The Retreat(12)

After a moment of hesitation I followed her into the sitting room – the Thomas Room, I reminded myself – where she stood by the bookcase, her chest visibly rising and falling, a thunderous expression on her face.

‘Julia, I promise I didn’t know until yesterday. A taxi driver mentioned it when I said I was staying here.’

She stood with her back to me, staring through the window at the cloud-choked sky. ‘And then what did you do? Google me?’

My silence was confirmation.

She turned. ‘Do you know how many journalists I had coming here, day after day, week after week? All of them pretending to be concerned, wanting me to give my side of the story. It took months to get rid of them. And now I’ve got an author staying here who specialises in writing about missing children—’

‘I don’t specialise in it.’

‘I should never have opened this place. I’m not ready.’

She covered her reddening face with her hands. She was silent and I didn’t know what to do or say. Eventually, I managed, ‘I swear, Julia, that my new book has nothing to do with missing children. I have no interest in writing about you or your family. I feel terribly sorry for you, that’s all.’

She shook her head, as if the sight of me made her sick.

‘If you want me to go, I will.’

‘I think that would be best.’

‘Okay.’ I felt sick, but what else could I do? ‘Now?’

She wouldn’t meet my eye. ‘You can stay tonight. But first thing tomorrow, I want you to go.’





Chapter 6

I dreamt I was drowning, being dragged to the bottom of a river by clutching hands. All I could see beneath me was hair, swaying like fronds, and I swallowed mouthfuls of dirty black water. I could hear music, muffled and soft. A girl singing on the riverbed, sweet but distorted, the melody bent out of shape.

I woke up gasping – but the singing continued. I lay there, still half in the dream, listening, thinking I must still be asleep. Stupidly, I pinched myself. I was definitely awake.

I got out of bed and pressed my ear to the wall that separated my room from the one Julia had stopped me going into. Lily’s room. That’s where the singing was coming from, just as before. Now, in the silence of the night, it was clearer – but I couldn’t make out the words. I strained to hear and then it struck me. The words weren’t in English.

I hadn’t studied Welsh since I was five years old but was sure I recognised the first few words. Un, dau, tri. One, two, three. The rest of the words, though – and the tune – weren’t familiar.

What was a girl doing in Lily’s old room, singing in the middle of the night?

I was about to leave my room to investigate further when I realised: it must be Julia. Yes, it sounded like a child singing, but it was conceivable that it was a woman. Or it could even be someone playing a recording . . . That must be it. Perhaps Julia was in there now, listening to a recording of her daughter singing. It was unusual behaviour, but people deal with grief in many different ways.

The singing stopped. I waited for the sound of Julia leaving the room. But all was silent.

Eventually, I got back into bed and pulled the covers up to my chin. I had come up with a solid, rational explanation for what I’d heard, but I was still spooked, and I lay there for hours, the melody from the song repeating inside my head, burrowing deeper into my brain with every loop, until eventually I entered a hypnogogic state where I could hardly tell the difference between imagination and reality. I pictured myself getting out of bed again, crossing the room and touching the wall. It was warm, pulsing, and I became convinced the wall was made of flesh and bone, that the house was alive. I dug my fingernails into the wallpaper and tore holes in the pattern. As the melody from the little girl’s song went round and round in my head, blood trickled from beneath my fingers and ran down the walls. The house shuddered as if it were crying.



It didn’t take long to gather my stuff and pack my suitcase. Although I felt guilty about looking into what had happened to Julia’s daughter and invading her privacy, I also thought I was blameless to some extent. It was, surely, a coincidence that I’d written about the topic that most hurt Julia.

I yawned, exhausted from my disturbed night, haunted by my waking dream. As I checked to see if I’d forgotten anything, I couldn’t help but glance over at the walls, expecting to see them bleed. Maybe it was a blessing that I was leaving. One thing had struck me in the morning light: when the house cried in my dream, it had sounded like Priya.

I opened my bedroom door – just as Karen came down the stairs from her room on the top floor.

She spotted my suitcase. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I’m leaving.’

‘What? Why?’

Sensing that she would bombard me with difficult questions if I wasn’t honest, I gestured for her to come into my room and take a seat. I told her everything, keeping my voice low.

‘Oh, that poor woman,’ she said. ‘I had no idea.’

‘Do you remember seeing it on the news at the time?’

‘No. I was living in Italy then. It’s dreadful. I don’t have children but I can imagine . . .’ She trailed off. ‘It’s not right for her to chuck you out, though. I mean, you didn’t come here because she had a missing child, did you?’