Chapter 68
FAYE
We sleep uneasily. Owls and foxes screech throughout the night.
I’ve never known pitch black before, and at any moment I expect someone to bang on the windows of the van.
Claire lies next to me, clutching the big kitchen knife.
It may make her feel safer but it doesn’t offer me any comfort whatsoever.
When sleep eventually pulls me under, it does not provide the rest I need. I dream of pale faces made wet by rain. Claire staggering across my driveway, breaking into my house.
Magnus and Dina on the moors, the rain sheeting down, an open grave behind them. Penny lying unconscious or dead, ready to be buried.
I wake with a start.
“Can’t sleep?” Claire asks.
“No. You?”
“Not a wink.”
The sky is lightening now, and we decide to get back out on the road.
We drive along in silence for over an hour, both feeling the weight of anticipation, until Claire finally speaks.
“You know, I did try with Magnus. For years I tried to be his mother, to be patient and kind and look past every way he tried to hurt me. But that wasn’t the point. He never wanted a mother, I think he just wanted to practise being cruel.”
I look over at my sister, her face etched with pain as she speaks. Between Magnus and Jack, it seems the past thirty years have been very hard on her.
“You see, that’s the thing with Magnus. He takes pleasure in hurting people. He enjoys it. And he wants me dead. Which is why I have to act first. If I don’t, he will torment me forever.”
I nod. I believe every word because I’ve seen his brutality with my own eyes.
“I know you may not agree – many people wouldn’t – but it’s something I have to do.
I can’t bear the thought of the police never catching him, or him going to prison and getting out after a few years for good behaviour.
He will make it his life’s mission to make the rest of our lives miserable.
He learned everything he knows from his father. ”
I turn to her. “I understand. And I’m with you all the way. I will never forgive that bastard for what he’s done to my daughter.”
We look into each other’s eyes for a second.
A lightning rod shoots up my back. When I look at Claire I see Marigold. The darker half of the Palmer Twins. The girl who dies and becomes a ghost.
The thought makes me shiver.
We’re on a dangerous path, she and I, one from which I intend to return, though I can’t say for sure that I will.
Claire’s eyes glisten. Her energy is something I want to consume. We need each other. We could be more powerful together if we can channel this. I know it deep down in my bones, like I always knew I wasn’t alone, that there was someone else out there just like me.
It’s almost like an omen, this realisation. We’re going to get my daughter back.