I stared at the ring on her hand, then I turned to my mother, who looked as though she had been punched. Her face was pinched tight, as if every muscle was working its hardest to hold her smile in place. Nana’s mouth formed a perfect O. I had never seen what she looked like when surprised before. My sisters and I shuffled closer together, as though instinct told us our pack was under threat. Sometimes the thinnest of threads can tether people to one another, and that was always true in my family.
Thoughts collided inside my head, bad ones, causing a series of small explosions. Until that moment, I think I always thought that my parents would get back together one day. We had all agreed that Rebecca was wonderful, but our opinion of her changed in a heartbeat. Now she was an awful, hateful witch of a woman – who I had adored only a few minutes earlier – because she was trying to destroy my family.
I can remember my sisters spinning me round and round as a child, on the beach or in the garden, then telling me to try to walk in a straight line. It was impossible, and for some reason very funny, to be that dizzy. We would laugh as I staggered and swayed all over the place, before collapsing in a heap. But when I thought my dad was going to marry someone who wasn’t my mother, I felt a very bad kind of dizzy. Then I felt sick. Then I fainted.
I’m sure that’s all it was. The Albert Hall was extremely hot, the box we were in was very high up, and the idea of my father remarrying caught me off guard. I just fainted. But Nancy was convinced my heart had stopped again, having literally been broken by Dad’s news. An ambulance was called, and I was rushed away to hospital, along with the rest of the Darker family women. My dad stayed with his orchestra and his fiancée. We never got to see him fulfil his dream on stage at the Albert Hall, and we never got to see him marry Rebecca. She broke it off two weeks later, saying that she couldn’t be with someone who put his career before his child, even when they had been rushed to hospital.
It was all my fault, and my heart didn’t really stop that day, not that I ever told anyone. It was the first time I understood that withholding the truth was almost, but not quite, the same as lying. And although I felt guilty about everything that happened as a result, I never confessed. You can get away with murder when everyone thinks you are dying.
‘Trixie!’ screams Lily, snapping me out of the memory.
I turn to see where my sister is looking at the very back of the cupboard under the stairs, and spot my niece curled up on the floor in the shadows. Her pink pyjamas are covered in dust and dirt, there are cobwebs in her hair, her eyes are closed and her skin is so white she looks like a ghost. She doesn’t move, even when Lily screams her name a second time.
Trixie
Daisy Darker’s niece was a precocious little child.
Like all abandoned ducklings, she would not fare well in the wild.
Aged fifteen （going on thirty） Trixie Darker was clever and kind,
But she asked too many questions, and some truths are hard to find.
The child was unexpectedly chosen to inherit her grandmother’s estate.
A decision which caused much unhappiness, and jealousy, and hate.
Her own mother felt angry and cheated, most of the family felt the same.
The child’s father might have been happy for her, but nobody knew his name.
Despite her endless questions, the child most wanted an answer to one:
Who was her dad, did he know she existed, or would she only ever have a mum?
When the time came, no one knew who to blame, when she was found under the stairs.
It’s hard to know who to trust, when a child is left for dead in the dust, wondering if anyone really cares.
Twenty-two
31 October 2:30 a.m.
less than four hours until low tide
Rose crawls inside the cupboard and gently pulls Trixie out. Nobody speaks, and the house is eerily silent. It seems strange to me that Lily doesn’t rush to her daughter’s side, but I think she must be in shock. We all are. Except for Rose, who takes charge of the situation again. She carefully lays Trixie on the parquet floor in the hall.
‘Hold the torch steady,’ she barks at Conor, leaning down over my niece and feeling for a pulse. It seems to take the longest time, but finally Rose nods.
‘She’s alive.’
‘Oh, thank god!’ Lily says, but the smile soon slides off her face. ‘Who did this?’ Nobody answers. ‘Which one of you did this? She didn’t lock herself in the bloody cupboard.’
‘Wait,’ says Rose. ‘She’s alive, but something isn’t right.’
We watch as she examines Trixie from head to toe. She’s unconscious, deathly pale, and I notice that one of her socks is missing. Rose sees it too, and stares down at her bare foot.