The Retreat Read online

  LILY – 2014

  So far, this was the best birthday ever. Lily had a card that said It’s great when you’re eight! and Mum and Dad had bought her the best present she’d ever had: a new bike to replace the one she’d had when she first learned to ride. Back then, Dad had taken her to a field near their old house and taught her how to keep her balance, not letting her give up. It was one of her happiest memories.

  She stood in the park in town, holding the bike by its saddle, just looking at it. It was green – her favourite colour – and there were streamers attached to the handlebars. There was a gift tag attached too, which said, Happy Birthday Lily. All our love, Mum and Dad xxxx. It was awesome.

  ‘So,’ Mum said. ‘Are you going to ride it?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Go on then.’

  Mum made a fuss about whether the saddle was too high and double-checked the brakes, while Dad rolled his eyes. That was typical. They had to argue about everything, even today, the most important day of the year. Lily had been watching them closely lately because they hadn’t had any of their big massive rows about Dad’s drinking, but they made comments to each other all the time. Snip snip, like two pairs of scissors having a fight. Dad was always rolling his eyes when Mum’s back was turned. And Mum said Dad was something-aggressive.

  They still loved each other, though. They had to.

  And they loved her. This morning, they’d both come into Lily’s room with her cards and presents and Dad had given her a big cuddle and told her how happy she made him, and how she was his princess. It was slightly embarrassing, and he smelled a bit weird, like mouldy potatoes or something, but it was still nice.

  ‘Why don’t you do a circuit of the green?’ Mum said. ‘We’ll be able to see you.’

  Lily climbed onto the bike. It was a little bit high and the saddle dug into her bottom, but if she stood on tiptoes it didn’t fall over. It was a cold day and Mum said she needed to wear gloves, but she had taken off her coat because she was hot. The helmet on her head made her hot too, but she definitely wasn’t allowed to take that off.

  ‘Thank you for my bike,’ she said, grinning at them. She licked the big gap in her front teeth.

  ‘You’re very welcome, sweetheart,’ said Mum.

  She pushed off, wobbling at first, almost tilting over before getting her balance. And then she was heading down the path. The bike was smooth and fast. She loved it! She gathered pace as she went round the first bend, and kept going, cruising all the way around the green.

  She passed Mum and Dad, and shouted that she was going to do another circuit.

  Now she was in the swing of it, her mind wandered. It had only been a couple of weeks since she’d gone into the field behind their house, searching for the cat. Chesney, it turned out, had been curled up underneath her bed, safe and sound. But Lily had a bad dream that night. She dreamt she was being chased through the woods, a witch calling her name.

  ‘I only want a taste,’ the witch said. ‘Just a little taste.’

  When she’d told Megan at school about the shape she’d seen in the fog, Megan said it might have been the Widow, but then Charlotte, who was the nosiest girl in their whole class, had butted in and said it was probably a Stranger.

  ‘A Stranger?’ Lily asked.

  ‘Yeah. You know . . .’ Charlotte pointed to a poster on the wall which showed a picture of a grey van with the words STRANGER DANGER! NEVER GO WITH SOMEONE YOU DON’T KNOW.

  ‘A Stranger watching my house?’

  Lily shivered. She had only the vaguest idea of what Strangers did. All she knew was that they took kids and did things to them. She didn’t know what kinds of things. Bad things. That was all she knew.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Charlotte said. ‘As long as you don’t talk to Strangers, they can’t get you.’

  A squirrel dashed across the path in front of her bike. Instinctively, she yanked the handles to the left and the bike swung onto the green and hit the stump of a tree.

  She lost control and fell off.

  It didn’t hurt, not really, but she lay there dazed for a minute, like a cartoon character with stars whirling round its head.

  And then a shadow fell over her. It was a man. He had a bald head and his teeth were all crooked and horrible.

  ‘Are you all right, lass?’ he said.

  She lay on her back, frozen with fear. A Stranger. A Stranger was trying to make her talk to him. He reached out a hand and she understood that he wanted her to take it so he could help her up, but she couldn’t move.

  He crouched beside her. She could see right up his hairy nose.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he said.

  She still couldn’t speak or move. Where were Mum and Dad? What were they doing? Had they left her alone with this Stranger?

  He reached out a fat-fingered hand towards the handlebars of her fallen bike, and read the gift tag.

  ‘Lily,’ he said. ‘That’s a lovely name. Lily.’

  At that moment, she heard her mum’s voice, and her dad’s, and there they were, next to her, eyes full of worry.

  ‘I think she’s fine,’ said the Stranger. ‘Just a little bump, that’s all.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said her mum, for some reason, and the Stranger walked away. Mum was fussing over her, helping her sit up, and Dad was checking the bike, making sure the wheels hadn’t buckled or something.

  Neither of them saw the Stranger look over his shoulder and wink at her.

  Chapter 14

  My parents moved to Spain ten years ago, shortly after they retired. A lovely whitewashed villa in Alicante, a short walk from the Mediterranean. Mum was always telling me I should go out there, spend some time in the sun – after all, it wasn’t as if I had an office job – and I thought about it often. The problem was, Britain’s gloom suited my writing, and hot weather made me torpid and lazy.

  I had been out there only once since my dad’s funeral. I’d been shocked when Mum told me the cremation was going to take place in Spain, but she insisted it was where he was happiest. Dad wanted his ashes scattered over a warm sea, somewhere beautiful. It made sense, even if it meant the ceremony was sparsely attended – just immediate family and a few of their ex-pat mates. I was less surprised when Mum told me she was staying in Spain. ‘Why would I come back to rainy Britain? I intend to stay here till I’m too old to look after myself. At which point I’ll chuck myself off a cliff.’

  She was like that, my mum.

  These days, we mostly spoke via Skype. Unlike the stereotype of people in their seventies, she was au fait with technology. She ran a group on Facebook for crafting enthusiasts, knitters and embroiderers, and was on Instagram and Twitter. She was always Instagramming photos of her latest creations.

  The night before, I had gone to sleep thinking about Julia and Lily, along with what Zara had told me about the local legend. Now, as sunlight filled the room, I opened Skype and saw that Mum was online. I hit the call button and her tanned face appeared on the screen.

  ‘Lucas! Speak of the devil! I was just talking about you with Jean.’ Jean was Mum’s closest neighbour. ‘She wants to know when your next book’s out. She loved Sweetmeat, though she said it gave her the willies.’

  ‘Have you read it yet?’

  Mum was usually my number-one fan, but Sweetmeat had come out just after Dad’s death. She’d told me she couldn’t handle anything darker than a Jilly Cooper but that she’d read it eventually.

  ‘I will. Soon. You look pale. Are you eating properly?’

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  She worried about me, especially since Priya’s death. ‘Where are you? That doesn’t look like your flat.’

  ‘I’m in Beddmawr.’

  The look on her face was priceless. ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘Just outside Beddmawr, actually. A place called Nyth Bran.’

  ‘Where the old mine used to be?’

  ‘Yes. It’s a writers’ retreat now. I’m here trying to finish my new book
. “Trying” being the operative word.’

  I had expected her to be pleased that I had returned to the place where I was born, especially as it was her home town, but she frowned. ‘Well. I never expected you to go back there.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She seemed flustered, which was unusual for her. In that moment, she seemed older, giving me a glimpse of what she might be like in a decade or two. ‘You were so young when we left there, I didn’t think you’d remember it. Not properly, anyway. As soon as we moved to Birmingham, it was as if Beddmawr never existed.’

  ‘That’s the thing. I don’t remember it. Hardly any of it. I have the occasional flash of memory. But most of it’s lost.’

  She sipped from a glass of water. ‘That’s normal. I don’t remember the first six or seven years of my life either. And Beddmawr is hardly the most memorable place.’

  Keen to get the conversation back on track, I said, ‘There’s a guy here, a handyman, who remembers you. Rhodri Wallace.’

  ‘Wallace? It doesn’t ring a bell. But it was a long time ago, Lucas. All I remember of those days is looking after you. Oh, you were a difficult child. Did I tell you that you used to come into our bed every night till you were five?’

  ‘Only about a thousand times.’

  ‘I was so exhausted all the time, it’s a miracle I can remember anything about that period. It’s a great fuzzy blur.’ She took another sip of water. ‘My goodness, it’s hot here today. You should come over, treat this place as a writing retreat, get some vitamin D while you’re here . . .’

  Was I imagining it, or was she deliberately trying to change the subject from her home town? Thinking about it, she hardly ever mentioned the place. She never had done. Apart from the paintings of Wales that hung on her wall, and her lingering accent, she hardly acknowledged the old country. Why had I never noticed that before?

  I was trying to think of a way of broaching this topic when she said, ‘I wonder if they ever found that little girl?’

  Shocked, I said, ‘What little girl?’

  ‘I can’t remember her name but I saw it on the news a couple of years ago. They thought she fell into the Dee.’

  ‘Lily Marsh.’

  Now it was her turn to look surprised. ‘Oh, you heard about it too.’

  I lowered my voice, worried that Julia might overhear. ‘Yes, I know about it. And no, she hasn’t been found.’

  Mum shook her head. ‘Terrible. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it had happened again.’

  ‘What?’

  The picture was growing fuzzier, the connection breaking up. My mother’s face was pixelated. I wished I could pull her through the screen so I could talk to her properly.

  ‘You won’t remember. You were too little. A little girl went missing in Beddmawr when we still lived there.’

  ‘When did this happen?’ I asked.

  ‘Shortly before we moved away. Around 1980?’

  I made a note in the pad on my desk.

  ‘It was terrible,’ she went on. ‘They never found her or the person who took her.’ The picture was really breaking up now.

  ‘What was her name?’

  ‘I can’t remember. Oh, what was it? I’m sure she lived in the children’s home, didn’t have any parents . . .’

  The picture froze, my mother on-screen with her mouth half-open.

  ‘Mum, can you still hear me?’

  Bad connection appeared on screen and the call ended. I tried to reconnect but it rang out. This happened sometimes. The Internet in Mum’s villa was painfully unreliable.

  I went to Google and typed in ‘missing child Beddmawr 1980’. There were no results, presumably because news websites hadn’t existed in those days. Some newspapers have searchable archives online, but a lot of them are hidden behind paywalls and aren’t indexed by search engines.

  Still, I thought it shouldn’t be too hard to find out.

  I called Zara’s mobile. It rang half a dozen times, then went to voicemail. I left a brief message asking her to call me back, but as I did so I wondered if all this was a distraction. Surely the disappearance of a child over thirty years ago couldn’t be connected to what had happened to Lily? If there was a serial child abductor or murderer out there, there certainly wouldn’t be such a long gap between his crimes.

  Even so, I felt uneasy, and it took me a minute to realise why. I had written a book about children going missing, and the landscape in that book was eerily similar to the landscape of Beddmawr. I had been six in 1980. The adults around me must have talked about a child going missing. They had probably said something about it at school too. I had no memory of it, but it was feasible that my subconscious had retained and – eventually – leaked this information into my novel.

  But that didn’t help with the investigation into what had happened to Lily. After singing ‘Happy Birthday’ with Julia the night before, I wanted to help her more than ever. But I hadn’t actually got anywhere, not really.

  The truth was, I was stuck. And if Zara didn’t call me with some groundbreaking news soon, I figured it was time to give up and go back to the most obvious solution.

  Lily had drowned. End of story.

  I spent the afternoon working on my novel, immersing myself in the new world I was creating. It was hard going. The cries of missing children kept piercing the surface, echoing through the text, trying to drown out the story I wanted to tell. I had situated my fictional family in the hut in the middle of the woods, with monsters closing in. A stranger had joined them, a young woman who tried to persuade them they needed to go somewhere safer, somewhere far away.

  I kept being drawn back to the section I couldn’t remember writing, the part about people going door to door looking for a child. Had I come up with a brilliant idea while drunk; an idea that had died during the night? I tried to dig into my memory but it was exhausting.

  Every so often, I checked my phone. There was no word from Zara. I tried to call her but she didn’t answer.

  At around four, I looked out through the window and saw Karen in the front garden, pacing about with her back to me. She was gesticulating as if she were having a conversation with someone. I thought perhaps she was on the phone, using an earpiece. Or maybe she was speaking dialogue from her book aloud. I knew a few writers who did that. She seemed agitated, anyway, but I decided to leave her be. No doubt she would tell me all about it over dinner. I had decided not to go to the pub this evening; I’d had enough of Max and needed a break from him, plus I was still off alcohol. At forty-two, my hangovers lingered for days, and the black hole in my memory from my evening in the pub made me uneasy. The guilt and the fear, they called it, and I was suffering from it big time.

  At seven I went down for dinner. Max and Suzi were at the table, chatting.

  ‘Where’s Karen?’ I asked.

  Max ignored me. I guessed he was still sulking after I’d had a go at him, last night before I’d found Julia with the birthday cake.

  ‘We haven’t seen her,’ Suzi said.

  Julia came into the dining room with a couple of bottles of mineral water. She gave me a little smile, then said, ‘Karen told me she’s not feeling well, so she’s having an early night.’

  After dinner, I went back to my room to work, then went to bed.

  Yet again, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about Zara, wondering why she hadn’t called me back and wasn’t answering her phone. Then I started thinking about Julia and Lily and my book, a jumble of thoughts going round and round like clothes in a tumble dryer.

  It must have been 1 a.m. when I eventually drifted into sleep.

  I was immediately woken by a scream.

  Chapter 15

  I jumped out of bed and pulled on some trousers. I was sure the scream had come from upstairs.

  My first thought was that something terrible had happened to Julia. I took the stairs two at a time, panting as I reached the landing. With every step, I saw flashes:

  Priya, with her scraped and
bloody face.

  Lily, arms windmilling as she fell with a splash into the river.

  Blood oozing from a hole in my bedroom wall.

  Julia was there on the landing, wearing a dressing gown, her hair sticking out at crazy angles.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I panted. ‘I heard a scream and thought . . .’

  She looked me up and down. I must have looked wild-haired too. And wild-eyed. ‘It wasn’t me,’ she said. ‘I think it came from Karen’s room.’

  Suzi’s door, which was opposite Karen’s, opened and she emerged, wearing a pair of pink silk pyjamas. A moment later, Max stuck his head out of the same door, saw us all standing there and quickly vanished. Suzi blushed.

  Gently, Julia tapped on Karen’s door. ‘Karen? Are you okay?’

  A high-pitched yell came from inside the room, followed by banging and another scream, one that started anguished and ended with fury.

  The door was unlocked and Julia opened it and rushed inside, Suzi and I following.

  Both doors of Karen’s wardrobe stood wide open and I couldn’t see Karen at first. But then I heard her shout, ‘Where are you? Where the fuck are you?’ A pair of trousers flew across the room, landing on the bed, followed by a black shoe. As we entered the room we saw Karen, leaning into the wardrobe and yelling as if she’d discovered Narnia but the door to the magical kingdom had slammed shut.

  Julia tried to take Karen’s arm, but Karen shook her off and carried on rifling through the wardrobe, chucking stuff behind her like a crazed poltergeist. A coat hanger missed my ear by an inch.

  ‘Do something,’ Suzi said, and I stepped forward.

  ‘Karen,’ I said, ‘what is it? What are you looking for?’

  She didn’t seem to notice me, so I said it again. I put a hand on her shoulder and she went stiff, then turned and stared at me with wild eyes. Her body was rigid, as if she were afraid to breathe; her knuckles were white where she gripped a coat she’d been about to chuck across the bedroom.

  ‘They were in here,’ she whispered. ‘I heard them.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  She didn’t respond. But at least she’d stopped pulling items out of the wardrobe.