. ‘There, that’s done.’ Without speaking, he picked up all the pillows and duvets from the floor and tried to make them look tidy on the bed. ‘Right, now for your bed, Kitty.’

We went back downstairs to get the remaining bedding stuff, but Dad froze statue-still as soon as we got to the lounge. ‘Where’s your mother?’ he said, loudly and angrily.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. I tried to sound defiant and not worried, but I was scared. It wasn’t too much of a worry when she went off wandering when we were at home. This was a rather recent thing, and I got the feeling Dad wasn’t quite sure how to deal with it. I don’t think he wanted to lock her up or force her to stay in the house all day while he was at work, and mostly she just kept to the lounge or the kitchen. But sometimes she wandered, usually to the local shops, just to try on some clothes. She never bought anything, but the staff now knew her by name and were very nice to her. They would allow her to sit down in one of the changing room cubicles for a bit if she got upset, then telephone for my dad to walk down the street to get her and help her home. But we weren’t at home now. And Mum couldn’t have gone to Debenhams. We were alone, in the middle of the woods in a fairy tale house, and it was dark and strange. And worst of all, I think it was me who had left the front door wide open.

Chapter 5

‘Holy fucking Christ,’ my father said. He turned to me. ‘Was she down here just now, before you came upstairs?’

I nodded.

‘Stay here,’ he said. ‘She can’t have gone far.’

I sat on the sofa Mum had recently left. There was still an indentation in the middle from where she had been sitting. I stared around at the odd place in front of me. There was a television, smaller than ours at home and with a thick layer of dust on top of it. There was also a fireplace, with a rusty metal thing around it. I looked forward to watching logs burning on it.

I was about to go and put some wood in it from the little pile by its side, hoping Dad would see it and be inspired to build a fire, but then I heard noises from outside: Dad shouting my mum’s name, then another shout from her, then her voice, loud and clear. It sounded like she was walking around the side of the house. ‘I need to check to see if they’re listening,’ she said to my dad, speaking as if she thought he was stupid, while at the same time annoyed he was bothering her.

‘There isn’t anybody out there to listen to anything. Even if there was anything they’d want to listen to! Marjory, please, come back inside.’

‘He has thousands of spies, Nathan. Thousands. Do you want to know how many I see every night in my dreams?’ She shouted these words, coming closer still. I twisted round on the sofa and leaned over the back so I could see out of the dirty, green-tinged window. I could just about make them out. She was standing out there, clutching something – I thought it was a stick. And Dad had his hands out, trying to take it from her. ‘I see their eyes. Their EYES. You know what that means, don’t you? You know what they tell me to do.’ Then she burst into tears. Loud tears with serious sobs and lots of words I couldn’t properly hear.

Dad walked over to her. For a second, I thought she was going to run him through with the stick, but he just put his hands round it and took it from her. She let him. She was too busy crying.

At first, when I started to see Mum cry more and more, I wanted to cry too. I didn’t really know what was happening, or why she got so upset, but I used to think there must be something really serious to worry about if a grown-up was crying. Because crying was something children did. Adults only cried when something was really bad, I thought. But when I started to see my mum cry about four times a week, I stopped finding it as upsetting as I once did.

‘It’s OK, Marjory. Why don’t we just go back inside? We need to make this place a home.’ Dad was doing his best to be kind, now. And, finally, she let him, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, her sobs turned into silent crying. I turned around and sat back on the sofa properly to watch them as they came in.

‘Hello Kitty Cat,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry about my little moment.’ She sniffed and dabbed at her eyes with the back of her hands, as if she was trying not to disturb the make-up she wasn’t wearing. ‘I just got so upset at the thought of someone listening.’ She sat down and Dad murmured something about a glass of water as he left the room. ‘Do you know what I mean by listening?’ she said. Her eyes were going wide again. I thought about calling Dad, but before I could he was back and giving her a drink.

‘Have some of this,’ he said, and Mum did as he said and took a sip of the water.

‘Better?’ he said.

‘It’s not from the stream is it?’ she whispered, urgently.

Dad looked confused. ‘No, it’s from the tap.’

‘Are you really, really sure?’ She gripped his hand, stopping him moving away, staring at him as if desperate for him to reassure her.

‘Yes, I’m very sure. I haven’t seen a stream.’

‘We passed one on the way,’ she said, sipping at the water and flicking little looks at me that I found more disturbing than the crying.

‘No we didn’t,’ Dad said with a sigh. ‘And it was dark. Even if we did I don’t think you’d have seen it.’

Mum muttered about ‘all-seeing eyes’ and then went quiet, concentrating on her drinking.

‘Why don’t you go up to bed, Kitty?’ my dad suggested. ‘We’ll carry on with the unpacking in the morning.’

I nodded and got up. ‘Goodnight Mum,’ I said. I went to give her a kiss, but she didn’t look up. She was staring into the water in the glass as if it were the most interesting thing in the world. ‘Night, Dad,’ I said, walking past him. I didn’t offer him a kiss, as he’d made me cross too many times today.

‘Goodnight,’ he said.

I went up the creaking stairs and made sure I pressed hard on the loosest ones, hoping some dust or wood flakes would snow down on any creatures inside. Perhaps they’d come out and play during the night.

My duvet and things were all on my bed. I didn’t know where my toothbrush was – probably in one of the hundreds of bags and boxes either downstairs or in the car – so I just used the stiff tap in the bathroom to wash my mouth out (five spits, one gargle) and then went back to get into bed. On the landing I could hear my dad saying something to my mum about sleeping downstairs if she ‘promises not to go walkabout’. She replied straight away, ‘Oh dearest, why on earth would I want to go walking about in the woods at night? Anything could be out there.’

Once in my room, I spent a good few minutes trying to put the bed sheets on myself. I eventually succeeded, feeling a little proud at how good I was starting to get at doing things like this without help. I then got under the covers and tried to sleep straight away, but it didn’t work, so I just started counting the drips of water I could hear falling outside the window. Then the drips became rain and the rain became a downpour. I burrowed into my bedding and pretended I was a little mouse, caught in the fields in a storm, in need of a large leaf or a den to shelter under and stay dry and warm. I need to stay safe and sheltered, I thought to myself as I finally drifted off to sleep. After all, Mum was probably right. Anything could be out there.

Chapter 6
January 2020

The police station is a drab, seventies build – the sort of thing that might have looked edgy and modern once, but now looks depressing in a harsh, Brutalist way. Part of me had expected a row of uniformed officers holding sub-machine guns to be waiting for me at the doors, the type you see patrolling London underground stations or key tourist attractions. But of course, they don’t bother with the likes of me. I’m not an immediate threat. It’s the past that matters now. Not the present, or the future.

The woman on the desk looks at me with all the emotion of a robot. I explain who I am and who I’ve been asked to see. She glances at a screen that’s turned away from me, then at a tablet device on the desk in front of her, then tells me to take a seat. I do as I’m told, sitting next to a young man who cracks the knuckles on each hand, as if to warn me not to even think about messing with him. One of his hands, I notice, is badly bruised and cut, like he’s punched a wall. Or a face.

‘What you fuckin’ looking at?’ he asks me in a thick Newcastle accent, then, without waiting for an answer, he asks, ‘Want a smoke?’ and brings out a packet of cigarettes. I look down at them, noticing the box is stained with something dark and sticky-looking, perhaps spilt beer, then jump when a voice above me says, ‘No smoking in here. It’s illegal.’ A short, burly police officer rounds on us both, as if we’re two naughty school kids. I object to being grouped in with the unsavoury-looking man next to me and start stammering about how I hadn’t intended to take one, but another voice cuts me off.

‘Katherine Marchland?’

Another figure has appeared to the left of the short man. This one’s also male, but younger – he only looks about twenty-six or -seven – and much taller. ‘I’m Detective Constable Malik. Please come this way.’

He doesn’t smile exactly, but his mouth thins into a shape that I think is meant to be comforting. His movements are gentle and courteous as he holds the door open for me, leading us deeper into the building. The light quality is poor – the corridor is windowless and lit by dim white strips, with some of the bulbs blinking as if they might give up the ghost at any moment.

‘Just in here,’ he says, and opens the door to a small room, also windowless. I recognise it instantly as a police interview room from any number of television dramas. It even has one of those dark-glass sections in the wall, presumably for people to watch behind it unseen. The only thing different is that I can’t see one of those big old cassette recorder decks on the desk, although I can see something long and thin hanging from the ceiling, so I presume it must be a microphone hooked up to a recording device somewhere out of sight.

‘Do take a seat,’ he says, motioning to the one he clearly wishes me to sit in, then asks, ‘Would you like some water?’

I nod, grateful for the offer. ‘Yes please. Thank you.’ Maybe things aren’t quite as bad as I’d thought. This man seems kind.

He opens the door, presumably to go out and get the water, but a woman walks straight through it before he can exit. ‘Ms Marchland? My name’s Detective Inspector Tamara Cousins. I’ll be leading this interview with DC Malik.’ She’s short, and quite a bit older – maybe early forties. Whereas the younger officer is clearly a local, with a pleasantly soft Northumbrian note to his voice, her accent is a surprise – rather posh and tight.

At this, DC Malik leaves the room and returns seconds later with a plastic cup filled with water. ‘Are we all set up?’ DI Cousins asks her colleague.

He nods. ‘Fine to go ahead.’

‘OK, for the recording, present in this interview we have currently speaking Detective Inspector Tamara Cousins and Detective Constable Leon Malik.’ She then looks at me: ‘Please confirm your name and date of birth.’

‘Katherine Marchland,’ I say, a little shakily. ‘I was born on the 4th September 1977.’

‘I gather you were formerly known as Katherine Carlson – although I understand Marchland is a name you have created rather than one you acquired through marriage – and you live at Number 2, Station View Walk in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham?’

I nod.

‘Could you answer “yes” or “no” please for the recording?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Ms Marchland, you do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’ She’s looking right at me, watching for a reaction. I don’t give one, just stare back, trying to ignore the rush of panic sweeping through me. ‘As I explained on the phone, you’re not under arrest at present, and I’d also like to make it clear you’re free to leave at any time. Do you understand everything I’ve just said to you?’

I nod. ‘Yes.’

‘Splendid. I’ve got here that you are currently employed as a staff writer on a newspaper. The Dagenham and Rainham Advertiser. Is that right?’

‘Sort of. I do bits and bobs. Sell some advertising space, write some copy.’

She nods, looking at the papers in front of her. ‘The purpose of this interview is to help us understand your perspective on certain incidents which have come to our attention.’ Her eyes flick back up to my face and stare directly into mine. ‘In other words, Katherine, we’ve seen the video.’

She holds my gaze for a couple of seconds, then presses on. ‘What you say in this interview will be recorded. We will take into account what you tell us today when we decide whether to pursue formal arrest and any potential criminal charges. You have not brought any legal representation with you, and I believe you declined the offer of a solicitor to be appointed for you?’

I nod again. ‘Yes.’

She produces a folder from her bag under the desk. ‘I trust you have an idea as to why you’re here?’ It’s said like a question, and she raises her eyebrows at me.

‘I do. I’m here because …’ I take a deep breath, trying to stop my speech becoming shaky, ‘because of what happened in the woods. All those years ago.’

Chapter 7
1987

I woke up to blood. Tiny, tiny drops of it on my pillow. I examined them through my sleep-blurred eyes. Then I felt the sting of a cut in my finger. It was small, like the droplets of blood, but it was there. It took me a few minutes to discover what it was – a discovery that rather pleased me. There was a large stag beetle, the size of a small mouse, climbing up my wall near my bed. I knew they would come. Animals usually sought me out. I think it was because they knew I wasn’t a threat. I was curious rather than predatory.

‘Hello,’ I said to it. ‘What shall we do with you, then?’ I scooped him up in my hands, feeling his pincers trying to cut me again. I let him cut me. I didn’t mind. After all, he was here first. I was the one trespassing on his territory.

I walked down the stairs, giving them some celebratory creaks (maybe more creatures will come, I thought). Dad was in the kitchen, a small, cold place, colder than the rest of the house, which was odd as I’d always thought of the kitchen as being the warmest, filled with stoves and ovens. In spite of the cold, Dad was just in his pants, brandishing a screwdriver over the old toaster from home as he leaned over the rough, stained kitchen table.

‘Dad?’ I said, watching him from the doorway.

‘Morning, Kitty,’ he said, not looking up.

‘How old are you?’ I asked.

He looked up then, clearly surprised by my question. ‘I’m thirty.’

‘How old were you when you stopped crying when you hurt your hand or got a cut or fell over?’

He looked a little irritated now, and turned back to the toaster. ‘Er … I don’t know. Probably your age.’

‘I’ve been bitten by a beetle more than once this morning and I haven’t cried once. I haven’t really felt the need to.’

He gave me one of his confused looks. He often looked confused when I told him things I found interesting.

‘Mum cries all the time though,’ I said, a little quietly.

‘Well, Mum’s different,’ he said. He seemed to be finished with the plug part of the toaster now and went to plug it into the wall. ‘The bread’s stale,’ he nodded towards the loaf. ‘We should have got some on the way last night but I didn’t really think about it. So we’ll toast it. Then it will taste fine.’

‘Will it?’ I asked, rather surprised by this new information.

‘It will. Come and sit down.’

I looked around the kitchen and found what I was looking for. I dragged a small but deepish bowl from the countertop and dropped the beetle into it. ‘What the hell is that?’ he said, looking at the bowl in disgust.

‘The beetle. The one I just told you about.’

‘We don’t want it in here. Throw it out in the garden. You can’t carry on with this weird animal adoption thing, Kitty. You’re getting too old for it now. It may have been, I don’t know, cute or eccentric when you were young. You’re ten years old now … it’s just not normal.’

He stopped, then turned away as if he’d changed his mind.

‘Why?’ I said, folding my arms. He was starting to upset me, but I tried not to show it.

‘It’s just not … something you should be doing.’

I kept my arms folded. ‘Mum used to say my creature curiosity was the sign of a mind that one day would do great things – because I’m interested in things. In animals, in wildlife, in—’

‘OK, OK,’ he said, holding up his hands. ‘I’m sure that’s all very true. But your mum doesn’t like little creatures any more, does she? You’ve seen how she can react to them. Just … just chuck the beetle out, all right?’

‘After the toast,’ I said, sitting down. I could see him deciding whether to argue further or not. He chose not to. It was for the better, I thought.

He left me to my breakfast, muttering about unpacking some clothes and going for a pee. He was right about the toast. It didn’t taste stale, although I had to cut off a little green bit on the side. I accidentally ate some of it before the amputation and it tasted like plants. Strong ones, with a bitter, furry taste. The rest of the two slices was fine, though.

Dad came back quicker than I expected, dressed in a t-shirt and one of his older pairs of jeans with a few holes in them. ‘Where’s Mum?’ I asked immediately.

He let out one of his I-would-prefer-not-to-talk-about-it sighs. ‘She’s still asleep.’

‘Do you need me to wake her?’ I went to stand up.

‘No.’ His hand shot out to stop me. He gripped me – not too hard, but firm. ‘Please, Kitty. Just let her sleep. It’s still very early. It’ll be the only peace and quiet I’ll get all day.’ He looked sad when he said this, and the lines on his face seemed more there than usual. Jemimah Prince at school once described my dad to her mother as ‘a young popstar dad’ compared to her ‘crumbly old git of a dad’. Jemimah’s mum didn’t seem too impressed with this description and told her daughter to keep such rude evaluations about her father to herself. She said her comments about my dad were ‘inappropriate’ and then frowned at me, as if I’d said them. I didn’t really know what to think. I didn’t think my dad looked like a popstar. I suppose his tallish thinness and dark-brown hair made him more noticeable than the chubbier, slightly grey-haired dads I sometimes saw at school plays or Christmas fetes, but to me he was just my dad. Nothing more remarkable than that. But now, I wondered if Jemimah were sitting at this table at this moment and saw those lines on my dad’s face, with his tired, dark eyes and sad expression, whether she’d still describe him in the same way. I thought it unlikely.

‘Let’s go and take your beetle outside,’ he said, sounding kinder now. ‘We’ll say goodbye to him together. OK?’

I nodded and counted the burn marks on the kitchen table while he went to find a jumper from the car. I had already got dressed, but Dad had something draped over his arm and seemed keen for me to take it. ‘You’ll be a bit cold,’ he said. ‘Put your mum’s coat round you.’

I’d worn Mum’s coat before and I had always liked how much it smelled of home – when home was a happy place, a place I liked to remember. A little while ago, probably just over a year back, Mum and I would spend most Saturday mornings going to the shops to buy ingredients for a pie, then spend the afternoon making it. Rolling the pastry together, filling the insides with apple in sugary syrup from a tin, her telling me what a clever girl I was when I made a pattern on the outside that went all the way round the rim. Thinking about this made me a little sad, so I wrapped the coat around me, bunching it up so that it didn’t trail along the ground, and tried to press the thoughts out of my mind. I followed Dad as he carried the bowl with the beetle in and walked away from the house through the trees. Their branches went high – higher than most trees I’ve seen – and although it was autumn, most of them still had their leaves, dark green and spiky, sticking to their branches. ‘Here we go,’ Dad said, kneeling down by one. ‘This is far enough away from the house. Let’s let him out here.’ He handed me the bowl.

I didn’t say anything as I let the beetle go. I would have been sad if I was at home. Friends like a large stag beetle were hard to come by, though perhaps not quite so hard as human friends. One of the nicer teachers at school, Mrs Clifton – she taught another class but helped out at break times – once took me aside at the end of lunchtime play and asked if I’d like it if she helped me make some friends and how she was worried she always saw me on my own. I said I was fine as I was, watching the butterflies on the bushes and the birds nesting in the trees. She went away eventually, but part of me wondered how things would have been if I’d said yes, I would like some human friends. But I missed my chance, and she didn’t ask again.

‘No! No! No!’ I heard the shrieks and dropped the bowl.

Dad jerked around quickly, then immediately started walking towards the little house. ‘Come in, Kitty,’ he said sharply.

‘I will not do it!’ My mother’s shouts echoed around me and I watched my dad go inside the house. Heard him trying to calm her.

I turned back to the beetle. He wasn’t moving. Just standing on the trunk of the tree. Poised. Unsure. Sensing danger.

I know how you feel, I thought. Then I put my cut fingers into my mouth and sucked them gently as I went back inside.

Chapter 8

We spent that first day getting unpacked. Mum even started to feel better enough to help at one point, although she kept getting distracted. Most of the boxes she opened led to her sitting cross-legged on the floor examining her own collection of mugs or balls of Dad’s socks, as if they were really interesting things from another planet that had just been discovered.

We had lunch later – about 2.30, according to the old metal clock above the fireplace that was already there when we arrived. Lunch consisted of toasted stale bread again, with Marmite this time, and Dad said he’d drive to the nearest shops later and get us some supplies. I think he was getting tired of checking each slice for mould before he bit into it.

‘Can I come with you?’ I asked. I was keen to see the world outside the woods. Just to make sure it was still there.

‘No,’ he said, gruffly.

‘You want me to stay here alone?’ I was annoyed with him, mainly because he was doing this stupid thing where he didn’t look at me properly. He did it when he was going against what he knew I wanted.

‘You won’t be on your own,’ he replied, quietly. ‘You’ll be with Mum.’

I looked over at Mum, who, having cut off all her crusts, was now eating them one by one, leaving the main (and best) part of the slice of toast on the plate.

‘She could come too.’ It seemed like a reasonable suggestion to me.

‘Just stay with her. We’ll see if we can get that old TV working.’

I didn’t jump for joy at this. He knew I didn’t really care about TV. ‘I think I’d still rather come,’ I said, simply.

‘And I’m the adult so what I say bloody goes,’ he said, angrily. He was looking at me now, his eyes sharp and filled with warnings. I often ignored signs like these and he would get into a rage where he’d go white and then red and then white again and have to go and lie down.

‘I wish Mum was the one who was still normal,’ I said.

I heard him drop his knife with a clatter. I didn’t look up. I was staring at my plate. Trying not to move.

‘Are you trying to upset me, Kitty? Is that what you want? I’m doing my fucking best, you understand! I’m—’ He stopped. Got up. Then walked out of the room. I heard him putting his coat on in the little hallway cloakroom thing. He took a long time doing it. Mum was already crying, but not making as much of a fuss about it as normal, just wiping her tears on the plastic bag the bread was in. ‘I’ll be back in about an hour, hopefully.’ Dad didn’t come back to say this. Just called it from the doorway. ‘Do not let your mum go outside. Keep the door shut. Keep talking to her. OK?’

I let a few seconds pass before I finally called out ‘OK’ in response. I heard the latch and the door slammed. And then he was gone.

And I was left at the kitchen table, watching the ‘o’ of the word ‘Hovis’ go all blurry from my mother’s tears.

Eventually, I finished the unpacking. I thought I might as well do it on my own, even if I couldn’t quite reach the high things and the chairs didn’t look too safe to stand on. I got the things all packed away – saucepans in the cupboard, clothes in the rough, scratchy old wardrobes and drawers. Mum even helped me fold my cardigans neatly, humming the theme tune to Coronation Street as she did it. With the clean, though slightly tatty, carpets and light green curtains now feeling a little more familiar, the place had started to feel more like a home. Just not our home.

I didn’t hear the door go. I was sitting on the stairs, so wasn’t far from it, but I was concentrating on encouraging out a large spider I’d seen crawl into a hole at the bottom. I thought it would make a nice replacement for the beetle I’d been forced to cast out earlier, so I spent a good few minutes trying to coax it into a bowl, though without success. I’d just given up and had gone to put the bowl back in the kitchen when I saw that Mum had disappeared from the lounge. I went through, into the hallway. The front door was open, swinging in the breeze. It was starting to get dark. Darker than I had expected. How long had passed since Dad left? It must have been more than an hour. More than two, if it had got dark already?

I ran and put on my wellington boots and a coat, then went outside into the twilight. Although not as new-cold-crisp as it had been this morning, the wind was blustery and I hugged my coat close to me as I walked around the outside walls of the house. ‘Mum!’ I shouted, peering around the corners, hoping to see her crouched on the ground, playing with some leaves or something. Right around by the back wall, I did find something. But it wasn’t Mum. It was on the wall. A word in big, black letters, scrawled in what looked like paint.

LEAVE.

I knew I probably shouldn’t have, that I should have gone back inside immediately, but the glinting of the letters made me do it: I reached out and touched the bottom half of the ‘L’. My fingers came away wet. It smelled like paint. And if the paint hadn’t dried in the blustery wind, that meant it hadn’t been done very long ago. My mind started racing. I remembered a creak I’d heard just before I found the spider – a sound I’d dismissed as a tree moving in the wind. Could someone have sneaked up on us in the dark without me knowing? Was someone watching me as I stood there, at the back of the house, just a tiny insignificant figure amidst the enormous woodland?

‘Mum!’ I shouted again. I heard a noise to my right. A strange scratching noise, as if someone was scraping something against the side of the house. Someone I couldn’t see. I looked all around me, but I couldn’t focus on anything. It was like the forest was closing in, the light getting dimmer by the second. A flurry of birds suddenly erupted from a nearby tree, screeching and squawking, and I felt my pulse increase, my temperature drop and goosebumps break out across my skin. I tried to call for Mum, or Dad, or anyone, but my throat was tight and croaky. In the end, I just ran.

I ran as far away from the house as I could in my wellington boots. When I was completely out of breath, I crouched down behind a big thick tree trunk and peered around it. The house was a small speck of light through the trees. I watched and waited for a little while, listening hard to the rush of the leaves and the wind. Then I saw something move, up near the house. Did they go inside? Or had they gone round the other side again?

My heart was pumping, my thoughts racing, wondering if it was one of the murderers I’d seen pictures of on TV and in the newspapers Dad read. Or if it was someone else. Something else. It was the worst ‘or’ in the whole horrible world. Because it would mean something really, really bad. It would mean Mum was right. They were listening. The trees were listening. The animals were listening. And they didn’t want us here. They were not going to let us live.

I ran again, blindly through the woods until suddenly the trees vanished and I was standing on a road. A long, winding road, with trees either side. It was completely empty – no cars, driving or parked. No signs. No glimmer of light to suggest the house in the distance or the direction I’d come from. Nothing. I’m lost, I thought to myself with a flash of fresh new panic, wondering how long it would be before the wolves or cannibals would arrive to eat me. I walked along the edge of the road – away from the house, I thought, but I wasn’t completely sure. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a light. A glinting light. It was a car.

I once saw someone in a film waving down a car. They had put their hand out and the person driving stopped and the other person got in. I thought that was maybe what I should do, but before I’d decided I saw the car slowing anyway, so I just stood there, at the edge, watching it crawl to a stop. There were two people in the front seat and the driver wound down their window. It was a woman. She looked like she was about to speak, but before she could, the passenger-side door burst open and a man jumped out. A man I knew. I’d been crying already without realising, but at the sight of him I immediately burst into full, gasping tears.

‘Dad?’ I sobbed.

‘Kitty! What the hell are you doing out here? What’s happened to you?’

He was staring at me as if I looked a fright – and when I looked down I saw that I did. There were mud marks on my coat, one side of it was scratched so much the material had almost ripped, and my hands were cut and bleeding.

He saw that I was crying, trying to speak, and he came round to me and clasped my hurt hands. ‘Kitty, darling, tell me. Where’s Mum?’

I shook my head, and the tears rolled down my face.

I saw the worry growing in his tired eyes. Then he looked back at the woman, now standing by the door of the car, looking at me with big, curious eyes. She was rather beautiful, and slightly older than Dad. Her hair was short and modern-looking and she was wearing a brown leather jacket. ‘We need to find her,’ Dad continued. ‘Let’s get back to the house.’ The woman didn’t say anything, just nodded and got back behind the wheel. Dad led me by the hand to the car and helped me into the passenger seat.

‘Drive,’ he said, and she zoomed off. The trees blurred past the window. I was pulled away from them by Dad, who was trying to ask me questions. ‘Kitty, when did you last see Mum? Where was she when you last saw her?’

I tried to think about it, about how much time had passed, but I couldn’t get my thoughts in order. He got impatient. ‘Kitty! Please, answer me.’

‘I … I think she was in the lounge. I left her painting her nails with her favourite violent colour.’

‘Violet,’ he corrected automatically. ‘And how long ago was this?’

I shook my head again. ‘A little while. I forgot what the time was. You were gone so long. Why were you gone so long?’

He looked at me and I thought he was about to say something, then he turned back to face the way the car was going and carried on looking ahead.

It didn’t take us long to get back to the house. The car wound into the thicker parts of the trees and up towards the front door – still open, as I had left it.

‘There’s something else,’ I said, but he didn’t wait to listen.

‘Marjory!’ he shouted at the top of his voice and ran into the house.

‘Don’t worry,’ the woman said, turning round to face me. If she had been a new class teacher, or one of the team of women who gave me milkshakes at the café in the high street, I probably would have liked her. But right at that moment, I just wanted to get back in the house with Mum and Dad and close the door. ‘I’m sure your dad will find your mother soon.’

‘How do you know?’ I asked.

She didn’t seem to know what to say to this straight away. She paused for a moment, then said, ‘Whatever will happen, will happen.’

A noise to my left distracted me, and I turned to see Dad running out of the house. He still looked frantic. ‘No sign of her in there,’ he said.

‘I’ll get Kitty inside,’ said the woman in a businesslike way. ‘I’ll come and help you look for her in a sec.’

He shook his head. ‘No, both of you stay—’

A scream stopped him mid-sentence. Then another. Then a cry. It sounded just a short distance away.

‘Marjory!’ my dad shouted.

Another scream answered in return.

Then he set off running and I followed, even though the woman was shouting at me to wait. We kept running and I realised we were going down a slope. At the bottom of it was a river, the water glinting and flickering, a big shimmering line through the woods. And in the stream was Mum. She was floating on her back, her arms slowly caressing the water, the movements making her look like an angel.

Except that angels didn’t scream.

‘Fuck!’ Dad shouted and looked around him. I’m not sure what he was hoping to find – maybe a boat which he could use to sail out to get her. ‘Stay on the bank, Kitty.’

‘But—’

‘It’s deep around here. Do as I say.’

He threw down his coat, pulled off his shoes, socks, and jeans, and started wading in.

‘Christ!’ he said. The water must have been cold. He should have kept his trousers on, I thought to myself. Then I remembered that there are few things in the world worse than wet jeans. Mum always used to say so when I was younger if we were caught in a rain storm in the park. Back when she did trips to the park.

Mum’s screams got worse as Dad grew nearer to her. He took her hand and pulled her back to the edge of the water. She was shivering, and so was he, although Mum didn’t let it interrupt her wailing. ‘I need you to walk, Marjory,’ Dad snapped at her. I was alarmed to see something dark on her arms, dripping down into her clothes, but as they came closer I realised it wasn’t red like blood, but rather deep, dark black.

It was paint.

‘What the hell is this?’ he shouted when he saw it.

‘At the back of the house …’ I said, struggling to get my words out, ‘I think she’s painted on the wall. It said LEAVE.’

He glanced over at me, his face filled with worry. ‘Kitty, go back into the house,’ he said, but I didn’t move. I was watching Mum walking slowly, leaning on his side, crying as she did so. As her breathing got slower, I managed to work out what she was screaming. ‘Poison. Poison. Poison. It burns him. It burns him. It burns him.’

Chapter 9

‘I told you to watch her, Kitty,’ Dad said as he helped Mum up the stairs to the bedroom and began towelling her down.

‘You didn’t actually,’ I murmured. I watched him as he helped Mum out of her wet clothes, looking at her nakedness; her pale, white skin, slightly shrivelled from the water, now clean after Dad had washed the paint off. Once she was dry, he helped her into her night clothes and then got her into the double bed.

‘Let’s let her sleep,’ he said. ‘Come on. I need to introduce you properly to Amanda.’

I followed him downstairs. The spider I had been trying to befriend earlier had come out to see what was going on, peering down from the side of the banisters, his legs wrapped around the flaked white-painted wood. I stopped to look at him, stretching out my hand to see if he’d crawl onto it, but Dad snapped at me. ‘Kitty, I told you to come.’

I left the spider for another time and followed him through into the lounge. The woman – Amanda, apparently – was sitting on the sofa, looking comfortable and relaxed, as if she’d always lived here with us and we were all one big happy family.

‘Hello Katherine!’ She smiled a wide smile, her hoopy earrings swaying as she turned her head to look at me.

‘It’s Kitty,’ I said, staring back at her. I didn’t smile.

‘How lovely. It’s such a pleasure to meet you in person. I’ve heard so much about you from your father.’

I looked over at Dad, who had sat down in the armchair near the fireplace. ‘Amanda was kind enough to give me a lift back. My car broke down when I went to the shops earlier. We’ll need to go and get it in the morning.’

I nodded, but remained silent. If all she did was give Dad a lift from the shops, why was she still here sitting on our sofa?

‘Are you two friends?’ I asked, looking from one to the other. There was something odd about all of this and I didn’t like not being told things.

‘We’re … yes, we’re friends,’ Amanda said, nodding. ‘Your father actually helped me a lot with an insurance issue I had with my flat down in Thurrock, near where you both live. That’s how we first met. I mentioned I was originally from up here and he should say hello if he should ever visit. And lo and behold, there he was, on the side of the road, with a broken-down car.’

I frowned at her. I wasn’t quite sure which bit of her explanation to argue with, but something about it sounded false.

‘It’s quite an interesting place you guys have moved into,’ she carried on, looking around her. ‘You’ll need to stand on a chair or two to reach those cobwebs up there. But I’m sure you’ll help your father get it all spick and span.’ She gave me her smile again. I didn’t return it.

Dad glared at me from his seat, as if he thought I was showing him up or something. I didn’t care. He’d left me all alone and he must have known that what had happened was a possibility. It wasn’t my fault Mum escaped. He never said to lock her up or anything. It wasn’t like she was our prisoner, after all. Not like one of those Colditz people Mr Gregory showed us at school on a video he brought in.

After a minute or two of sitting there in silence, Amanda eventually got up. ‘Well, then. I better get going. Lots to do. Got three dogs at home. Yappy little things. They’re not even mine – my sister’s. Just one night left before she gets back from her holiday and I can return them. They’re one big nightmare as a pack, I can tell you. Rather terrify me. They’ve probably ripped up the house in protest by now.’

I turned my gaze on her. ‘I’m never terrified by dogs. I like animals.’

She nodded, raising her eyebrows slightly. ‘Good. That’s good, Kitty. I’m pleased. Well, I might borrow them off my sister one day and bring them round these woods for a walk as a special treat.’

I wasn’t sure if she meant it would be a special treat for me or for the dogs, but I didn’t ask.

‘Right, off I go then,’ she said, walking towards the door. Dad jumped up to follow her. ‘I hope your mother has a calm night and feels better in the morning.’

Dad said a few things to her at the door that I couldn’t properly hear, but I did make out the word ‘tomorrow’. The door closed and Dad came back into the lounge.

‘Time for bed,’ he said, not properly meeting my gaze.

Tomorrow arrived sooner than I expected. It felt like I’d only closed my eyes for a short few minutes before I opened them again, light shining in through the dirty window, some creature tap-tapping outside it. A magpie. It seemed pretty determined to undo the latch on the window and join me in my bed, but I didn’t dare let him in. Little animals, like spiders and beetles, rarely caused a fuss. Usually my parents didn’t know I had one. But something as big as a bird wouldn’t go down well. Plus, there was every chance Dad would still be cross about the previous night.

The memory of last night was liquid. It rippled when I tried to touch it in my mind, just like the folds of water that lapped against the side of the stream down the hill through the woods. I thought about Mum screaming, and Dad and that woman talking in whispers. The water on Mum’s body. The damp leaves clinging to her skin like black bruises; the trails left by the paint running down her arms. I felt bad that she escaped, but at the same time there wasn’t really much I could have done. And Dad had been gone for hours. Hours and hours. I didn’t mention last night how unfair the situation was, because I didn’t think I needed to. I made a plan to drop it into conversation if he started complaining about the next little creature I adopted.

Breakfast downstairs didn’t go well. Mum started off talking quite normally for once – or normal for her – not mentioning her ordeal in the river. Instead, she lectured me and Dad, in a quiet, matter-of-fact sort of voice, on how bread made by a baker who hadn’t washed his hands both ‘prior and after’ kneading the dough could quite likely pass on ‘Satan’s stain’ to those who later consumed it. She said this was particularly likely if ‘the baker had taken part in fornication or similarly wicked deeds’ before the bread’s flour was sifted. I was a bit confused by this, but it clearly annoyed Dad; he seemed to take it as a dig towards the loaf of bread he had brought back from his hours-long trip yesterday.

‘I don’t think Hovis let their sodding factory workers do anything wicked before sifting the flour,’ he remarked sternly, taking up two thick slices and buttering them generously. Mum poked about at her slice, which had been meticulously toasted to the right shade by Dad, as per her instructions. In the past, it would have been me being fussy over how my bread was toasted, and Mum telling me to ‘stop being silly’ when I objected to it being undercooked or burnt. She’d always give in though, toasting me a nice slice just the way I liked it, with extra chunks of orange peel she’d scooped out of the marmalade jar, just for me. Now, I felt like we were going in opposite directions, as if someone had reversed her timeline to make her become younger as I started to get older, her slowly becoming the child again. A child who needed an adult to sort out her fussy little problems. And bigger problems, too.

‘Please eat,’ Dad said, sending one of his cross glances her way.

Mum shook her head and pushed her plate away. ‘I think it would be better if I went back to bed,’ she said, looking not at Dad but instead over towards the ancient-looking refrigerator in the corner by the wall.

I thought back, then, to one time when Dad had tried to encourage Mum out to eat breakfast in the garden, on a warm sunny day in late spring. She wouldn’t go. She’d been terrified someone was outside waiting for her, convinced the unusual invitation for ‘al fresco dining’, as Dad called it, was a sinister trick. She accused Dad of calling for people to come and take her away to somewhere she could never come back from. ‘Promise me,’ she’d pleaded, ‘you never will. Promise me you’ll never call them.’ He’d promised her then. Promised her never to send her away. I had a feeling it was a promise he would one day have to break. That he couldn’t keep indefinitely. But for now, at least, he seemed to be keeping his word.

With Mum now ignoring his attempts to coax her into eating, Dad got properly cross. He threw down his bread and lined up the different types of spread on the table – raspberry jam, Marmite, blackberry jam, peanut butter, on-the-comb honey – saying each one’s name out loud. Mum still refused to properly look his way, and flinched as each jar landed on the wood in front of her.

‘Surely there is one of these you could possibly fucking contemplate eating,’ he said, starting to shout now. ‘One of them must free the bread from Satan’s fucking stain or whatever shit you’re about to come out with next.’

He didn’t normally say words like this to Mum and she seemed upset by it. Tears started to fall down her face and she began muttering something containing the words ‘Jesus’, ‘God’ and ‘forgiveness’. Dad then got a bit sad too, and started to say he was sorry. He tried to hug Mum, but she screamed and he went back to his seat and ate the rest of his toast in silence. I chewed on the little pile of toast squares on my plate and tried to think nice thoughts.

After breakfast, Dad announced that today would have a ‘bit more structure’ compared to yesterday. For a second I thought he was about to apologise properly for leaving us alone for hours, but he didn’t. ‘Today, we’re going to have some visitors. Some very nice, very important visitors who are going to want to talk to us.’ He turned to me now. ‘Or, specifically, Kitty, they’re going to be talking to Mum. So there might be some moments where you’ll have to go and amuse yourself. I’m sure you’ll find things to do up in your room. Or, in fact, it might be better if you went exploring for a bit. Only nearby. Not too far. Our visitors are going to want to have a nice long chat with your mum and me without any disruptions.’

‘I don’t cause disruptions,’ I said. ‘I just sit by and watch them happen.’

Dad looked a little confused by this. ‘Right,’ he said at last. Then he made a big fuss of tidying everything, preparing for the guests, getting everything tidy when it was already quite tidy, while Mum sat there, like a strange statue, not moving a muscle.

Chapter 10

Mum was upstairs asleep when the guests arrived. She’d started muttering again about returning to bed and eventually Dad gave in and went upstairs with her to settle her down. A little while later, I heard him greet people at the front door and I heard a voice I recognised. Amanda had returned. She was, apparently, one of the guests, along with a strange-looking, and very round, old man. ‘Hello Katherine,’ she said from the doorway to the lounge as Dad brought them in.

I said nothing.

‘I hope you’re all rested after last night’s excitements?’

She said it like a question, but I thought it a foolish one. I just stared at her until she looked away and started to take off her coat. Dad should have asked her for it at the door, but he often forgot these things. It used to annoy Mum. Back before Mum started to annoy Dad. Back before Mum started to make Dad look stressed and pale white all the time.

‘Shall we all sit down in the lounge here for a bit of a chat?’ Amanda asked, settling herself down on the sofa and patting the seat next to her.

‘Do you live here?’ I asked. It was something I’d been wondering since we’d arrived; whose cottage this was before we made it our temporary home.

She laughed a little. ‘Goodness me, no. But the owners of it are acquaintances of mine. Your father got a very good rate from them.’

I looked over at Dad, who had been talking to the old man, offering him something to drink. ‘Tea. Proper tea, milk in first, there’s a good chap,’ the old man said. His voice sounded a little posh, but old-person posh, not really-rich posh, and he sat down in the armchair by the currently dead fire.

‘And you must be Katherine,’ he said to me. This made me jump, as he wasn’t looking towards me, since the chair was facing the other way. I could only just make out the tip of his white hair, barely covering his bald spot, poking over from the top of the chair’s frayed top. I hadn’t accepted Amanda’s invitation to sit next to her, but I decided to leave my position by the doorframe and walked over to face the old man in the chair.

‘My name is Kitty,’ I said, sternly. ‘I rarely answer to Katherine. Only in emergencies.’

He seemed to find this funny. ‘Oh very good, very good,’ he said, laughing.

I looked down at his clothes. They were completely black, except for a white bit that could be seen under his collar at the front. I recognised it as a dog collar and pointed.

‘You must be a vicar.’

‘Well, well, well, you are a clever one,’ he said, then laughed again.

I lowered my hand, unsure if he was mocking me. I didn’t like to be mocked.

‘Well? Are you?’ I said in a way Dad would have called rude if he wasn’t busy in the kitchen making the tea.

‘In a way, in a way,’ he said, smiling.

‘In what way?’ I asked, but that set him off chuckling again.

‘Why don’t you come and sit down with me,’ Amanda said from over on the sofa.

I ignored her. ‘Why are you here?’ I asked the old man. He didn’t stop smiling, but he did narrow his eyes a little.

‘I think that subject is best discussed when your father is back in the room,’ he said. He nodded a little after saying it, then looked towards Amanda. ‘I think my daughter over there offered you a seat. You should probably take it.’

‘Your daughter?’ I stared between Amanda and the old man. ‘But she’s old. How can she be your daughter?’

I saw both of them look at each other, then they laughed again. I was starting to get really tired of the laughing.

‘Oh, Katherine, how blunt you can be,’ Amanda said. ‘I’m not that old. I’m only thirty-seven.’

‘And I am a good three decades older than that. And a bit more,’ the old man said, winking at me. People winking at me made me feel weird, so I walked away from him and took the seat next to Amanda that she’d been patting for a while.

‘I see you’re all getting on like a house on fire,’ Dad said, coming into the room with two mugs on saucers. He set them down on the scruffy coffee table in the middle of the room, and then hovered by the old man’s chair. ‘So, what are we all talking about?’ he said. He was trying to look cheerful, but I could tell he was worried about something. Dad never smiled this much these days. There was something very odd about his face right now.

‘Katherine was just suggesting I’m getting on a bit,’ Amanda said, then laughed some more. ‘Practically called me ancient!’

Dad looked shocked. ‘You didn’t, did you Kitty? That’s very rude.’

I glared back at him, anger rising in me. ‘She’s lying.’

Amanda, still smiling broadly, waved her hand. ‘Oh it’s nothing. I dare say to someone of Katherine’s age I probably do look quite old.’

‘Even if she does insist on wearing that infernal leather jacket of hers’, the old man said, shaking his head a bit. ‘Trying to be one of the young, hip, trendy ones, I’m sure.’

‘I do try,’ Amanda said, winking at me. Why were all these people winking, I thought as I looked from her to the old man.

‘Well, I don’t think you look ancient,’ Dad said. He was putting on a nice voice, a bit posher than normal, so he sounded more like these people and less like how we all normally talked. I’d heard him do this before, like when he talked to people at the bank or the doctor’s. It seemed strange he’d be doing it now though with this odd pair.

‘Well, that is enough merriment for now,’ the old man said. ‘If we’re all settled, let’s just give Katherine here a rundown of what to expect over the coming days.’

I looked at him with a strong, fixed gaze. Unlike most people I did this to, he didn’t look away. Although I was sure I didn’t like this man, I couldn’t help but be a little bit impressed.

‘Yes, that sounds sensible,’ Dad said.

‘Right, OK then. Katherine—’

‘Kitty,’ I cut across him.

‘Kitty. Yes. Quite.’ He nodded, as if giving me permission to be called what I wanted. ‘Well then, Kitty, my daughter Amanda and I are going to be staying here, in your lovely house, for the next week, maybe a little more. The length of time isn’t fixed. We’ll be coming and going, as there isn’t space for us all to sleep here at any one time. Amanda will be more “residential” than me. My bones are old, and I’m not quite as adept at sleeping on a sofa as I once was.’ He paused, as if waiting for me to laugh, and when I didn’t he smiled and carried on. ‘As you may have guessed, this concerns your mother.’

My eyes flicked to the ceiling, where I could hear Mum shuffling around. There was the occasional clunk of something heavy; I suspected she might be rearranging the furniture. She had a bit of a preoccupation with nightstands and bedside tables. She liked them to be as far away from the bed as possible.

‘We don’t want to upset you, Kitty.’ Amanda was talking now, but I carried on looking at the old man in the religious clothes. ‘But your mother is exhibiting some behaviour that some may call … well … disturbing. And my father and I – and indeed your father, too – believe we might know how to sort it out.’

I said nothing.

‘The sorting-out part,’ the old man now said, ‘will be what we’ll focus on, at least for the next few days. This might take a bit of trial and error, and I don’t imagine we’ll achieve success straight away, or even particularly quickly. This is why I said there’s no fixed time to us being here. This is very rough work. Interesting, of course. Very interesting, and your mother is a particularly fascinating case. I don’t think I’ve really encountered that many similar, aside from a young woman from Baghdad who—’

Amanda coughed quietly, and the old man very obviously changed what he was about to say.

‘So, anyway, will you allow us to take up your lovely home? And you won’t mind if we need you to be absent for a little while while we try our best to help your mother?’

I thought for a little, and then looked up at Dad, who was staring into the distance, as if in his own world. ‘This isn’t my house. I don’t think it’s lovely. And I don’t really have a choice about you being here.’

Silence greeted these words for a bit, then the old man started laughing again, ‘Well, I do like a young girl to know her own mind, and it sounds like you certainly do. Thank you, Kitty, for being so honest.’

I nodded once, short and sharp. ‘I’m not a liar.’

‘Certainly not. I never would have thought it.’ He smiled widely at me again. ‘So, I think it’s time to bring down your mother and let us have a chat with her. I think, so long as your father agrees, it might be useful for you to remain for this introduction. Your presence might help put your mother at ease. But I understand if you wish to leave if she responds badly to us and it starts to become upsetting for you.’

Dad left the room without really reacting to the old man’s words. I heard him going up the stairs and then some mumbling from one of the bedrooms.

‘Do you get upset, Kitty?’ Amanda said, in what she probably thought was a kind, child-friendly voice. ‘About your mum? About her … moments of distress?’

I considered this for several seconds, then answered her. ‘I used to. But not now.’

Amanda nodded and looked as though she was going to say something else, but then the sound of two people on the stairs signalled Dad’s return, accompanied by Mum. She wasn’t screaming just yet.

‘Hello, Marjory,’ Amanda said warmly, standing up from the sofa and going over to her. She held out her hand and Mum took it, not looking at her, but peering around the room, as if hunting for something. Amanda clasped Mum’s hand between hers and said, ‘We’ve been looking forward to properly meeting you. We didn’t get the chance to speak last night.’

At the mention of last night, Mum’s gaze snapped to Amanda and she looked worried. ‘Have you come to take me away?’

Amanda looked worried too for a moment, then said, ‘Oh no. No, no, no. Definitely not. We’re here to help you. We have no wish to take you out of this beautiful woodland property you have.’

‘It’s not beautiful,’ I murmured, more to myself than to Amanda, but Dad hissed ‘Kitty!’ at me. I glared at him, and then looked at the floor.

‘I’m Amanda, and this,’ Amanda said, gesturing to the old man, who was also rising from his chair, ‘is my dad, Father Tobias Kent.’

The effect on Mum was instantaneous. She yelped as if she’d been kicked, then fell to the floor and clasped the man’s black clothes, saying, ‘Please, please, help me.’

He lowered himself slowly to her level, knees clicking, and took hold of her hands. ‘That, my dear, is the very reason we’re here.’

She was shaking now, and tears started to roll down her face. ‘Please. We don’t have much time. When … when he finds out you’re here … he’ll be so angry.’

Father Tobias Kent nodded. ‘Then we’d better get started straight away.’

Chapter 11

I was sent out into the woods soon after the introductions had been made. Mum’s sobbing became loud and close to hysterical, and Amanda decided it would be better for me to go and play.

‘Play with what?’ I asked. She laughed as if I’d made a joke, but I didn’t really see what was funny.

‘Explore! Make a fort from sticks! Just don’t get lost. Stay in the nearby vicinity of the house, or your dad will worry.’

She closed the door, leaving me outside in the cold. I wasn’t sure my cardigan would be enough to keep me warm. Amanda hadn’t said how long I should stay out for.

I began by checking the outer walls of the house for creatures, and I was pleased to find a patch of snails around the back wall. I removed them from their place on the concrete and lined them up on a large thick log that was resting next to a nearby tree. The log must have been an upright tree itself at some point, I thought to myself. I wondered how it fell. I could fell a tree, I thought, as I watched the snails making their tracks across the damp, rotten bark. That would have made all of them in the house sit up and take notice.

I wandered a bit further into the woods, following the route we took last night when we were looking for Mum. Dad had slipped slightly on the wet ground as it turned into a slope, and there were marks where he must have skidded. I followed them, realising where I was going, but it was still a surprise when I reached the water and had to stop myself walking on. I raised my eyes from my shoes and looked ahead at the river, the water smooth and still, though obviously moving. The trees hung so low and the cloud so thick that there wasn’t much difference in light here than there was deep amidst the trunks of the trees.

‘Be careful,’ said a voice. ‘You’ll be swept out to the ocean.’

I looked around me and saw a girl over on the other side of the stream. She looked about my age, and was dressed like me too, in a cardigan and boots. But her hair and skin was deep dark brown, rather than light like mine. She was smiling, and seemed to be waiting for me to respond to her warning of peril, so I looked down at the water and asked, ‘Does it really lead out to the ocean?’

‘I’m sure all rivers do,’ she said, knowledgeably. ‘And this one moves quite quickly. Isn’t it strange how it runs through the woods so quietly? It’s like a secret.’

These words made sense to me instantly. I liked this girl.

‘My mum said it is poison.’

The girl laughed. ‘She probably just doesn’t want you to go into the water. Maybe she’s heard about the enchantments.’

‘Enchantments?’ I looked up at the girl now. She was throwing things – acorns, by the look of them – over the stream towards me so that they landed with a scatter-thud by my feet.

‘Yes. Apparently a witch placed an enchantment on the stream. Anyone who disturbs its calm surface will be cursed with terrible, painful skin for the rest of their life. Apparently it will speed up ageing too. In some cases, you die instantly.’

I picked up one of the acorns out of interest. There was a hole in it. A hole possibly made by a creature. ‘Who told you these things?’ I asked.

She shrugged. ‘People talk. I listen.’

I nodded. I knew exactly what she meant.

‘Walk down the river with me and you’ll come to a bridge. Then you can cross over to my side.’

‘OK,’ I said, and started to walk in the direction she was, moving along the side of the river bank.

It didn’t take that long to get to the bridge; an old wooden thing that creaked as I stepped onto it, but didn’t look like it was going to break. At least not just yet. When I reached the other side of the stream, the girl offered her hand, as if we’d only just met. I suppose we had.

‘My name is Adah,’ she said.

‘My name is Kitty,’ I said.

We shook hands.

‘You look serious,’ she said.

‘I didn’t know there were other young people around here.’

She laughed. ‘Well, there aren’t many. And I’m only here while my aunt decides what to do with me.’

Adah sat down on the raised end of the bridge and I sat next to her, taking care not to squash a woodlouse that had appeared from the depths of the folds of wood. I let the woodlouse run over my hand and then asked: ‘Why does she need to decide what to do with you?’

She let out a sigh, but it didn’t really sound like a normal sigh. Not like the ones Dad did when he was stressed. It sounded almost pretend, like she was doing an impression of an adult.

‘My aunt has been looking after me since last year when my parents died.’

‘Oh dear,’ I said, surprised by how calmly she said this.

‘Yes. It is a bit of a nuisance.’

I was surprised again. Surely she should be upset? She looked about my age – I didn’t think she was more than ten – but the matter-of-fact way she spoke reminded me of an adult more than a child. At any rate, there weren’t any tears in sight. Just a calm face.

‘Why is it a nuisance?’

Another sigh. ‘Because she doesn’t care about me. She’s awful. She’s called Andrea.’ When she said this name, she made a twisted shape with her mouth, like she had just tasted something sour. ‘She keeps telling me to “fuck off and get lost”.’

‘Does she hurt you?’ I asked, very curious about the answer. I’d never met a child like Adah before.

‘No, she doesn’t hit me. Just tells me I’m a waste of space. I ran away once to a big city. She didn’t come to look for me. I stayed away for a night. I slept in a disabled toilet in a park.’

I frowned. ‘Didn’t the police send you home?’

She shook her head. ‘Nobody saw me. I did wonder if the police would come looking for me, but nobody seemed to care. The next morning I felt too cold, so I went home. My aunt was in the lounge watching TV and just said “Christ, I thought I was fucking shot of you.”’

‘She sounds horrible.’

‘She is.’

‘Were your parents nice?’

She shrugged. ‘I suppose. Nicer than her.’

‘What were their names?’

‘My mother was called Nikki and my dad was called Jep. I’ve got my mum’s hair and my dad’s eyes. I’m pleased it’s that way round. My mum was black, so I’ve inherited her hair and I can do fun things with it when I’m bored.’

I looked at the beads she had in it now. She was right – it did look fun. ‘Was your dad not black?’

She shook her head. ‘No. He was white and Jewish.’

I nodded. ‘There’s a Jewish boy in my class at school.’

‘Where do you go to school?’

‘A long way away. In Grays.’

‘I don’t know that place. Is it all grey there?’

I nodded. ‘Yes. Very. My parents have always lived there, I think. Even before I was born.’ I shuffled a little and reached forward to put the woodlouse on the ground. He had died in my palm. I didn’t kill him. It was just his time.

‘What are their names?’

‘Marjory and Nathan.’

‘And what are they like?’

This was a question that could not be answered in my usual short way – not properly – so I opted with: ‘Like normal parents who are suddenly not normal any more.’

She chuckled. ‘That doesn’t sound very normal.’

I nodded. ‘I know.’

Adah seemed intrigued. ‘Tell me something that they’ve done that isn’t normal.’

Part of me didn’t really want to go into details with someone I’d just met, but almost against my will, I could feel examples crowding to the front of my mind, keen to break out. ‘OK,’ I said, slowly, ‘well, there was a time last year, when my dad got me a programme about whales from the video shop in the high street, and it was one of those big video cases with two tapes in. Well, one of the tapes wasn’t the right video. It was this film called something I can’t remember – something like The Heretic but it may have been called something else. Anyway, Mum discovered it just as I was putting it in the machine, and she burned it. Not just the tape, the whole video player. She did it in a bucket in the garden. My dad was furious. It took us months before we got a new player.’

Adah watched intently throughout this story, but once I’d finished she just shrugged. ‘It was probably a naughty film.’

I didn’t feel Adah quite understood what I was trying to say. How the whole thing had been so frightening: how Mum had ripped out the video machine from its sockets; how she’d filled a bucket with some liquid she’d found in the shed; how she’d made the tape machine, with the cassette inside it, burn so bright and with such black smoke that one of the neighbours had threatened to call the fire brigade. Dad had arrived home amidst the chaos. He said it was just a bonfire gone wrong, but once he and Mum were alone they’d had a shrieking row in the kitchen.

‘There have been other things,’ I said, feeling a need to impress upon her the sense of spiralling disorientation I’d felt over the past two years. ‘One time she wouldn’t let me go to school swimming lessons until the local priest came and did something to the swimming pool. I don’t know what she wanted him to do, but in the end my dad told her the priest had visited the pool the previous day and done whatever was needed.’

Again, Adah seemed resolutely unmoved. I couldn’t quite work out if I was frustrated by her or admired her. ‘Well, at least you got to swim,’ she said with a little shrug. ‘I’ve never learned. They tried to teach us at school, but on our first time in the water I got in a scrap with a girl who threw my shoes in the water. We both had to sit on the poolside from then on.’

I nodded, trying to look thoughtful, deciding not to continue trying to make Adah understand the strangeness of my home life.

We walked about her side of the forest for a while until we got to a winding track that clearly led somewhere proper. ‘Where does this go to?’ I asked.

‘To the street, eventually. Where the houses are. But it’s still a long way, even once you’ve got through the trees. It’s where I live. I’m going that way.’

‘I don’t think I should follow. I think my dad would worry if I was away from the house for too long.’ I looked at my little red watch Mum got me for my birthday when I was eight. I wasn’t completely sure what the time was when I left, but I could see at least a couple of hours had passed.

‘Where is your house?’

I turned back, about to point, but then decided it was pointless, since we’d come quite a way and you couldn’t even see the river from here, let alone the house. ‘Back there somewhere. It’s in the middle of the woods. Perhaps not quite the middle, but it feels like it.’

She nodded. ‘The house in the woods. I know it. I didn’t think anyone lived there.’

‘People do now. Us.’

‘I’ll have to come and see it soon.’

She looked as if she was about to say goodbye, but she grabbed me and pulled me off the path and behind a tree. ‘Shhh!’ she said.

‘What?’ I whispered.

She peered out from behind the tree, looked for what felt like a long time, and then pointed. I followed her hand and could see something; something moving. Up a tree. It was climbing up the branches. I couldn’t work out what it was. Was it an animal?

Then it became clear: it was a human. A teenage boy, quite a bit older than me and Adah.

‘Who is it?’ I asked.

‘Levi. He’s always climbing trees.’

I stared at the boy, who was dressed in shorts and a t-shirt that looked rather too summery to be worn at this time of year. He had a thin face, with a harsh jaw. I imagined he could be quite cruel or rough if he wanted, although of course I didn’t have anything to back up this assumption. ‘Does he live in the woods?’ I asked. It seemed like a reasonable question to me – after all, I lived in the woods – but Adah laughed and said ‘No, he doesn’t live in trees. Just climbs them. He lives in one of the houses, not far from me.’

I nodded, even though I still didn’t really know where these houses were. In spite of her descriptions, the woods felt like they took up the whole world, and everything else outside them had vanished as soon as Dad had driven us up that winding road towards our weird cottage.

‘I should go,’ I said.

Adah nodded. ‘OK. Just follow the river to the bridge and you’ll find your way back. Make sure you don’t fall in though. Or touch the water at all.’

I looked at her, confused.

‘It’s evil,’ she explained. ‘One touch of it, and bad things will happen.’

I didn’t like this. It was too similar to what I’d heard Mum say when she came out of the water. Thinking about it made the back of my neck go prickly, so I changed the subject. ‘Is it safe to walk past the Levi boy? Will he throw acorns at me?’

Adah giggled again. ‘It’s safe. And if he follows you, you can always just scream.’

I looked back over at the tree and could see his eyes, little dark holes watching me as I took a few tentative steps away from Adah.

‘All right,’ I nodded. ‘If he follows, I’ll scream.’

I’d never properly screamed before, but as I left Adah and turned to walk back into the depths of the wood, I got the feeling that I might be rather good at it.

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