‘Why?’
I shrug. ‘Like I told you. It’s dangerous.’
He rolls his eyes.
‘And you saw that note, Ethan. I’m scared. What if someone’s out to hurt us?’
‘It’s just a note. A friendly note. You’re reading too much into it.’ He grabs the butter and starts spreading it on his bread.
I have so much to worry about but my secret will remain just that. I can’t talk to Ethan about why I won’t allow Morgan to go into the woods, but I can talk about the use of the word fall in that note. ‘Look at it.’ I throw it onto the worktop in front of the packet of cooked chicken that he’s about to put in his sandwich.
‘You’ve already made me look at it. I don’t see anything wrong except they forgot to put their name at the end.’
‘They want me to fall like Aunt Dorette did.’ I pause. ‘I think she was pushed.’
He cuts his bread and places the knife in the sink, then he lets out a slow breath. ‘The police would have investigated. They concluded that she fell.’
‘But you don’t know that. No one knows.’ I can’t believe he keeps saying the same thing. Now Morgan has left, our voices are raised. Cora’s jaw begins to wobble and she runs to the settee and throws herself onto it. I chase after her and kneel to her level.
‘Come here, Sweetie.’
She shakes her head and ignores me for her blanket, which she snuggles into. ‘Want Mog.’
I leave Cora for a moment and hurry back to Ethan. We look at each other and he opens his arms. I hug him closely.
‘Gemma, is there something you’re not telling me?’
I stay where I am and hold him closely. ‘No, I just don’t want to be here.’
The burden of the past I’m carrying will easily contaminate what we have if I let it. I need to rein my worries in and find out who wrote that note and sent the hamper. At the very least it will put my mind at rest. My heart beats against Ethan’s. As I glance over his shoulder, I catch sight of the woods through the window and I’m scared my daughter will go into them and never come back.
Six
Morgan
Relieved to be out of that house, I take a deep breath. On looking up, I can’t see that any of the windows or doors are open. Maybe it was an animal, a rogue badger or a fox. My line of sight falls on the balcony and I try not to think too hard about what might be in the house. My mind is back on the ghost theory. I know I’m being silly but I don’t have any evidence that ghosts don’t exist. I shake those thoughts away before I scare myself silly. My mind is seriously running away with me. The cause of the noises in the house will be wildlife or a breeze carried from the broken window, or both at the same time.
The air is cold but fresh. My heartrate steadies and I hope I don’t look flustered. As I tread the snowy path, I leave my footprints behind. The houses here are different to those on our old road back home in Bristol. These are all unique, architect designed, as my mum and dad would say. The house I’m heading to is the one at the entrance to Clover Lane with the same standard cutesy white fence that edges each drive – except ours. Ours is rotten. I wonder if the boy is still there.
The woman next door with the short black hair reverses off her drive in a small red car. I smile as she changes gear, but she ignores me. She pulls over by her post box and starts checking her phone.
I turn on my useless phone. I hate not having Wi-Fi. I tentatively see if there’s an open network close by that I can use, and there is one with a super long mix of letters and numbers.
The woman gets out and checks her post box. I run over.
‘Hi, I’ve just moved in with my parents next door. Is this your Wi-Fi?’ I show her my phone.
She frowns as she heads back to her car. ‘Yes.’
‘Can I please log in, just to make a call? We haven’t got Wi-Fi yet.’ It feels desperate asking a random for their Wi-Fi code, but I’m so cut off here.
She scrunches up her nose. ‘Sorry, it’s not something I’m comfortable doing.’ She gets in her car and speeds off. How rude. It was worth a try.
After walking up the path a little, I hear a scraping noise then a car engine bursts into life. I watch as a huge black four-wheel drive pulls out from where I saw the boy working. It leaves the lane and the scraping has stopped. Maybe the boy has finished and gone back inside. I hurry, trying not to slip on the compacted snow.
The boy trudges around the corner, leaving the house behind. He glances up and smiles. ‘Hi.’ He waves.
‘Hi.’ Now, I didn’t say anything to my parents but I think he was hanging around our house when I went out to phone Mai. He was walking away, up the path, and then he started shovelling snow off that drive. I wonder if he left the hamper for us. Maybe it was a gift from his parents. I cross over.
