Chapter 27
All of a sudden, Tilly was awake and not sure why.
Staring up at the ceiling, her eyes were wide open, and every part of her was on high alert.
The Shed and all around it were making horror movie sounds.
A banging somewhere below, a long low howl coming off the water, a whistling through a gap, and underneath all of it the slap and suck of the tide against boards.
The sky above the roof gave a loud grumble, there was a bang and then a crack of thunder.
Tilly felt as if she and the whole building were bracing themselves.
Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm, she chanted to herself on repeat.
Calm was the last thing she felt, though.
Reaching out from under the duvet, she found the lamp cord and pressed the switch.
Nothing. Trying again, still nothing. Nothing but the dark, the racket outside and her heart going like the clappers.
The power cut and raging storm the Darling-ites had darkly predicted were happening right above her head, and Tilly Bloomwood was not keen on it one iota.
In Tilly’s rose-tinted version of the storm she'd cooked up in her head, it had involved a roaring fire, a tipple of something warming and rain on the glass. She’d envisaged herself all cosy and snug, cossetted and comfy, smug as anything about her clever little life by the sea.
What she actually had was no fire, no power, a foghorn the size of Wales going off at intervals, and a flat she'd lived in for not long at all creaking around her like a galleon.
On top of that, she felt afraid, alone and not winning at life.
Three short, mournful blasts went up from the foghorn, and Tilly shivered under the duvet.
Only a few hours earlier, she'd smiled to herself with the thought that the foghorn was rather romantic. Harking back to simpler times and all that. Lying in the pitch dark with the back decking creaking, the windows banging and the roof feeling as if it might blow off, it wasn’t even remotely romantic. Terrifying, more like.
With her mind on overdrive, suddenly she realised that it was a perfect upon perfect time for someone to try and break and enter.
Swiping up on her phone, she tapped the torch button, ready, in the daft theatre of her head, to catch an intruder mid-creep.
The beam swung round the room. No intruder, obviously, just the curtains billowing horizontally into the room, the sash window in its frame doing a dance, and the sounds outside getting louder.
Clicking the switch on the lamp beside her back and forth again, nothing happened.
At least she'd had the wit to charge everything before dinner.
Phone, iPad, laptop, all topped up and ready to save her if need be.
All alone in the dark, suddenly Tilly’s ex-husband Andy was in her head, and she was tumbling through some horrible tunnel back to her marriage.
She’d been betrothed to a coercive control freak who had scared the life out of her in the end.
However, give the man a smidgeon of credit, he had taken charge in a storm and just about everything in her life; the mileometer on her car, the bank statements, what time she got home, what clothes she wore.
She had to admit that in all the years she'd been with him, she hadn't been scared in a storm. Tutting, Tilly shook her head and yanked up her big girl’s pants. She’d rather die in a storm than go back to Andy.
Nothing was as bad as a marriage where her every move was tracked by a little disc in her handbag and documented on a screen.
Tilly tried to remain calm, but it was a gigantic ask because as another boom of thunder clapped, she was not only scared, but blooming well petrified.
The storm was so loud and the room so dark that she felt completely and utterly alone.
On top of that, there was nobody around who really knew her.
At least she'd heeded the advice to batten down and stay put.
Trying to speak sense, Tilly told herself that the buildings on Darling didn't fall into the sea on a regular basis.
None of these buildings had flooded, Otto had said.
Telling herself that the sandbags were precautionary, Tilly jumped as another gust hit, and the foghorn went again, pulled the duvet up over her head, adopted the foetal position and shuddered as a ginormous clap of thunder banged.
Listening to the water, the howls of the wind and the great mournful horn, Tilly wondered if Darling Island was her place.
So far, a lot of things about the shed had been a disappointment, and the whole island itself seemed to have strange customs and superstitions.
Maybe it wasn't the place for her after all.
Perhaps it was just too remote, and she was too on her own.
Perhaps a nice little house with double-glazing, a glorious boiler, a little patch of lawn and a nice strong pavement running along outside was more her cup of tea.
First thing in the morning, power or no power, she'd regroup. Taking stock was another thing her dad had always reiterated. Assess and reassess, he’d always said. Holding that thought, Tilly tried to fall asleep as a horror movie continued to play out above. She didn’t really succeed.