The Retreat(47)

Mum seemed sad at the moment. She’d had a summer cold for weeks and complained about being tired all the time. Quite often, Lily would walk into the room and Mum would be sitting there, staring into space, and she wouldn’t respond unless Lily said her name really loud or got right up in her face. Dad said she was a zombie and Mum narrowed her eyes at him and said it was all his fault.

Lily didn’t know whose side to take. She didn’t want to take anyone’s side. She thought maybe her parents needed a date night, which was something Megan’s mum and stepdad did – even though the thought of them kissing and being lovey-dovey made her want to vomit – but there was no one around to babysit. The whole thing was like horrible homework that the teacher hadn’t explained properly.

Megan and her grandad turned up and they went out. The two girls sat in the back seat and Megan talked non-stop about her brother and YouTube and the Bloody Mary video game. Lily tuned out and concentrated on Mr Collins. She could only see the back of his head, and his eyes in the rear-view mirror. He concentrated on driving, humming along with some rubbish old music on the radio.

She relaxed until he said, ‘Everything all right, Lily?’

He had caught her staring at him. Her ears burned and she shrank back into her seat, not speaking until they got to the adventure playground.

The playground was massive. There was a chute slide and rope bridges strung between trees and even a flying fox. Lily started to relax, until a horrible boy, who was part of a group of annoying kids who kept hogging the slide, shoved her out of the way.

‘Hey!’

When the boy reached the bottom of the slide, Megan’s grandad went up and whispered something in his ear. The boy went white and he kept out of Lily and Megan’s way after that.

Maybe Mr Collins wasn’t so bad after all. He bought them ice creams too, and slushies. Mum never let Lily drink slushies because she said they contained ‘more Es than a rave party’, whatever that meant. But Megan’s grandad clearly wasn’t one of those grown-ups who was obsessed with looking after your teeth.

Back in the car, he said, ‘I need to go into town before I take you home, Lily. I’ve texted your dad and he said it’s fine.’

‘Okay.’

As they approached Beddmawr, Mr Collins suddenly got this look in his eye – that ‘I like scaring kids’ look – and said, ‘Did I ever tell you girls where the Red Widow came from?’

Megan sat up. ‘No! Tell us, Grandad.’

Lily shrank back in her seat. She really didn’t want to hear it.

‘Lily, you’ll be interested in this. Did you know your house is built on the site of an old slate mine?’

She’d heard her parents talking about it before. Slate was basically a kind of rock. Once upon a very boring time, lots of people had spent their whole lives digging it up and using it to build roofs.

‘Yes, Mr Collins,’ she said.

He grunted happily. ‘That mine opened two hundred years ago, you know.’

‘When you were a boy,’ said Megan.

‘Very funny. Now, slate mining was a dangerous business . . .’

Lily’s mind wandered off to something more interesting. Her attention drifted through the window and across the fields to her house and, more specifically, her kitchen. What would it be tonight? She fancied burgers, or maybe pizza, or pasta . . .

‘And he was crushed to death.’

Her attention snapped back to Mr Collins.

‘Terrible business,’ he said. ‘And most terrible of all for Dafydd’s wife. She was pregnant, and they say the shock made her lose her baby.’ He shook his head. ‘The world was a cruel place back then, girls. None of the mollycoddling that goes on now. Dafydd’s wife, whose name was Rhiannon, didn’t just lose her baby – she lost her home. She was starving, alone, penniless. And now homeless.’

‘So she went to live under the bridge,’ Megan said. ‘You’ve told me that part before.’

‘Ah, but Lily hasn’t heard the story.’

Megan frowned and nodded. She clearly took the story very seriously.

‘Poor Rhiannon made a home under a bridge. She was a very pretty woman with all this black hair. One morning, a young man from the mine went down to the river and saw a dozen dead fish floating on the water, with Rhiannon standing by the bank. He ran back to tell the other men and that’s when they decided. She must have killed the fish using witchcraft. And do you know what happened then?’

Megan’s eyes were wide and round.

‘The men formed a gang and drove her into the woods,’ she said.

‘Exactly. They were going to burn her but they were afraid to get too near her. Instead, they banished her, thinking she’d die in the woods anyway.’

‘Were there wolves?’ Lily asked.

‘No. They died out four hundred years ago. But it was cold and inhospitable and there was nothing to eat.’ He cleared his throat. They were almost in town now. ‘As she headed into the woods, Rhiannon called out a curse. She said that if the townsfolk didn’t bring her a child as a sacrifice, she would come into town and choose one. Do you know what happened next?’

‘Tell us, Grandad.’ Megan’s voice had dropped to a whisper.

Mr Collins’s eyes sparkled. ‘The people ignored her warning. But a week later, something terrible happened.’