The Retreat(101)

She followed us from the house, keen to see if her plan worked. She had no idea Zara’s body was in the crypt. And she had no idea Heledd was on her way there too. But when she saw Heledd push Julia down the stairs she was horrified. She attacked Heledd. Carys, in her red coat, sprinting into the chapel. Heledd, already in a state of heightened emotion, was petrified. The Red Widow – in the flesh! Heledd fell to her knees and began to babble, terrified the witch was going to kill her, all these years after her parents had sacrificed another little girl to save her.

And Carys knew who Heledd was. Years before, when Heledd was a teenager, Shirley had brought her to Nyth Bran to visit her old friends Albert and Bethan. When Carys encountered Heledd at the chapel, she flipped.

She had saved our lives and, inadvertently, given herself away.

And that was the end of the story. The police interviewed Rhodri Wallace and he finally confessed to abducting Carys back in 1980 with the help of Shirley Roberts. Rhodri, it turned out, had done some work in the garden of the children’s home, which gave him the idea of where to find a child who ‘wouldn’t be missed’. Rhodri doted on his secret daughter, seeing her as often as he could. Her happiness and well-being made everything he’d done worthwhile. In his mind, it absolved him of all his sins.

Glynn Collins had nothing to do with any of it – apart from scaring Shirley with the story of the Red Widow. He had also told Shirley that someone new – Zara Sullivan – was in town, asking questions, a conversation that Heledd overheard.

So Glynn was indirectly responsible, but not guilty of any crime. I still wondered why he had refused to let me talk to Jake. There was something not quite right about that . . . But after thinking about it for a while I decided he was most likely just being a protective grandfather.

And Heledd? She was in prison, having pleaded guilty to the murders of Zara Sullivan and Max Lake, and the manslaughter of her mother, Shirley Roberts. She denied causing the death of Malcolm Jones, and the CPS had decided to drop that charge, as it was impossible to prove.

All the guilty parties were either dead or locked up. Carys was currently in a secure psychiatric hospital. Nobody yet seemed to know what was going to happen to her.

Personally, despite what she’d done to Lily, I thought Carys deserved to be free, as long as she was kept under observation and was a long way from us. She was a victim herself. She’d spent her whole life living in that dark hole beneath this house, believing wholeheartedly in the Widow. When she took Lily, she genuinely seemed to believe she was harbouring her from the Widow. I imagine that, after a while, she got used to having Lily around, like a pet. And she couldn’t let her go because then Carys’s secret home beneath Nyth Bran would be revealed.

Didn’t Carys deserve to spend some time in the light? I thought about the paragraph Carys had written on my laptop, the words I thought I’d drunk-typed. She had a fascinating story to tell. Maybe, with encouragement and help, she could tell it. She would need a ghostwriter, of course . . .

I didn’t think Julia would be too happy about this idea.

‘I’m going to see if Lily wants some lunch,’ Julia said, kissing me before she left the kitchen.

I looked around. I had fallen on my feet here. Julia and I had decided to make a go of the writers’ retreat together. We had our first new intake of guests due at the start of September. I was going to act as a tutor and organise courses for the guests. That would be my job for now. I had abandoned the novel about the family living in the forest. The contract with my publisher had been cancelled – or, at least, put on hold. I would write something again when I was ready. I was thinking about writing something lighter next time. A romantic comedy, perhaps.

‘Yeah, right,’ Julia said when I told her that.

She was looking for illustrating work again too – she had a meeting coming up with an old contact at Jackdaw Books – and was seeing a grief counsellor. Now Lily was home, Julia was finally able to confront Michael’s death. There had been a lot of tears shed during the nights. I think it helped that I had lost someone too – we could share our feelings, talk about our former partners without either of us worrying we had to compete with the dead. I knew there were going to be bumps ahead, but I felt confident we could cope with that.

It was worth trying, anyway.

My phone beeped. It was a message from Karen, who I’d been in regular touch with over the past few months. She’d kicked her heavy weed habit but had been hugely relieved to discover she hadn’t been imagining the voices in the walls.

Her message contained a link to a story on the Bookseller website: Suzi Hastings had signed a six-figure deal for her debut novel, which was described as ‘a highly erotic thriller about an affair between a married writer and a young ingénue, set in a writers’ retreat in Wales’.

Looks like they were at it after all! Karen texted.

Either that or Suzi was making it up. Max had sounded so sincere . . . but I guessed we’d never know for certain. It didn’t matter anyway, did it? Though I didn’t think Max’s widow would be too happy about Suzi’s book.

As well as Karen, I’d kept in touch with Olly Jones, meeting up with him a few times for a drink. He wasn’t driving a taxi any more. Instead, he’d used the money from the sale of his dad’s house to set up his own minicab firm. He was the boss now. He told me running his business kept his mind off Heledd and how she’d broken his heart. He insisted he was over her now, but I wasn’t fully convinced.