‘Why don’t you get Patricia a cup of tea?’ Alex tried to intervene. She didn’t have to, especially given what had been said. He was never so grateful to hear another voice. ‘She’s had an awful shock, you know that. I’ll stay with Maeve. We’ll go to the study and wait, is that okay?’
Nick looked at his daughter, her pale little face, half-ghost herself. Her arms were wrapped around Alex’s leg like she was clinging to a rock in a storm.
He’d seen the photo of Maeve with the two ghostly figures. The gleam in their eyes. The look on their faces. And he had a really bad feeling about it. He didn’t want to consider what it might mean.
He just wanted his daughter to be safe. He didn’t want to leave her right now.
But Alex was right. Patricia was beside herself and he needed to calm her down first if any of them were going to get anywhere.
‘I won’t let her out of my sight, Nick,’ she said. ‘I promise.’
And he believed her. Alex would look after Maeve, keep her occupied somehow. At least until he could get Patricia calmed down. She would keep her safe.
Patricia drank the tea with a grim determination but finally a wave of exhaustion passed over her and she looked old. Far older than her years.
‘I apologise,’ she said at last, oddly formal with embarrassment now, her eyes the same steely grey as her hair. ‘I-I shouldn’t have said any of that. I don’t know what came over me.’
Nick wanted to say Wildewood Hall but he didn’t dare. She’d have opinions on that and it wasn’t the time. Besides, she’d only just set foot inside the house so that wasn’t an excuse. Not that she needed one, not really. Patricia adored Maeve. She must have been beside herself with fear when she realised her granddaughter was missing.
And maybe the spirits here just latched onto that, ratcheting it up, revelling in her distress. The bastards.
‘No need to apologise. You had a fright, that’s all. And I know she’s a handful.’
‘She’s a joy,’ his mother-in-law said softly. ‘But she’s too like Sally sometimes. Too like my mother as well. Wild. Too full of fancies. It scares me, Nick, the situations she could put herself in. Has put herself in. It’s not right.’
Nick chewed on his lower lip, not sure how to respond to that. ‘She’s just a little girl with an active imagination, Patricia. And yes, Sally and your mother filled her head with stories, but they’re just stories…’
Patricia made a disgruntled ‘pah’ noise.
‘We both know that’s not true. I’ll apologise to Alex. She didn’t deserve that. She doesn’t deserve any of this, even if she is a de Wilde.’
‘Don’t—’ he began, but she waved him to silence.
‘Well, she is. And I can see the effect she has on you. And on this place as well. Right from the first I could see it. I’m from Kilfayne, boy. I may not practise what our foremothers taught, nor set any great stock by it, but I’m not without my own skills. Be careful, Nick. That family…they bring nothing but ruin to us. Even if they don’t mean it. They can’t help themselves. Look at Sally and Theo. Look what they did.’
Nick suppressed a groan. He really didn’t want to bring this up. Especially not with his mother-in-law. ‘They fell in love.’
‘While she wasmarriedto you.’
Nick shrugged awkwardly. He would have thought Patricia would have taken Sally’s side. He’d never dared to bring it up just in case she did. Because Patricia was the closest thing to family he had besides Maeve and he didn’t want to lose her too.
‘It wasn’t their fault,’ he whispered at last. ‘It was this place. This house. It changes people.’
‘Not you.’
He tried to smile. It didn’t work. ‘Me most of all, I think.’
Patricia shook her head, got to her feet and ran a hand over his hair. It was an unexpectedly maternal gesture and Nick didn’t know what to do with it. He just stared at her. ‘I don’t know everything that our Sally did to you, pet, but she didn’t deserve you. Other men would be raging still. But you defend her. Now, I should take her wayward child back home with me. Like you said, this house changes people and I don’t want it changing our girl. She’s too precious for that.’ She paused, thoughtful. ‘Or changing me, for that matter. That wasn’t like me at all. I don’t know what to say. The sooner I’m away the better. Besides, there’s a storm coming in tonight.’
Nick forced himself to grin. She was from Kilfayne after all. ‘Did you smell that on the wind?’
Might as well try to make a joke of it. But Patricia wasn’t laughing. Neither was he.
‘I heard it on the weather report. Like a normal person, thank you very much. Nasty one, I believe, a red warning. Storm Ferdia or some such. Why do they keep giving them names now?’
Nick shrugged again. To make them feel more real, he thought. More of a threat so people would take them seriously. Like the ghosts who lingered here, it was supposed to be easier if they had names rather than left them as faceless, terrifying entities. ‘I should make sure the estate’s secure then.’
‘Always comes first, doesn’t it?’ Patricia muttered. He didn’t know what to say to that. He felt a bit like he’d just been told off.
