The Lighthouse Witches(77)

“Not in so many words.” Luna rubs her stomach and lays her head back on the sofa. “Maybe I should.” She smiles at Cassie. “Thanks.”

Cassie shrugs. “Every relationship comes with baggage. I fucked up my last relationship so badly that it’s made me an expert on communication.” She smiles. “Lucia and I see a counselor every year. We don’t have any serious problems, but I’m a prevention-instead-of-cure sort of person now.”

“What about your dad?” Luna asks. “Is he still on Lòn Haven?”

Cassie takes a swig from her bottle and wipes her lips on the back of her arm. “Fuck no. He moved us both to New Zealand not long after you left. When Rowan accused him of taking Saffy, I think it broke something in him. I don’t think he could ever face coming back.”

Luna tries to remember this. It’s a small detail buried inside other memories. “Rowan . . . she was Isla’s daughter. Wasn’t she?”

Cassie nods. “And the daughter of the chief inspector. Dodgy.” A muscle ripples in her jaw. “The accusation was false, of course. And there was only a slap on the wrist for little Rowan for slipping Polaroids of Saffy into my dad’s car.”

“Polaroids?”

“Nudes that Saffy had of herself. You never heard about this?”

“No. Who took the nudes?”

“Saffy did.”

Luna stares, processing this.

“Dad never said anything more about that time,” Cassie says. “God knows I tried to get him to open up but I think it was too painful for him. Some of his closest friends stopped speaking to him after it. Mud sticks, doesn’t it?”

“It does.” The mention of Isla’s name has flipped Luna’s stomach. She doesn’t want to ask, but she has to know. “What about Isla?” she asks. “And Rowan. Are they still on the island?”

Cassie shakes her head. “Rowan’s in Bali, apparently. Lives on some weird commune. I think it’s a cult, actually, by the sound of it. Isla’s in prison. She got handed twenty years a couple of years ago.”

Luna’s eyes widen. “She’s in prison?”

Cassie nods and grins, relishing the opportunity to share this with Luna. “It was a huge scandal, as you can imagine. Bram—you remember him? Had a heart attack on the job. They brought in a new chief inspector, young guy, not so tolerant of bullshit folklore and what have you. About a month later, someone writes anonymously to the police that Isla killed a child in the forest. They dug up human remains and Isla confessed to the whole thing.”

Luna shivers. She presses the bottle to her cheeks, her mood spiraling. She barely knows what to do with this information. Did Isla murder Saffy? Her mind races.

“You never found Clover?” Cassie asks, sadly. “Or your mum?”

Luna opens her mouth to answer, but holds back. She doesn’t know where to start.

“I think it’s beautiful that you named your daughter after Clover,” Cassie says. “The likeness is stunning.”

“She’s not my daughter,” Luna says quietly.

“Who is she, then?”

Luna opens her mouth to lie, but despite herself, it all comes out—the phone call, the trip to the hospital in Inverness, fully expecting to be reunited with a twenty-nine-year-old woman.

Cassie looks stunned. She stands and paces, thinking it through. “That’s crazy,” she says. “And they let you take her?”

Luna explains about her worries that social services will yet come looking for her. She tells Cassie about her theory that Clover has some kind of age regression disease that has stopped her from growing, about the things that Clover has said that only Clover could have known: the Longing, Saffy, their mother painting the mural.

She tells Cassie about the glass in the food they ordered at the hotel. About Brodie chasing her.

Cassie cups her hands to her mouth. “Fuck, Luna. This happened tonight?”

Luna nods. “Right before I saw you in the car park.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I’ve a crowbar in the boot of my car. I’d have gone after the bastard if you said . . .” She recovers. “Tell me you at least called the police?”

“I don’t trust anyone on this island,” Luna says firmly. “Except you.”

“I’ve heard about Brodie,” Cassie says after a long silence. “He’s been married a couple of times, had a long stint with drugs, fell on hard times.”

“Why would he say I’m meant to be dead, Cassie?” Luna asks. “What happened after I left Lòn Haven?”

Cassie blinks, thinking back. “It’s all a bit of a blur . . . Dad was so out of sorts after the accusation . . . and then Liv went missing and he spent a while looking for her. He took you to the police station, do you remember that?”

Luna shakes her head. “No, I didn’t know that.”

“He wouldn’t leave until social services were ferried out from Inverness. I remember him phoning them, even when we were in Auckland, to check up on you.” Cassie looks up. “He said you were in foster care. What was that like?”

“I’m still in touch with one of my foster mothers. Other than that, it was shit from start to finish.”

Cassie nods again, smiles. “You seem to have it together, though.”