The Lighthouse Witches(19)

The “why” of her abandonment has all but pulled her apart over the years. She remembers vividly waiting for her mother, believing wholeheartedly that she’d come back for her. Weeks passed, months. She’d run up to strangers in the street, in the mall, shouting out “Mum! Mum!” Christmases spent in foster homes. She’d sit by the living room window, watching the cars pass. She always believed her mother would come back.

But she didn’t.





LIV, 1998



I

The day the girls started at school, the equipment and paint for the mural arrived. I’d planned to start setting up as soon as it came, but I had been feeling ill all day, laid up on the sofa with a hot-water bottle on my stomach. By evening I felt better, and when the girls went to bed I headed out to check out the delivery.

It was a wild, windy night, autumn descending on the island in a fury with all her gales and rain. I hurried quickly across the wet rocks, pulling the heavy door of the Longing open and shutting it tightly behind me.

The black sludge on the floor was gone, drained away to a film of slime. I made sure the piece of wood was put back carefully across the grille on the hole in the floor. Then I pulled back the tarp that was covering the cherry picker and the rest of the equipment. It looked good. Enough paint to cover several lighthouses, and in the exact colors I’d requested. Brand-new paintbrushes, a wallpaper table, work lamps, and extenders for the hard-to-reach parts. Protective clothing, a harness, goggles. It was top-notch equipment, and I felt relieved.

I decided to store the paintbrushes and protective clothing in the lantern room, just in case the ground floor flooded again. It was dark, but my torchlight fell on something that definitely hadn’t been there the day before.

On the floor was a white triangle made up of three objects.

I bent down carefully to take a look at it, retracing my steps in my mind. No, the lantern room had definitely been empty. I’d have spotted such a thing if it had been there.

Bones. The triangle was made out of three delicate animal bones, perhaps the leg bones of a fox, crisscrossed in the shape of a triangle.

Someone had been here. And they’d left me a message.

Or a warning.

Just then, there was a noise from below. A loud creak, then a slam. Footsteps.

Someone was inside.

I felt sick. I listened, my heart roaring in my ears, for the sound of the footsteps. They were heavy and slow. So, definitely not one of my children.

There was no way out of the lantern room, and nowhere to hide. I was trapped. I would have to pray that whoever it was would leave. Or I’d have to confront them.

I’d like to say that I screwed my courage to the sticking-place and went out to confront the intruder, but I was terrified. What kind of person would come out on a stormy night to a derelict lighthouse? The sort of person who would also kill an animal to make some horrible symbol like the one lying in front of me. I squeezed my eyes shut. I wanted it all just to go away.

And then, a sound. A tune. Whoever was downstairs was humming.

It was a familiar song. I opened my eyes, utterly confused. Was that . . . ABBA?

I raced out to the top of the stairs and shone my torch down the stairs.

“Who’s there?”

A loud clatter followed, and several loud expletives. My torchlight fell on a man. He’d fallen flat on his arse and was holding his hand up against my torchlight. I moved quickly down the stairs, much faster than I should have.

“You scared the shit out of me,” I said, when I reached the bottom. I took pleasure in shining my torchlight directly in his eyes. Built like a tank, he looked like a Viking—a thick copper beard, a round belly stretching the fabric of an Iron Maiden T-shirt, long amber hair pulled back into a ponytail, tattoos covering his hands. Just then, a horrible thought occurred to me.

“Are you . . . the owner, Patrick Roberts?” I said, lowering my torch.

“Finn McAllen. Isla said you’d need of a plasterer.” He had a deep, booming voice that bounced off the walls. “I can come back later if that’s easier . . .”

“No, no,” I said. “The dead of night is absolutely the right time for checking out a lighthouse . . .”

“It’s only eight o’clock,” he said. “I came as soon as I finished my other job.”

“You’ve not been in earlier?” I said, thinking back to the bones. “There was something left in the lantern room . . .”

“Nope,” he said, dusting himself off. “I had a big job on today. I told Isla I’d have come sooner but it’s been manic . . .”

So he hadn’t left the bones upstairs. That is, if he was telling the truth. I watched him carefully in the cold glare of the torchlight.

“You’re here to see what plastering needs doing, correct?”

“Correct. Isla mentioned the place is getting a mural or something painted inside. You’re the painter, I take it?”

“Yes.”

“OK,” he said, in a way that suggested he was expecting a different answer. “Show me what needs doing.”

Everything, I thought, but instead I pointed the torch at the sections of the stonework that I couldn’t paint over, not without the mural looking disjointed and uneven. We took the stairs and climbed to the first turn.

“Place is a mess,” he said, wobbling the banister.