The Retreat(100)
‘What’s she doing?’ I asked.
‘Playing with Chesney.’ She smiled. ‘Sometimes I think she missed him more than she missed me.’
‘I doubt that.’
She filled a glass with water from the tap. When she turned her arm over I saw the scar from that day four months ago. I had a matching one across my belly. Sometimes, in bed, we would trace our fingers over each other’s scars and remind ourselves how fortunate we were.
Julia sat down at the breakfast bar, keeping an eye on Lily through the window as she chased the cat around the garden. Lily was due to start school again soon. Julia was nervous about this, about the idea of Lily being out of her sight, but Lily had insisted that she wanted to go back.
‘I want to see my friends again, Mum.’
It had taken weeks to get the full story out of Lily about what had happened. She said she’d been trying to scare her parents, throwing Big Cat into the river and then running away into the woods. That was where Carys had grabbed her. Lily said she’d intended to hide for half an hour, that was all.
The police, and the psychiatrists who’d interviewed Carys extensively, said that she genuinely believed in the Red Widow and that she thought she was protecting Lily. Carys said she’d found Lily tied to a tree, but Lily denied that. The police were sure Carys was getting it all mixed up in her head. Her own abduction, and finding Lily in the woods.
Carys had told the police everything she could remember. How Shirley and Rhodri had taken her from St Mary’s children’s home into the woods. How she had been convinced the Widow was going to kill and eat her – until Albert, the man she soon called Daddy, ‘rescued’ her and took her to his nearby house. She described her life there in great detail. According to DI Snaith, she cried when she recounted the death of her ‘Daddy’, though seemed less upset about the death of Bethan, her ‘Mummy’.
People who’d known Albert and Bethan – including my mum and a few older people who still lived in town – talked about a quiet couple who had, for a long time, seemed sad that they couldn’t have children. ‘But then they seemed to get over it; they were happier, more relaxed.’ That was the testimony of the elderly proprietor of Rhiannon’s Café, which the couple frequented. ‘That would have been in around 1980.’
The year when they finally ‘got’ the child they’d always yearned for.
It turned out they hadn’t been able to adopt through official channels because Albert had a criminal record (he stole a car when he was a young man and crashed it into a shop, leading to a few years in jail). The police theory was that the couple knew they wouldn’t be allowed to keep Carys, so they let everyone think the Widow had taken her. Neither Shirley nor Rhodri knew what had happened to the girl they left in the woods. They never knew that Albert had seen them while out walking by the river; that he’d followed them, watching as they tied Carys to a tree. He let them go on thinking the Widow had taken her. It suited Albert and Bethan if the whole world thought Carys was dead.
DI Snaith told me the police psychiatrist had tried to find out if Albert had abused Carys, if they’d had a sexual relationship – either while she was still a child or as an adult. She denied it, but the police weren’t sure if she was telling the truth. Perhaps one day she’ll reveal all, but now she continues to talk about her ‘Daddy’ as if he were a saint.
Carys went on to describe how, after the deaths of Albert and Bethan Patterson, she’d continued to ‘visit’ the house upstairs. She was angry when the Marshes moved into ‘her’ house, but then learned to like them; she even began to see them as her new family. She liked to listen to Julia and Lily and Michael. After Michael drowned, and while Lily was locked up under the house, Carys was happy with the state of things. She came into the house and took what she needed. She watched Julia as she mourned the loss of her husband and child. Carys said Nyth Bran was her home, but she was happy to share it with Julia . . . until she opened the writers’ retreat.
Suddenly, there were strangers traipsing through the house, invading Carys’s space. Carys had to get rid of them. She tried to scare them off by making it look as if the house was haunted. I was one of the people she wanted to get rid of. And when she overheard me talking about how I was investigating Lily’s disappearance, it became even more imperative to dispose of me.
The rest, we pieced together from both Carys and Heledd’s testimonies.
Carys didn’t know that Heledd was assisting her in this. Heledd was trying to shut down the investigation into Lily’s disappearance because she was worried it would lead to the truth coming out about what had happened with the last little girl who disappeared. And so past and present were coming together to create a perfect storm.
When Carys overheard Ursula talking about spirit guides, her twisted mind came up with what she saw as a good plan: she wanted to convince Julia that Lily was dead. She spoke through the walls and told Ursula that Lily was ‘with Jesus’, wanting us to believe she had died in the chapel. She told Ursula that Lily had gone to a better place and was happy with her dad. She hoped then that we would stop searching for the truth. She wanted me to leave, and Julia to give up hope of finding Lily alive.
But when we didn’t stop, she used Ursula again. She retrieved Little Cat from the hut where she’d hidden it after Lily’s escape attempt, made Lily bleed onto its fur and left it in the chapel. Then, through Ursula, she directed us to the chapel, hoping the toy, stained with Lily’s blood, would convince us Lily was dead.