The Retreat(96)

‘Albert saw them taking me into the woods and followed them, just as I did for you.’ She smiled, showing her yellow teeth.

‘One day, the lady who tried to give me to the witch came to Nyth Bran. I recognised her straight away. The woman with the kittens! She had her daughter with her. The daughter had beautiful red hair. I wished my hair was that colour, so pretty and bright . . . I hid in the walls and watched them.’

Lily swallowed. This ‘lady’ was Carys’s equivalent of Megan. The person who’d tried to give her to the Widow.

‘Did you hate her?’ Lily whispered. ‘For what she did?’

‘No, because if she hadn’t done it, Daddy wouldn’t have found me.’

Lily was astonished. ‘But she tried to kill you! Carys, if it wasn’t for her you wouldn’t have spent your life living down here, in a hole like a . . . like a Hobbit.’

Carys narrowed her eyes. ‘What’s a Hobbit?’

‘See!’ Lily exclaimed. ‘You don’t know anything. Have you ever watched a movie, or TV? Your whole life was stolen from you.’

Carys shook her head. ‘No! Daddy hid me from the Widow and looked after me. He said I was his and Mummy’s reward, a reward for their patience. They couldn’t have children – and then I came along, like a gift. That’s why he made these walls soundproof – so when visitors came to the house they wouldn’t hear me.’

Lily stared at her. ‘I don’t understand.’

Carys scratched her arms harder and glared at Lily as if she were stupid. ‘Because no one could know I was here, of course. Daddy said if they found me they’d take me away. Send me back to the home.’ Tears appeared in her eyes. ‘I couldn’t go back to that place. It was so horrible there. The other children were mean to me and the grown-ups were mean too. The food was disgusting. I was so sad there.’

Her eyes darted from side to side and she leant forward as if she were about to share a big secret. ‘Daddy said he would never let me go back to that place, that he would never let anyone find me. He built spaces into the walls of Nyth Bran so I could enter the house without anyone seeing me. He said that if anyone ever came looking for me, there would be places for me to hide. He got the idea from a book, he said, about a little girl in the war who hid from the nasties.’

‘The Nazis, you mean? Anne Frank?’

Carys frowned. ‘I’m sure he said nasties.’

Something dawned on Lily. ‘Wait. Nyth Bran. That’s my house!’

‘That’s right.’ Carys pointed to the ceiling. ‘It’s up there.’

Lily jumped up. She went all dizzy and had to put a hand on the wall to steady herself. ‘Who lives there now?’

‘Nobody, Lily. Just us.’

‘Then why can’t we go up there, into the house? I want to see it! My things might still be there. My toys and books. My iPad! I can show you things. Videos! Games! I can show you all the things you missed.’

The angry look came back, but there was confusion there too, as if Lily were actually getting through to her, making her see that she hadn’t been saved. Her ‘Daddy’ was not a good guy.

‘Let me go upstairs, find the iPad, all my other things . . .’

‘No! It’s all gone. And it’s not safe to go up there, not for you. The Widow will see you.’

Lily wanted to wail with frustration. She had to make Carys see that this wasn’t right, that she had been wronged. That she didn’t need to live underground.

‘Where’s your . . . daddy now?’ she asked after a while.

Carys clenched her fists. ‘Daddy got sick. The Big C, they called it. He was sick for ages, and then he died.’ Her eyes were watery. ‘And then Mummy got sick too, soon after. She said when he died her heart stopped working properly.’

‘Then what happened?’ Lily asked.

A smile. ‘She let me into the house to look after her. It was nice, being able to do that. But then . . . then she changed. She became mean. Nasty.’ She screwed up her face and her voice changed. She sounded like a scary witch. ‘I never wanted you, never loved you. He loved you more than he loved me. I know what happened when he came down here to see you. You cunt. You little cocksucker.’

Lily gasped at the bad language.

Carys’s voice returned to normal. ‘But he never touched me. No man has ever touched me.’

Lily didn’t know what to say to that.

‘Mummy told me that when she died I would have to leave here. She said she was going to leave the house to charity, to atone for all her and Albert’s sins. She cried a lot, ranted about how she was going to Hell but at least Albert would be there too. And then one day I went up to see her and she was gone. I waited and waited but she never came back. I began to sleep up there, with the sun coming through the windows, in their big bed. That was when it struck me. If Mummy was dead too, that meant the house was mine. I was their daughter and it rightfully belonged to me.’ She almost shouted the last sentence.

‘But then people came. A man and a woman, wearing posh clothes. They put up a big sign outside. For Sale. I pulled it down but they brought another one. People kept coming to look around the house. Strangers. Nosy parkers. I hid in the walls and I made noises. You should have seen their faces.’ She laughed, sounding like a witch again. ‘But then I got sick . . . I thought I was going to die. I dreamt that a family had moved in upstairs, a new family with a little girl. And when I woke up the dream had come true.’