The Lighthouse Witches(11)

Luna doesn’t have a Facebook page for her mother. She has a single photograph of Liv, sent by her uncle, that she keeps in her bedside drawer. Her mother is kneeling by a canvas propped on an easel on the stern of the houseboat where they lived for a while. She’s wearing old dungarees covered in paint, and her brown hair is worn in two girlish ponytails. She’s slim, with tattoos on both arms, and her face is turned to the camera in a wide smile, as though she’s laughing with the photographer about the painting she’s doing. In the corner of the frame, Luna can make out a child of around eighteen months old, wearing just a nappy. She’s never been able to work out if the child in the photograph is her or Clover.

The photos and video were donated by old school friends from Bristol and York. Sapphire’s page has only two pictures that Luna had managed to source from the school. One is a good-quality school photo from Year Seven in which Saffy is smiling so broadly that she doesn’t resemble the sullen, angry girl that Luna knew. The other is a scan of a blurry photo Saffy’s ex-boyfriend Jack sent—he’d found it in the back of a school notebook. It shows Saffy’s rakish frame as she stands in front of the Longing. She’s wearing jeans and a black ribbed polo neck, her blonde hair scraped up off her face in a topknot, revealing her long, pale neck—this is exactly how Luna remembers her. From the scowl Saffy is wearing, it’s likely Luna is the one who took the photo, using her mother’s Polaroid camera.

No bodies were ever found, despite extensive searches. The disappearance of an entire family may well have attracted substantial media attraction, especially given Lòn Haven’s history. But barely a week after Liv disappeared, an explosion at the nuclear power station near Glasgow drew the eyes of the national press and the government for months afterward, and the mystery of her family was all but forgotten.

The phone buzzes in her hand. She lifts it hastily, hoping to see her foster mother Grace’s name on the screen, but instead finds “NO CALLER ID.” She lifts her thumb to cancel it, let the caller go to voicemail, but changes her mind and answers quietly instead.

“Hello?”

“Is that Luna Stay?”

“Yes?”

“Hullo there, this is Police Constable Cullen. I’m calling you from the station here in Dingwall.”

The line is bad. She rises, heading out of the reception area. “Where?”

“Dingwall? In Scotland? We have you down as a named contact in the case of finding a missing person.”

She walks quickly toward the window at the end of the corridor, where, at last, three bars of signal appear on her phone.

“Hi, are you there?”

“I’m here.”

“You said a missing person . . .”

“Yes. Clover Stay. Your sister, is that correct?”

Luna holds the phone away from her face and catches her breath. Is this actually happening? Did the police officer on the other end of the line just say that Clover has been found?

“Yes, yes,” she says, her voice thin. “You said Clover, right? Is she there with you now?”

“Can I take a few details from you first, please?”

He asks for her full name, date of birth, current address. She is shaking from head to toe, her palms clammy and her breaths quick and light. She can’t believe this is actually happening. Once he’s satisfied she is Luna Stay he gives full disclosure. “She was brought to us last night. An ambulance has just taken her to the hospital in Inverness.”

Luna stops pacing. “What happened? Is she all right?”

“I’ll let the social worker talk you through that.” Then, quickly: “She’s OK, by the looks of things. Dehydrated, and they’ve sedated her to get some rest, but otherwise sturdy enough. Nothing life threatening. I’ll need consent to pass your number to social services for them to get in touch.”

Her throat is dry, and the link between her brain and her mouth seems to have been severed. “Of course, yes. Yes, please. Which hospital?”

He tells her. She gets him to spell out the postcode and makes sure to write it down as she’s certain she’ll forget. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

She’s pressing a hand to her mouth, as though she might be sick, when Ethan approaches.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“They’ve found my sister.” She whispers it. She has had false alarms before. The last one was four years ago and she cried for weeks afterward.

Ethan stares at her. “They’ve found . . . ?”

“Clover. Clover, Ethan.”

“Are you sure it’s her?”

She’s weeping and laughing at once. “That’s what they said. Oh, God.”

“Did you see her? I mean, didn’t they FaceTime you, let you speak with her?”

“They just said she’s in a hospital in Inverness. She has to stay in for another day, maybe two.”

“I’ll drive you there . . .”

She shakes her head. “You’ve got work.”

He’s insistent. “This is more important, Luna.”

At their flat, she packs as much food as the cool box will hold and fills an empty milk bottle with water. Luckily their old car has just been serviced, though it still has a kayak attached to the roof and there won’t be time to take it off. Ethan empties the gin bottle filled with loose change to fill up with petrol. Luna taps the postcode into Google Maps, a long wavy line snaking from their home to the Scottish Highlands. They should reach the hospital by six p.m.