The Last Resort(80)

Amelia feels sick. ‘Wait, what? You did this for me? But you didn’t even know me. You don’t know me—’

‘You were a friend to me that day, Anne. I told you this. I didn’t want you to go through life feeling guilty for something you didn’t actually do . . . but I couldn’t find you. Not at first.’

‘Not at first?’ Amelia feels goosebumps sliding all over her arms. ‘When did you find me?’

‘I found you via your university applications. That was one of the first systems I accessed—’

‘Accessed? You mean hacked . . .’

‘Yes, but I wasn’t doing it to cause trouble for anyone. Not like those idiot boys in their bedrooms bringing down banking systems and blackmailing people when they find their profiles on extramarital dating sites. I mean, I could do all that, but it’s pretty pathetic, is it not?’

‘So what did you do?’

Merryn grins. ‘Once I saw where you’d been accepted, I made sure you were given the full maintenance grant. Plus a few extras that I was able to swing here and there. Nothing too ostentatious. I didn’t want you to get suspicious and question it with anyone.’

Amelia closes her eyes. ‘I did notice the extra payments. And I couldn’t understand how I got the full grant, when I hadn’t even applied because I didn’t think I was eligible. I said something about money to my grandmother, and she answered quite cryptically – so I just assumed it was her. I knew she’d set up a trust fund for me when I was little . . .’

‘Your grandmother’s payments were about fifty quid a month,’ Merryn says. ‘Nice for a few drinks in the union bar and the occasional fancy burger at the weekend, but nothing more than that. But I made sure you’d never get into debt.’ She lays a hand on Amelia’s arm. ‘I was pleased that you never went to the bank and asked them about it. I understood that in some way you probably knew.’

‘What?’ Amelia’s eyes fly open. ‘How could I have known that you were . . .’ She bats Merryn’s hand away. ‘Don’t touch me. Stay away from me. I can’t . . . have you been monitoring me all this time?’

‘Of course I have. I’ve been looking out for you. Things have been hard, despite all the honourable work you’ve done, haven’t they?’

Amelia sighs. She has nothing else to say to this woman. She’s completely insane, and she’s been spying on her, manipulating her life since she was eighteen years old – after one chance meeting one summer when they were children. There is no way to rationalise it. All she can do now is try to get out of here alive. But she can’t tell what Merryn’s endgame might be. Does she want her to stay on the island with her? She looks away. She doesn’t want to engage with this lunatic any further.

‘Did you know you’d found Father?’ Merryn says.

Amelia shakes her head. ‘What are you talking about?’ A horrible sick feeling starts to roll over her stomach. ‘Found him where?’

‘He wasn’t old when he died. He was strong. He might’ve lived another twenty, thirty years. He might have become Father to others. I couldn’t have that. Like I said, the other families had been taken away to the mainland to start new lives. Safe lives. It was only me and my mother left, but there was always the possibility that Father could lie his way into starting a new family. I couldn’t let him hurt anyone else.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I told him I wanted to meet him, here. In this house.’ She raises her hands, gestures around the room. ‘I told him I wanted to know all about the old ways, about where he’d come from, about how life was before the authorities moved everyone across to the other island and burned this place down.’ She laughs sadly. ‘He agreed. I think he was still convinced that the old ways were the right ways. That his “family” had been wronged.

‘I brought him here, and I killed him. It was simple, actually. I knew after the boat man that I could do it. That I could switch my brain to a different place and kill without remorse. Besides, I did them both a favour. The boat man and my father. I left his body out on the hillside, let the birds do their work. I knew no one would come here and find him. I came back a couple of years later to start work on the house, and I had one of the staff scatter the bones around the island. It gave me a little thrill when you held a piece of him in your hand. Powerless. Nothing left of him but bones.’

‘You need help, Merryn. You’ve suffered terrible trauma.’ Amelia shakes her head. ‘What’s happened today is terrible, of course it is. But I don’t think you know what you’re doing . . . or what you’ve done. Your family history, everything that happened to you . . .’

Merryn stands up, shaking her head in exasperation. ‘I thought you would get it. I thought if I could just get you here, then . . .’

‘Then what? That I’d understand? You killed six people today. People who had no reason to die.’

‘They did terrible things, Anne. If you do terrible things, then you must be punished. You know that. You’ve punished yourself enough over the years, and for what?’ She laughs, but it sounds hollow. ‘You didn’t even kill the boat man.’

Amelia stares at her. ‘I was there. I pushed him . . .’

‘It doesn’t matter now.’ Merryn pulls the tub of cheese straws across the table. Offers it to Amelia.