The Retreat(19)

‘A whitey,’ I said.

But Suzi had gone almost as pale as Karen. ‘I wasn’t high when someone tried to get into my room.’

‘I told you,’ said Max, ‘it wasn’t me.’ He seemed concerned for a moment, then laughed. ‘It’s the curse. The ghost of the dead miner. Wooo!’

‘Oh, shut up, Max.’ But Suzi laughed too.

‘Are you sure it’s not you doing it?’ Max said, and I was so deep in thought that it took a moment to realise he was talking to me. ‘Maybe you’re conducting research for your next book. Some kind of meta-experiment.’

‘I was downstairs with you, remember?’

‘Hmm. Well, anyway. It’s all quite exciting, isn’t it?’

We left Karen’s room. Max headed back downstairs, and Suzi said she would wait to check that Karen was okay.

I went to my room. The most likely explanation was that Karen was stoned and imagining things, almost certainly triggered by what had happened to Suzi. And Max was lying – he had tried to get into Suzi’s room but wouldn’t admit it. It was all perfectly rational.

So why did I lie in bed, unable to sleep again, imagining a figure on the other side of my door, trying to get in?

You’re not welcome here.

I finally went to sleep with those words echoing in my head.





Chapter 9

The atmosphere at breakfast was subdued. Karen seemed embarrassed by the incident the previous night and still looked a little green around the gills. Max tapped at his phone throughout, apparently conducting a Twitter spat with someone who’d made an ill-judged joke about depression. Suzi hadn’t come down; I guessed she was still asleep, or working in her room.

I took my used breakfast things into the kitchen, where Julia was stacking the dishwasher, the cat snaking around her ankles.

It was another cold day, frost sparkling on the lawn. Rhodri was in the garden, fixing a section of fencing that had blown down in the strong winds the previous week.

‘Did he come with the house?’ I asked, nodding towards Rhodri.

‘Huh? Oh, you mean did he work here before we moved in? Apparently so. He introduced himself to Michael as soon as we got here, but Michael told him we wouldn’t need his help because he was determined to do all that stuff himself. That was part of the appeal of coming here.’ She closed the dishwasher. ‘He had so many plans for this place.’ Her eyes shone with emotion.

Rhodri must have sensed us watching him, as he raised a hand before turning back to the fence.

‘What was the previous owner like?’ I asked, thinking of the Polaroid I’d found the night before.

‘I have no idea. An old woman lived here. When she died she left the house to a children’s charity. We bought it from them at auction.’

On my way up to my room, my mobile rang. It was Zara.

‘I met up with my friend last night.’ I assumed she meant the one with benefits. I hoped she wasn’t going to add condoms to her expenses. ‘He told me a few interesting things. Very interesting things indeed.’



I agreed to meet Zara by the river, at the spot where Lily had gone missing. I found her sitting on a fallen tree trunk, smoking a cigarette and gazing out at the water. Mist hung low among the shrubbery on the opposite bank.

‘My policeman friend remembers the case very well,’ Zara said, stubbing out her cigarette and slipping the butt into a little plastic bag. ‘He repeated what you already told me. That they were initially convinced she fell into the river. They spent a lot of money searching. They had helicopters out, frogmen, the whole works. You name it. All without success.’

‘I knew all that,’ I said.

‘But what do you know about bodies in water? You wrote a book about it, didn’t you? I’m assuming you did lots of research.’

I avoided her eyes. ‘Hmm. A bit.’

‘Ha. Well, my friend explained it to me. When someone drowns, the air in their lungs is replaced with water, which makes them sink. They stay underwater for a while. And assuming nothing eats them, the bacteria and enzymes in their chest and gut start to produce gas. Methane, carbon dioxide, some other gas that I can’t remember the name of.’

‘And the gas makes them float to the surface.’

‘Exactly.’ She produced a Mars bar from her coat pocket and unwrapped it. ‘Want a bit?’

‘This conversation isn’t giving me much of an appetite.’

She snorted and sang a jingle from our childhood. ‘A Mars a day . . . makes your teeth rot away. Where was I? Oh yes. Lily Marsh didn’t float. The police were convinced she would pop to the surface of the lake. But they waited and they waited. And still no sign of little Lily.’

I stared at her.

‘Now, there’s nothing in that lake that could have eaten her up. No monsters living in the woods round here, Mr Radcliffe. So if she did go in the water, she must have been weighed down – which didn’t fit with her supposed accidental drowning – or she got caught on something under the water.’

‘Supposed accidental drowning?’

‘Yes. If she was weighed down, it must have been murder. But that didn’t fit either, because her body would almost certainly be on the riverbed, not in the lake.’

A pair of moorhens drifted by.