36
36
‘I can’t wait for you to see it.’
Emma was behind the wheel, Rose beside her in the passenger seat. Fiona leaned forward, head between the two front seats. She was finding it hard to keep her enthusiasm in check – both for the place they were going to visit, and for what was going to happen later. Her insides fizzed and her palms hurt from where she kept clenching her fists, fingernails digging into her flesh.
‘It’s so nice to have a day out, the three of us,’ Emma said. ‘Maybe I should ask my boss if I could take the rest of the summer off, take a sabbatical. Would you like that, Rose?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Thanks for the enthusiasm.’
So far today, they’d driven out to Bluewater to do some shopping, which had been fascinating and educational for Fiona. Rose needed new stationery for the coming school term, plus new shoes and a few items of uniform. She’d dragged her feet around the enormous shopping mall, complaining about the uniform she had to wear – the clumpy, unfashionable shoes. She begged Emma to buy her Doc Martens but Emma said they were too expensive and non-regulation, and then Rose wanted an extortionately priced Swedish backpack because all the other girls at school had them, but Emma told her she should be happy with the one she already had, which led Rose to make the statement: ‘You’re the worst mother ever.’
When she’s mine , Fiona thought, she’ll get a slap if she talks to me like that. More than a slap.
Rose went off to buy a bubble tea and Emma let out a deep sigh. ‘She’s hard work at the moment. Flipping heck.’
‘I’d have been grounded for a month if I’d spoken to my parents like that.’
‘Yeah. Me too. I’m trying to cut her some slack. The house move was difficult for her and we haven’t spent that much time together recently. I have to remind myself how awful it was being twelve with all those hormones wreaking havoc.’
‘Hmm.’
If only Emma knew. It was a lot more than hormones. It was brain chemistry. It was nature.
It was the way things were meant to be.
‘You know,’ Emma went on, ‘I found one of my lipsticks in her pocket. I don’t mind her borrowing my stuff, but it was the fact she did it without asking and then lied about it. I guess I have to put that down to hormones too.’
Fiona pulled her sympathetic face. She’d slipped that lipstick into Rose’s pocket for no reason other than to cause mischief, hoping it would create tension between mother and daughter – presuming Emma did the laundry and checked her kids’ pockets before putting stuff into the washing machine. It seemed like her plan had worked perfectly.
After the shopping trip, Rose was starving, so they went to her favourite chain restaurant, Wagamama, but there was an enormous queue to get in and then service was excruciatingly slow. Rose complained throughout, especially when Emma and Fiona’s food appeared first, by which point Rose had already finished the expensive glass of juice she’d ordered.
‘I’m thirsty. I want another one of these.’
Fiona watched Emma’s grip on her chopsticks tighten. ‘Rose, just have some water.’
‘But I want the juice. Oh God, I’m so hungry, I’m actually going to die.’
Fiona glared at her, trying to communicate silently, to tell her to cool it. She needed to be chilled out today. Calm. But Rose glared back and said, ‘It’s all right for you. You’ve got yours.’
Emma said, ‘Rose, don’t talk to Fiona like that. You’re so rude.’
‘She doesn’t care. Do you, Fiona?’
Fiona pictured herself emptying her bowl of ramen over the girl’s head. She really was going to get a shock in the near future. She had a lot to learn about blending in.
‘I want you to apologise,’ Emma said.
‘No.’
‘Say sorry, now!’
‘It’s okay,’ Fiona said. ‘She’s tired and I’m fine.’
‘I want her to apologise. She’s been acting like a brat all day and needs to stop talking to people like that.’
‘But I’m starving!’ Rose cried out, throwing out her hands as she said it and knocking over Emma’s drink, a non-alcoholic beer. The liquid sploshed across the bench and Emma leapt up, swearing, then went in search of napkins.
Fiona leaned across the table and hissed, ‘Calm down. Stop acting like a little bitch.’
At that, Rose shot her daggers. But she did seem to cool down.
Now, in the car, Fiona wondered what was happening back on the estate – if Iris’s body had been found yet. Overnight, she had disposed of the clothes she’d been wearing when she and Rose visited the old lady, along with all the stuff she’d taken to make it look like a burglary. It almost made her sad, watching the jewellery and records as they sunk into the dark water, thinking about how much money she could have got for them. The engagement ring she’d pulled from Iris’s cold, bony finger must have been worth at least a couple of grand on its own. A shame.
She couldn’t help but smile, though, thinking how horrified Ethan would be if he knew the vinyl he loved so much was lying at the bottom of a lake, the sleeves turning to mush, all that money dissolving in the cold depths.
She hadn’t yet decided what she would do with his record collection.
‘How much further?’ Rose asked.
‘Just half an hour, according to the satnav,’ Emma said. She turned her head for a second to glance at Fiona. ‘We really are out in the sticks here. Would you really enjoy living this far out in the countryside? I don’t think I could bear it. In fact, when the kids are grown-up I’m planning to persuade Ethan to move back into London, if we can afford it. I want to be able to walk to a decent coffee shop or a theatre or some nice shops. A place where I don’t have to drive.’
Fiona tuned out, even though she knew on an intellectual level it was kind to allow Emma to fantasise about a future with Ethan.
‘There’s going to be a storm,’ Rose said, out of nowhere.
‘Are you sure?’ asked Emma, gesturing out the window at the blue sky. The fluffy white clouds. ‘It’s a lovely day.’
‘I’m sure. I can feel it.’ A pause. ‘Can I use your phone to take a photo? You know the camera on mine is rubbish.’
‘Sure.’ Emma passed her phone to Rose. This, Fiona was confident, was where Rose would do what they’d arranged earlier, and delete herself and her mum from the tracking app the Dove family used. We don’t want your dad turning up during our outing, spoiling everything , she’d explained.
While Rose took some photos of the sky and did what they’d arranged, the satnav instructed them to take the next left, and Emma turned off, driving through a small village with narrow streets that was dominated by a huge church. Fiona spotted a black dog sitting alone in the churchyard, watching them as they went by.
Soon, they found themselves driving past fields full of cows, most of them lying down, which made Rose say, ‘I told you,’ although the sky was still clear and blue.
‘You’re going to have to direct me now,’ Emma said, because Fiona hadn’t been able to give the exact address. ‘Do you know how to find it?’
‘Of course. Take a right here.’
They drove up a lane that was only wide enough for a single vehicle, with farmland on either side, one containing more resting cows and the other lying fallow. The lane curved around blind corners, with mirrors in place to avoid collisions.
‘You’re actually a good driver,’ she heard herself saying as they continued along the lane.
Emma laughed. ‘Er ... thanks. Did you think I wouldn’t be?’
‘Oh. No, I just think I heard Ethan say something about your driving once.’
‘What? Really? That’s a bloody cheek. Though I guess it’s from when we had our Land Rover. It had really awkward gears – there was something wrong with the transmission – so I was always stalling it coming out of neutral into first. But he did too. We only had that stupid car for a couple of months.’
A couple of months. A faulty transmission. Such bad luck. Somehow, this made it even worse. They had known the vehicle was faulty, yet still chose to drive around in it without caring about how much inconvenience, disruption or – in Fiona and Maisie’s case – life-changing catastrophe they caused.
‘We’re almost there. You’ll reach a crossroads in a minute. Go right.’
The crossroads appeared. A faded wooden sign pointed in three directions, the kind of place where one might do a deal with the Devil. Straight ahead and right would take you to a pair of hamlets. The left pointer was marked Ravenhill 1m .
‘Ravenhill?’ Emma said. ‘Is that the name of the nearest village?’
Fiona made a non-committal noise, not wanting to spoil the surprise. She genuinely wanted Emma to see the place that she had fantasised about so much. Mostly, though, she wanted Rose to see it. Rose who, she knew, was still itching to hear the answer to her question from last night. Because Fiona had promised to reveal all on this trip.
It was going to be such a surprise.
And then they were driving into the woods, all the trees with their leaves in their finest green splendour. To Fiona, it was like entering a fairy tale, one in which she was sometimes the princess, sometimes the wicked queen. A place of poison apples and hidden treasure; of beasts and beauty. The road narrowed even further until it was little more than a track, foliage crowding in on either side, and Fiona said, ‘Pull up here. We’ll have to go the rest of the way on foot.’
Emma stopped the car and turned her head. ‘You’re joking.’
‘No. It’s overgrown and not suitable for cars at the moment.’ She opened the back door. ‘Come on. You’re going to love it.’
Rose opened her door at the same time and got out, standing beneath the trees and looking around. Fiona wondered if she could feel it too – the charge that hung in the air here, the dark energy. It caressed her, like fingertips stroking her skin and making all the tiny hairs stand on end.
Emma sat behind the wheel for a few more seconds, shaking her head, then got out. She looked at Fiona like this was a strange practical joke of which Emma was the victim.
‘The place you wanted to show me is here ? You said it was your dream home.’
‘Oh, it is,’ said Fiona. ‘Follow me and I’ll show you. Amazing here, isn’t it?’
She pushed aside a low-hanging branch, ducking beneath it so she could follow the path, with Rose and Emma behind her.
‘Amazing?’ Emma sounded incredulous. ‘It’s creepy AF. Also, you could have warned me. I’m not wearing the right kind of shoes.’
Fiona looked back and down at Emma’s Converse. ‘They’re fine. The ground is dry.’
‘I think Rose is right, though,’ Emma said. ‘It’s going to rain.’
The sky was hardly visible above the canopy of trees, but the slivers of blue between the branches had been replaced by glimpses of deep grey clouds. Fiona wasn’t bothered by that. In fact, heavy rain might help her. Making surfaces slippery. Accidents more likely to happen.
They continued along the overgrown path, Fiona pushing aside vegetation, occasionally stopping to hold a branch so Rose could get by without scraping her head. The further they went, the stronger the charge of dark energy. She felt it enter her, slide beneath her skin and heat up her blood. She had to be careful: Maisie always told her that when she got overexcited she would make low, animal noises in her throat, ones she wasn’t even aware of. She didn’t want to freak Emma out and make her turn tail.
She glanced back at Rose, wondering what she was thinking. She looked grumpy, like any child forced to go on a hike by her parents. It was a shame she couldn’t feel the energy of this place too, though one day she would understand. After today, it would always be special to her.
‘I can see light,’ Emma said from behind Fiona, and she was right. The path opened up and suddenly they were standing in a clearing – and looking at a wire fence that blocked the way. The fence was almost completely covered with creepers and long green tendrils that had wrapped themselves around the metal, obscuring the view beyond.
‘Oh,’ Emma said. ‘What a shame.’
But Fiona had already moved to the left. It had been years since she’d come here, but she would be amazed if they’d fixed the fence. She just needed to remember where she had cut through last time. She patted at the vegetation, pulled some away, searching for the spot, remembering it was low down ...
Here it was! She yanked at the creepers, then lifted the section of fence to reveal a gap, big enough to crawl through. She grinned at Rose and said, ‘After you.’
‘Rose,’ Emma said. ‘Wait . . .’
But it was too late. Rose had pushed her way through and now stood on the other side, taking a few steps up a steep slope.
Now Emma looked pissed off. ‘Rose, get back here. You can’t ...’ She turned to Fiona. ‘What is this place? It must be private property. This is trespassing. Did you cut this hole in the fence?’
‘Stop stressing,’ Fiona said. ‘The company that owned this place went bankrupt during the pandemic. It’s public land now.’
Emma looked sceptical, as well she might. As far as Fiona knew, ownership of this land had passed back into the hands of the local council. Though didn’t that mean it belonged to the people?
‘I just want you to see it,’ Fiona said. ‘Come on. We’ve come all this way.’
Tutting, Emma put her hands on her hips. ‘I’m not happy about this. I’m going in there to get Rose and then we’re heading back.’ She crawled through the gap, complaining about the dirt as she went, then stood and called for Rose, who had disappeared from sight.
Fiona watched Emma climb the bank, still shouting her daughter’s name, then scrambled up after her.
Emma had caught up with Rose and they were standing at the crest of the slope, looking at the huge, crumbling building before them, with its half-collapsed roof and smashed windows and peeling paintwork and the ivy creeping up the red brick. As they stared, a pigeon emerged from one of the windows and flew into the trees. The once-pristine lawn was a tangle of weeds and knee-high grass. The front door hung off its hinges. And the sign that read Ravenhill was thick with moss, obscuring most of the letters.
‘What the hell is this place?’ Emma asked.
A beatific smile lit up Fiona’s face.
‘Home,’ she replied.