Dark Tides (9 page)

I was lying on my bed with my ankles crossed, flicking through my battered copy of
The Secret Garden
, when the doorbell buzzed. I hurried on to the landing and listened to the muffled voices below. My stomach fluttered. I thought I recognised the woman talking to Dad, but before I could lean out over the banister to make sure, he led her inside the lounge and closed the door.

I considered bursting in after them, acting as if I didn’t know she was there. But Dad wouldn’t fall for it. He’d send me back to my room. And if I tried sneaking downstairs to eavesdrop, the creaking treads would give me away. In the end, I opted to sit at the top of the stairs with my book open on my lap and my elbows on my knees.

I didn’t turn a page in forty-five minutes, but I managed to catch the odd word and phrase and it was enough to confirm her identity. It bugged me that Dad hadn’t told me she was coming. I badly wanted to talk to her. I was desperate to hear if there was any news.

I understood why Dad had been so secretive. I got that he wanted to protect me. But I was past that now. We both were. Mum’s disappearance had forced me to grow up fast. I’d had to contend with fears and emotions that no kid should have to face. But I’d endured them and I was coming out the other side. Not in one piece, perhaps, but complete enough to know that there were some things that needed to include me.

I finally got my chance just before noon when the lounge door opened and Dad’s visitor stepped out into the hall. She was leading him by the hand and I can’t pretend that the unexpected intimacy between them wasn’t a shock. She turned to face him, going up on her toes to cradle his cheek in her palm.

I shut my book with a snap and she turned and saw me and her brilliant smile was like a bright light shining into the dark recesses of my heart. She was achingly beautiful, with long, caramel hair that tumbled down around her face and shoulders, and the most incredible green eyes. She wasn’t the least bit embarrassed to be caught comforting Dad. She was the most relaxed, most uninhibited person I’d ever met.

Her name was Detective Constable Knox. Or Jen, as she’d told me to call her. She wasn’t in charge of the investigation into Mum’s disappearance but she was part of the team tasked with finding her. She’d talked to me right from the beginning. She’d listened to my questions and she’d answered them as best she could. She was someone I’d grown to care deeply about and, if I’m honest, someone I hoped cared deeply about me, too.

‘Hey Claire,’ she said, and if she was suspicious about why I was sitting on the staircase reading an upside-down book, she didn’t show it. ‘Rough day?’

I nodded and gave Dad the stink eye.

‘I was just letting your dad know where things stand.’

‘Have you found anything?’

Dad released a heavy breath.

‘Not yet, sweetheart. But we’re still looking. We look every day.’

‘Is there a new clue?’

‘
Claire.
’ Dad’s voice was tight and hoarse. ‘What have I told you?’

He’d told me that this wasn’t one of the silly mystery stories I liked to read. He’d told me there weren’t any
clues
to be followed. He’d told me it was much more complex than I could possibly understand.

But I didn’t believe him. I felt sure Mum had left something behind for me – some crumb I could follow. I’d been through her bedside drawers. I’d rooted through her sewing box and my craft things. I hadn’t found anything yet, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t anything to be found. The most important thing was that we didn’t give up.

‘It’s OK,’ Jen said, touching his arm.

She climbed the stairs towards me, tucked a coil of hair behind her ear and rested her hand on my knee. ‘Listen Claire, there may not be a clue for us to uncover, but there is a solution to all this and we’re doing our very best to find it for you. We’re determined not to let you or your dad down.’

‘Promise?’

‘I promise that we’ll do all that we can.’

I reached out and hugged her and she hugged me back. It felt good, felt comforting, so I guess she was right to say what she did. Back then, of course, I was young enough to believe that her words really meant something. I was yet to learn that simply trying wasn’t always enough.

Later, I was staring out of my bedroom window, turning Jen’s words over and over, repeating them like a mantra. The scene was pretty much the same as it was most days – an ordinary street filled with terraced houses and parked cars. Every now and then a vehicle drove by or somebody walked past, sometimes with a dog on a lead. Other than that, nothing happened. Nothing changed.

It was different in my mind. The street was still there, but I was imposing another scene on top of it. I was picturing Mum walking towards me, dressed the same way as she had been on the night she’d vanished. Her winter coat was buttoned up to her chin and the carved turnip lantern flickered on the end of its twine handle beside her, like an amulet to ward off evil spirits.

I didn’t hurry her approach. I savoured it, even slowing it down a little. In my mind’s eye, I saw her cross the road between the parked cars and switch the lantern to her left hand, ready to reach for our gate. Then, as she stepped on to the path, she glanced up and spotted me at the window, and she smiled so radiantly that I could tell she’d known I’d be there, had been sure all along that I’d keep faith in her. It made my heart soar. Not just because she was back but because her expression told me that I was the one who’d made it happen. Me, with my desperate need for it, with my determination to will her into being.

She lowered her head and stepped forwards out of view and I waited for the doorbell to ring. But it never did. The chime remained silent. I waited some more, barely daring to breathe, until I finally let my shoulders fall and looked back up the street to start the process all over again.

But this time it wasn’t Mum I saw coming. It was someone else, hurrying at a stoop, darting along in front of the houses on the opposite side of the street.

My heart hammered in my chest.

Morgan Caine.

He was faster and more nimble than I might have guessed. He had on a green-and-white baseball jacket, dark jeans and white basketball trainers.

Morgan ducked behind a parked van, then turned and scanned the street. Maybe he was playing some kind of game, I thought. A make-believe chase.

I pushed up on my windowsill and watched him stalk out from behind the van and scurry across the street, coming to a halt just outside our house.

His face was flushed. He was panting hard. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve, then unzipped his jacket and removed an envelope.

It was purple and unusually large. It looked homemade.

Morgan spread the envelope against his thigh and smoothed it flat with his hand. He glanced up at my window and our eyes locked.

He pushed his mouth to one side, lifted the envelope for me to see and stuffed it into the crack between our front gate and the wall. He nodded once before turning and breaking into a run.

I waited until he was gone, until I was sure that he wouldn’t double back and return, and then I slipped out of my room and rushed downstairs and out through the front door.

The purple envelope fluttered in the wind. I plucked it free and saw that my name was printed on the front in blue crayon.

I turned it over and ripped it open. There was a card inside, also homemade from purple craft paper. There was a simple drawing of a flower on the front. The message inside was written in the same blue crayon and careful handwriting.

‘You need to relax.’

David handed me my gin and tonic. The glass was smeared with fingerprints, which didn’t surprise me since the pub we were in was a complete dive. I had no idea why he’d chosen to meet here. Sure, it was cheap, but it was also close to empty and the dismal interior reeked of spilt beer and stale cigarette smoke.

The landlord had made a few half-hearted concessions to Hop-tu-naa – a plastic skeleton hanging from the coat stand, a wonky carved turnip at the end of the bar – but the fake cobwebs draped across the beer taps and spirit shelves looked disturbingly authentic. An ancient stereo behind the counter was playing – I swear – ‘Monster Mash’ through hissing speakers.

‘You told me that yesterday.’ I smiled sweetly. ‘And twice the day before that. And somehow, I don’t think your chosen solution would be very appropriate in the middle of this place.’

I raised an eyebrow and inclined my head towards the old guy slumped on a bar stool just along from us. His wishbone arms were crooked around a newspaper crossword and his head kept drooping towards the page.

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ David reached for my hip. ‘He might like to watch.’

‘You’re impossible. And I should be studying.’

‘You’re on holiday, Claire.’

‘It’s a
reading
week,’ I told him, not for the first time. ‘I have an essay to finish.’

‘It’s only Monday. Plus you’re bound to get an A. You always do.’

I sighed but I didn’t bother correcting him about how my essay would be graded. I’d done it too many times already and now it had become another one of his silly in-jokes – a kind of shorthand he used to reinforce our coupledom. He tended to work through his repertoire more often when we were in company, and though it bugged me a little, I didn’t really mind. I knew he was insecure. I knew he worried that I’d leave him for somebody at university, a boyfriend who was close at hand rather than a hundred miles away across the Irish Sea.

Every now and again, it would become an issue, especially when David riffed off his I’m-not-educated-enough-for-you routine. We both knew it wasn’t true. We both knew we’d just wanted different things. David loved the island. He never planned to leave. He could have had his pick of most universities when he’d finished school but he’d chosen to start out on his career at the airport and begin earning instead.

I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know that I was part of the reason for that. When we’d started going out, not long after that night around the fire up at the Ayres, I’d still had almost two years left at school. Two years for David to build a relationship with me. And things had been good. Scratch that: things had been terrific.

The problems started when I told him I’d been accepted to study English Lit in Manchester. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but he’d acted as if it was. We’d had a series of pointless fights but I hadn’t changed my mind about going and I hadn’t regretted my decision. It was still early days but I loved being a student and the university environment was everything I’d hoped it would be. Already, I was dreaming of a life in academia.

Not that I’d mentioned that to David. I loved him. I knew that he loved me. I also knew that any talk of the future would only complicate things.

‘Besides,’ David continued, rolling out his bottom lip in an exaggerated pout, ‘it’s Hop-tu-naa. It’s tradition for us to get together.’

‘So pass me Rachel’s vodka. We should head back to the others.’

The rest of the group were sitting in a velveteen booth in the far corner of the pub. Rachel was squeezed in between Scott and Callum, and I shuffled in next to Mark, leaving David to perch on a low stool at the end of the scarred wooden table.

Mark clinked glasses with us all and sipped the top of his lager. ‘So hey, good news. After all these years, it’s finally my turn to pick our dare.’

Scott groaned and banged his head against the table. I could sympathise with his reaction. The previous Hop-tu-naa had been Rachel’s year and she’d made us all get drunk and go to one of the nightclubs on Douglas promenade. It was pretty much what we did on most nights out, except we’d been in lame Halloween costumes and the club had been almost empty because it was a Sunday night.

The whole thing had been a disaster. Scott and Callum had ended up in a heated fight about how Callum was mooning over Rachel instead of having a good time with his friends. Callum had upped the ante, betting Scott that Rachel would be going home with him at the end of the night, which she didn’t, since she hooked up with some random guy working behind the bar instead. I’d had a drunken row with David about wanting to go to uni instead of moving into his new flat with him. Mark had left early, deeply unimpressed with us all. It had been many months before he’d spoken to any of us again and I’d assumed, not unreasonably, that it was the last time anyone would suggest that we carried out anything resembling a dare on Hop-tu-naa ever again.

‘Can’t we just stay here and drink?’ Rachel swirled her vodka and lemonade. ‘Dare me to neck this and I’ll double-dare you to down your pint.’

She raised her glass and gestured for Mark to do the same. Her top was very low cut and revealed a lot of cleavage. She’d confessed in a phone call to me a few days ago that she was looking to find what she called a ‘real’ man. Now, it was beginning to seem as if she’d decided that Mark fitted the bill. Or perhaps I was just very aware of the way he was staring at her chest. Not that he was alone in that.

I kicked David’s shin.

‘What?’

‘She’s your
cousin
, sicko.’

‘I was just listening to what she had to say.’

‘Then pay attention to her mouth, why don’t you?’

Callum snickered and punched David on the arm. ‘So tell us the dare, Marko.’

Mark set his lager down on a beer mat and twisted the pint glass between his hands. ‘There’s a bit of background to explain first. I’ve been doing some reading about Hop-tu-naa.’

‘Whoa.’ Scott reared back. ‘You can read?’

Mark gave him the finger.

‘Mark enjoys reading,’ I put in. ‘And he goes to the museum. I think it’s great.’

And I really did, although Mark’s sharp look told me he didn’t appreciate my contribution. Not hard to see why. I’d noticed since I’d been back on the island that I’d fallen into the habit of acting as if I was suddenly much smarter and more cultured than the people around me. Dad had already mentioned it a few times, in a playful way that was becoming steadily more vexed. ‘Go easy on us natives, Claire,’ he’d said, as I’d talked him through every ingredient I’d put in the Thai chicken curry I’d cooked for him the night before last. ‘Some of us know a few things, too.’

‘Yeah, well.’ Mark twisted his pint glass some more. ‘Point is, I found out something pretty cool. See, a lot of the older Hop-tu-naa customs are all about prophesying for the year ahead.’

‘Which makes sense,’ David said, ‘when you think about how Hop-tu-naa used to be New Year’s Eve on the old calendar.’

‘Right. And what I found out with my
reading
’ – he paused to give Scott the finger again – ‘is that years ago, when a Manx family was ready to go to sleep on Hop-tu-naa, they’d put out the fire in their living room or kitchen and spread the ashes across the hearth. After that, everyone would go to bed, and then they’d all come down in the morning to see if a footprint had appeared.’

‘A footprint?’

‘Yeah. The idea was if a footprint appeared pointing in towards the fireplace, it meant there’d be a birth in the family at some point in the next year.’ Mark leaned back, bracing the heels of his palms against the table edge. ‘But, if the footprint pointed out towards a door, it meant somebody in the family would die.’

‘Ooh.’ Rachel shivered. ‘Spooky.’

‘Yeah,’ Scott said. ‘That is pretty cool.’

‘What’s it got to do with a dare?’ Callum asked.

Mark glanced at David and David nodded back. It was an abrupt, contained movement, as if David was giving Mark the go-ahead for something they’d discussed previously. Maybe it was my imagination, but they both seemed to be avoiding my eyes.

‘So the dare is we use this footprint thing to freak somebody out. Somebody old who’d be likely to know what it means. Somebody who deserves to be scared.’

‘Like who?’

Mark paused and looked at me straight on. ‘Like Edward Caine. It’s payback time, Claire.’

I felt all the blood drain out of my head.

David reached for my hand. ‘We’ve worked everything out.’

‘Oh, you have, have you?’

Mark checked over his shoulder in case somebody was listening but he needn’t have bothered. The only living organisms close to us were germs.

‘I’ve taken a look at the house. I know I can get us inside.’

‘Wait.’ I snatched my hand free from David. ‘You want to break in?’

‘Hush.’ David copied Mark’s checking-over-the-shoulder routine, then he added a move of his own by patting the air as if he was bouncing a small rubber ball on the tabletop. ‘Not so loud, OK?’

‘This is cool.’ Scott seemed to be trying to fit both his fists inside his mouth at once. ‘I mean, this is actually interesting.’

‘It’s not cool. It’s crazy.’

‘Well, I want to do it.’ Rachel flicked a painted nail against her glass. ‘If Mark says it’s possible, I believe him.’

‘I’m in.’ Callum nodded.

‘Are you all out of your minds? We’ll end up getting arrested.’

‘We won’t, though.’ Mark’s voice was oddly detached. He sounded like a doctor delivering a sobering diagnosis. ‘Tell her.’

I wheeled round and glared at David. ‘Yes, tell
her
. What have you been hiding from me?’

‘It’s not like that.’ He raised both palms as if I was holding a gun on him. ‘The house is empty, OK?’

‘How could you possibly know that?’

‘Because I saw Edward and Morgan Caine board the flight to London City yesterday morning. I checked the booking system. I can get access to all that stuff now.’

‘Holy crap.’ Scott’s eyes had grown wide. ‘It’s like we’re planning a heist.’

‘They come back three days from now.’

‘There’ll be nobody there.’ Mark was still speaking in the calm, assured tone of a professional.

I could feel my throat closing up. This was all too much, coming tonight of all nights. The anniversary of Mum’s disappearance. Ten short years ago.

‘What about a housekeeper?’ I croaked, and it stunned me to think that I was actually considering it.

‘She goes home at seven most evenings. Earlier, probably, when Edward and Morgan are away. We know what we’re doing, Claire. We’ve been planning this for weeks.’

‘It
is
a heist!’

‘Claire.’ Rachel reached for my hands from across the table. She looked deep into my eyes. ‘I think this is a good idea. It’ll be healthy for you. It’s closure.’

I opened my mouth to speak, to tell her to keep her homespun therapy for the clients in her mother’s salon, but the words died on my tongue. There was no way it could be good for me. I knew that well enough.

But that didn’t mean I didn’t want it.