Chapter Six

Dragging myself up from the murky depths of sleep, I squint at the diamond brightness. I rocket forwards, ready to fight the unknown. Mam is there to catch me.

‘It’s alright. Your scare on the beach gave you a nightmare is all.’ She cradles me back down onto the pillow. ‘It’s all OK now.’

My mouth feels clogged, my gums bruised. Mam is smiling, but I can tell it’s an effort.

‘It’s OK, Lark. You’re safe.’

Rain drums against the roof of the caravan. Sherlock pads his way up my duvet to lick my nose and I can tell he’s been out for a walk because he still has that wet-dog smell.

I shiver, and Mam puts the back of her hand to my forehead.

‘How are you feeling?’ Dad’s face has been full of worry for the past three months. I mentally kick myself for adding to his troubles. I can’t actually kick myself because Sherlock has lain down across my ankles.

‘I’m fine.’ The words rattle through my brain like shrapnel. Mam smiles. We are both smiling and neither of us means it.

‘We were worried there for a minute.’ Her hand on my forehead is so cool and comforting. ‘You’ve been shouting some very strange things.’

‘Have I?’ I break out in a sweat. The ghost. They’ll think I’ve lost my mind.

‘About planes coming and the sky being full of fire.’ Dad is wiping the dishes and putting them away.

‘Oh.’ My mouth is gritty. ‘Weird.’

‘I’ve told you not to watch the news. It’s too distressing.’ Mam wraps her cardie around her and shoves a screwed-up tissue in her pocket. ‘Here, take some of this.’

She helps me to sit up and passes me a herbal brew that has pink spirals of steam rising from it. Our caravan only has two bedrooms, so I’m sleeping in the main living space, on a bench that turns into a bed, so it’s pretty awkward for everyone with me just lying here. I would complain about it, but Dad will threaten to make me sleep in a tent outside. I’m alright with tents in the summer but not in this weather.

I sip the shimmering liquid; it tastes of summer evenings and meadows filled with poppies and pinks. ‘Snow?’

‘She’s fine, no thanks to you.’ Dad stacks the dishes so angrily one chips, and Mam bites the corner of her lip. She has violet sacks under her eyes and her mascara has run.

‘She’s outside. Making a den. I told her not to wander far. I know I can trust her. She’s not been any trouble.’ Mam puts the emphasis on she’s. I think of the den in the woods and shudder. The Witch Woods. Ridiculous. I push away dark images.

I close my eyes and think about the fisherman who helped me off the beach and brought me back here. Away from the cold and the mist and the ghost. The ghost. I tell myself my eyes were playing tricks on me in the fog. A shiver bubbles the length of my spine.

‘You were lucky you fell above the tideline.’ Dad always scratches his stubble when he’s cross. ‘Who knows what could have happened to you if you’d been in the water.’

I heard a girl’s laugh out there in the fog. I’m sure of it.

‘Totally irresponsible.’ I can tell by the way he’s avoiding eye contact that Dad really wants to have a proper go at me, but he doesn’t want to upset Mam.

He’s right, of course. Mam gives me a sympathetic look and a wink which sticks her eyelashes together for a second. It makes me want to bawl.

‘Why don’t you go and get some air?’

Dad raises his eyebrows as far as his hairline. ‘In this?’

It’s raining a lot. Proper, full-on, fat Welsh rain.

Mam hands him his oilskin as an answer. He shrugs it on, gruffly acknowledging when he’s not wanted. ‘I guess I’m going for a walk then. Walk, Sherlock?’

Sherlock looks at him and then nestles down again. He double hates the rain.

‘Looks like I’m on my own.’

When he slams the door, Mam sits next to me, close. ‘Did I ever tell you our story?’

I nestle back. We both know that she has, a zillion times over. The words are beads in the necklace of a well-threaded tale. Each glimmers and sparkles and glows. It’s a story she used to tell me when I was a kid and I’ve heard it a thousand times. I love it anyway. It makes me feel better to hear how Mam-gu is the oldest grandmother ever to pick anyone up at the school gates. And how when Mam first picked me up the other kids called her my nan. They both had lots to do with their lives before they decided to have children. They made the most of the world so they could fill us with knowledge when we came along.

She tells me how Mam-gu travelled from the aurora of the polar lights to the ancient secret tunnels beneath Byzantium. How Mam was called Saffron River, because she was born as a monsoon hit a bazaar in India and the paths ran with yellow-gold spices. Then come the stories of how we were named: she says I was born at dawn in a nest at the tip of the forest’s tallest tree. Larks rose all around us to sing me a welcome. Snow was born in a field at the stroke of midnight while stars began to fall as flakes of snow from a sparkling winter sky.

It’s a good story, I’m not saying it isn’t, but we were born in a hospital in Cardiff like practically everyone else we know and so was Mam. I’ve seen the birth certificates. Mam-gu likes to see herself as a free spirit but she used to work in the tax office and hasn’t travelled far. I’ve seen all of her photos and they are practically all in Wales. Also larks nest on the ground. If the story was true, I would have been called Rook or something. But Mam does love to craft a spellbinding tale from absolute thin air. I have a feeling it’s a version of a story Mam-gu made up for her.

Her voice is thick with tiredness, but her face is bright. I like it when she gets lost in storytelling.

I can’t concentrate for long. Everything makes me think of the beach. The rain on the metal walls and roof has me back there, drowning. Every shadow outside is the face of the spirit who laughed. The clock pings and I almost jump out of my skin. I don’t want Mam to pick up on my fear, in case she thinks it has something to do with her, but I can feel it radiating from me.

Right at the bit where Mam starts telling me how the rain hit the floor so hard in India that you weren’t sure whether the water was travelling downwards or upwards, there is an unidentifiable noise outside. She puts her finger to her lips. We hear it again. Somewhere between a wail and a squeal, like an animal caught in a trap.

‘What is it?’ The words judder out of me.

We listen on tenterhooks to the wind and the trees, then jolt when the noise comes again. Mam dashes to the window and flicks open the blinds. She is through the door so quickly I don’t have time to stop her. Sherlock is straight out after her, barking his most ferocious bark. I hear yelling, throw off my duvet and hurl myself into the pouring rain with my teeth bared, ready to face whatever it is.

It’s Mam who’s yelling. Snow stands there, with a woman holding her by the arm. Snow is making that inhuman, animal wail and for an insane second I am happy that she can still make a noise when she wants to.

She looks scared. Mam is screeching and jabbing her finger at a woman I don’t know. The woman is not letting go of Snow’s arm. Snow reaches out to Mam. Mam tries to catch her hand and her favourite silver bangle flies off her wrist and circles through the air, spinning and glinting like the moon.

‘Let go of her.’ I rush straight at the stranger, bringing my arm down hard on hers, so she has to let Snow loose. ‘What are you doing?’ I push Snow to Mam, who catches her and pulls her inside. ‘Who do you think you are? Assaulting a little girl like that. Get out of here or I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you. Do you hear me?’

I’m shouting and shouting, and the words start to blur, as they do when I’m caught in the sharp fangs of rage. The woman steps back and slips into the wet mud. She picks up Mam’s bangle and holds it out to me.

‘Get your hands off my mam’s jewellery.’

She drops it and holds her hands up in front of her face as if she’s afraid I will hit her.

‘Lark, calm down.’ Mam is shouting at me now. Snow is peering out from the door of our caravan. Sherlock is yipping and trying to get out of her grasp. I’m soaked and coming back into myself.

‘Ten.’ Mam starts me.

Ten, remember to breathe.

Nine, the woman’s eyes are so scared.

Eight, the sky is purply grey.

Seven, I should help the woman up. I hope I didn’t hit her.

I break Mam’s hold and go towards the woman, but she scrambles up and backs away.

‘I came here to warn you.’

Six. Warn us about what?

‘You don’t belong here.’ She looks around her, terrified. ‘You don’t know about this place.’

Five. Don’t know what about this place? I wish I could ask but the anger is still too strong, and I have to concentrate on the counting to get back to normal.

‘You don’t know what you’re doing.’

Four.

‘Bad things will happen.’

Three.

‘You don’t understand. I’m trying to save you.’

Two.

‘Please leave. Please.’

One.

‘She will come for you.’

Zero.

‘Who will come for us?’

I get no answer. The woman gives me one last petrified look, then turns and runs. I snatch Mam’s bangle up from a puddle and Mam grabs my hand and drags me back into the caravan.

‘Lark, get out of those clothes and dry your hair. I need to look after your sister.’

My fingers are trembling badly. The woman’s words repeat themselves over and over in my head. She will come for you. She will come for you. I try to stop myself, but I can’t, and I just manage to make it to the bin before I throw up.

‘Lark. Are you OK in there?’ Mam opens the door. ‘Oh, Lark.’

She holds my hair. When I’ve stopped being sick she puts her hand on my head to feel my temperature again. ‘You really shouldn’t get so angry, sweetheart.’

Which is rich coming from a woman who was just screaming like a demon of the underworld.

‘That woman is probably just not very well.’ Mam hands me some tissue. ‘We’ll keep an eye out, but I don’t want you to stress about her.’

I wipe my mouth. ‘She’s completely nuts, obviously. But what did she mean, she will come for you?’

‘She was just talking gibberish. You are not to worry about it. I’ll try to find out who she is and you just keep your wits about you and stay away from her if you see her. We’ll report it to the police if we spot her again. OK?’ Mam takes the bin of sick into our tiny shower room and clunks about as she empties it down the toilet. ‘We’ll make sure that Snow isn’t left alone for a while. And, Lark?’

‘Yes?’

‘Don’t tell your father. He’s got enough on his mind as it is. Now, can you check on Snow while I get changed please, lovely girl?’

‘Course.’ I feel light as a feather when I get up and the floor comes up to meet my feet. It’s an odd feeling. Like I’m going to float.

‘And put the kettle on for some hot chocolate.’

I have to do everything.

Snow is wrapped in my duvet with her face lit up by the light box. ‘You alright?’

She nods.

‘That woman was a bit freaky, right?’

She nods exaggeratedly and rolls her eyes.

‘You’re not to be afraid of her, OK? I’ll protect you.’

She gives me a look that tells me she doubts it and receives a friendly punch to the arm in return. I flick the kettle on while she goes back to her artwork.

‘That’s beautiful.’ The light box has calmed her down really quickly and she looks far less traumatised than I feel. I check through the slats of the blinds again, just in case, but there’s nothing there but the hammering rain, the trees bowing to the wind, the purple darkness. The kettle clicks itself off and I jump, then try to laugh at my own nervousness. Making us all hot chocolate helps to settle me: the routine of it, the comforting smell, the memories it brings back that drift through the air.

I take ours over to the table and sit next to Snow, who starts slurping immediately. I congratulate myself on having topped it off with some cold milk, otherwise she’d be picking bits of shredded skin from the roof of her mouth. ‘Do you mind if I have a go?’

She pushes the light box along the table to me and I try to think of something calming to make with the pieces of sea glass. There are more bits here than I found. Snow must have collected some on her own while I was lost in the fog.

I start to rearrange the pieces into the shape of a boat. The sound of Mam having a shower and the rain still drumming on the roof helps to soothe me. I was right, this is therapeutic.

‘What do you think, Snow? Pretty outstanding seascape, right?’

She wrinkles up her brow to show she doesn’t think that much of it.

‘Cheek. What have you drawn that’s so good, then?’ I’m only joking. We both know that whatever she has drawn will be brilliant. I take a gander.

She’s drawn us on the beach. You can see the cliffs on one side and the town in the distance on the other. There’s me, her holding that horrible doll she found, and Sherlock with his nose pointed up to the sky like he’s howling. She’s done small blue dots to represent pieces of sea glass, and a big puffy cloud thing for the fog. She moves her arm so I can see more of the page and my heart skips a beat. Almost hidden by the fog is a figure. A girl in a green dress.

‘Who is that, Snow?’

She is engrossed in drawing a large candy-pink jellyfish.

‘I said, who is that?’

She swaps colour for the jellyfish’s tendrils, which annoys the hell out of me.

‘Was there someone else on the beach?’

She smiles and continues her blue squiggling worm shapes.

I move the sea glass about into a different arrangement while I try to rationalise. The light box makes Snow’s face glow and spills over her drawing. Mam is getting out of the shower. It’s my last chance to ask about that girl in the fog but, I’ll be honest, I’m too scared.

I look over at Snow’s picture again and breathe out loudly with relief. She’s covered the figure with scribbles of grey and has drawn in a mermaid in the sea. She is just using her imagination. I was using my imagination too when I heard that laughter. We’ve always been brilliant at making things up because it doesn’t cost anything.

‘Hot chocolate and then bed, I think.’ Mam’s face glows from the warmth of the shower.

We sit listening to the rain as we cradle our drinks and I lose the twitchy fear which has been picking at me all day.

‘Teeth.’

She doesn’t have to tell me. I’ve been brushing my teeth for years now without a reminder. But I just nod and let her be a mam for once.

I try not to look at my reflection when I get to the mirror, but I can’t hide from the something that darts about at the back of my eyes. It’s that creeping fat spider of doubt. Doubt about my sanity, what I saw, what was real.

I try to concentrate on more normal things, like how my nose is the wrong shape and my eyelashes too stubby. I spit crimson whorls of blood into the sink and I know I need to be good to myself for a bit. I stare into my eyes and make them look savage, brave and determined. It very nearly works.

‘Night, Lark.’ Mam barely has to raise her voice to shout this through the door.

‘Night, Mam.’

As I come out of the shower room, Snow is closing the curtain to her bedroom. She peers at me through the crack before she shuts it. It must be my state of mind, but it feels like a seriously creepy thing to do. Mam has left a lamp on for me and so Dad can see when he gets in. My nightie is laid out on my bed and next to it there is something that I really don’t want to see.

The doll stares up at the ceiling with its empty, expressionless eyes.