It took a couple of days before the handyman at The Lodge could come out and replace Annie’s broken glass. But once that was 58done, knowing her home was wind- and water-tight, she got herself down to Glasgow and Lewis’s flat.
From the moment she walked into his building, with what she’d come to think of as the lodestone firmly in her grasp, she was hyper-vigilant to any noises going off in her mind.
‘You getting anything?’ Lewis asked as she entered his living room, instinctively knowing her thoughts.
Annie held a hand out and made a so-so motion. ‘They’re definitely less intrusive. I can hear whispers, and the odd bout of mocking laughter.’ Her smile was tentative. ‘Not as bad as it was last time I was down here.’
‘I’ll take that as a win,’ Lewis replied.
After she’d settled in, they sat down in the living room and got down to the business of how they should go about finding Damien. They decided to retrace what they knew of his last journey. Chrissie had been able to tell them that the day he disappeared he’d been to visit his son, Bodie, who lived with his mother in the small Ayrshire coastal town of Girvan.
They talked late into the night – Lewis brought his own quilt and pillow through from his bedroom and camped out on the floor beside the sofa. Annie smiled, remembering times when they did this as kids. It was the two of them against the commanding nature of their mother – their adoptive mother – and they would team up like this while the grown-ups were sleeping. It was a small act of defiance – because Mother wouldn’t want either one of them out of their bed in the middle of the night.
Finally, Annie slept.
There was a woman there, in her dreams. Long black hair, eyes gleaming and teeth shining.
Annie felt a pang of loneliness, and knew this feeling belonged to the other woman. The woman came closer. Floated above Annie in her dream bed, her hair like black silk curtains extending down either side of Annie’s face, her breath on Annie’s skin. Warm and moist. Lonely. 59
She floated closer. Noses almost touching.
Trust, the woman sang.
Annie’s murmurs laughed. Mocked.
Love, the woman sighed, and kissed Annie on the corner of her mouth. It was so light, Annie barely felt it, but then, she was aware of its lingering weight. It made her feel looked after. Cared for. That someone was on her side.
The murmurs cackled.
Be gone, the woman said. And silence echoed in her mind. And Annie knew nothing but quiet for the remainder of the night.