Prologue
The moment I turn my key in the lock, I know something’s wrong. As I open the door, I realise it’s because there are no lights on. It’s dusk outside and I can’t see much in here. I was hoping that my daughter would be in because I need to give her a big hug. I’ve missed her. ‘Hello, I’m home,’ I say. Maybe she’s in her room with her headphones on. She might not be able to hear me. I hurry upstairs to check but she’s not there. That’s when I spot a note on her bedside table.
My heart bangs hard as I creep towards it.
Gone to hang out at Clover Lane woods with a mate. Be back in a couple of hours.
She’s dated it at the top, like she always used to do in her school homework diary. That date is two days ago. My banging heart is trying to burst out of my chest. Clover Lane – with a mate – I know the girl my daughter is referring to and I expressed that I didn’t want her to hang around with that so-called friend anymore. I grab the home phone and call the girl’s house but no one answers. She must be staying at their house and… where’s my husband? He said I could trust him and that he’d stopped drinking, but the emptiness of the house tells me that he’s failed in his promise. He said he’d take care of her while I got myself better. I stroke my belly and feel a twinge of pain. I thought I’d done the right thing by going away for a short while. I needed to do it for the little life growing inside me.
After snatching my bag from the hallway, I start running towards the girl’s house. I told my daughter she was never to go into those woods because a man died there in a wooden shack that everyone calls the den. The neighbours are outside, some check their post boxes, others are walking dogs. They can see I’m flustered. ‘Can you help me?’ I go to speak to them but they brush me off like I’m something disgusting that they don’t want to touch. I only wanted to ask them if they’d seen her.
I start jogging down the drive of her friend’s house. The lights are on which means when I called there must have been someone home. A sharp pain stabs at my stomach again. I reach down to support my belly and in doing so I trip on an uneven slab; I fall with a thud and hit my head on the porch step.
I don’t know how long I’ve been unconscious but I prise my eyes open and there’s a woman staring down at me. ‘My daughter, is she with your daughter?’ I’m slurring and my vision prickles. I place my hand over my stomach, knowing that landing like that has hurt me in more ways than one, but I swallow the lump in my throat, not wanting to believe anything bad has happened. She’s going to tell me that my daughter is in her house and all will be okay.
‘You should go home. You’re making a fool of yourself.’
‘My daughter…’ I want to see that she’s okay or, if not, we need to call the police but this woman is staring at me. I can’t get my words out. It’s like I’m choking on them.
‘I know what kind of mother you are, your daughter talks, you know. You need to go home and sort yourself out. You’re an embarrassing mess.’
Tears slip down my face. Pain sears through my stomach so I grip it and yell, ‘Call the police, please, and I need an ambulance.’ I don’t know if all that came out right. ‘My daughter… my baby… where is she?’
‘I’ll call you an ambulance,’ she says coldly.
I can’t stop my sobbing. I tried my best. I tried to do better.
As I slip into unconsciousness, I hear her voice again but this time it sounds like I’m under water. I don’t know if it’s the woman speaking or someone else, or did I imagine it? It sends chills through me. I’m sinking. The world is going black again and I can’t stop it. I will never forget those words.
It’s all your fault. If you never see her again, it’s because you are a bad mother. You bad, bad, mother.
One
Gemma
Aunt Dorette is dead. It has been six months since her death and now I’m with my family in our pickup on a dreary Sunday heading to Clover House, a place I swore I’d never, ever return to. I shiver and not because it’s a chilly late January afternoon.
‘Has someone just walked over your grave?’ Ethan glances over at me, then his gaze returns to the road. ‘We can turn the heating up even more if you’re cold?’ His wispy brown hair waves about as the warm air blowing from the vents catches it.
It’s so hot in here, I think I’m going to bake. Our trusty vehicle is lovely and toastie, despite it being freezing outside. ‘I can’t stop thinking about the accident and the fact we’re going to be living in the same house she died in.’ From how the police described the scene, I picture my aunt lying dead on the path after falling through her rickety balcony – then there’s the woods. My palms start to sweat as panic builds inside of me.
Ethan flashes me a sympathetic smile.
I think of that rusty railing. It was a death hazard all those years ago, back when I used to stay with her as a child and then as a teen. She obviously never got it fixed.
The police concluded that it was an accident, so here we are, driving up to Whitby, and we’re going to live in the very house I never wanted to go back to.
I try really hard not to resent Ethan. Our eighteen-month-old baby girl, Cora, makes a cute little sound. I worry that she’ll wake or need a nappy change, but I live in hope that she won’t, not yet at least. We take the A64 road to York. There’s still miles and miles to go. Our fourteen-year-old daughter, Morgan, bops her head in time to a beat. It’s no use saying anything to her while she has her earphones on.
Sadness washes through me as I think about poor Aunt Dorette again. She would have loved to meet Cora and Morgan. My aunt wrote to me on many occasions, inviting us all up to Whitby to see her, but I’d reply with lies, telling her that we were too busy, because going back was always out of the question for me. I admired how she still wrote letters. In the age of email and messaging apps, my aunt shunned it all for this traditional method of keeping in touch.
I loved my aunt and I hope she knew that. She lived alone and was a recluse from what I know. Mum used to take me to stay with her through the summers and she’d tell me that Aunt Dorette wasn’t always well, that she was very sad. I now understand that my aunt was depressed. It hurts to think that she could’ve been so lonely she might have taken her own life. I think back to some nicer memories. She used to wear long woolie cardies that dusted the floor. She had a door plaque that she made herself on a ceramics course and it had a four-leaf clover on it, for luck, she said, and now I see the irony. That house killed her, which makes it a bad luck house, and now I’m returning to that death trap with all its ghosts, taking my darling children with me. I glance at my daughters again and I know they can never be allowed to go into the woods.
‘There’s a sign for Whitby,’ Ethan says as he gives my knee a little squeeze.
‘Yuck, gross, get a room,’ Morgan says as she turns to look out of the window.
I smile and glance back at Cora who has dribbled a little, so I reach over and use my finger to wipe her chin. She thrusts a hand out but her eyes are still closed. She makes me melt with happiness. Even when she’s tugging at my dark curly hair and it hurts, I still smile.
