‘What are you doing?’ asks Lily.
‘Locking us inside until the tide goes out. To keep us all safe.’
‘But what about Nancy?’ Lily asks. ‘She isn’t safe. She’s out there somewhere, she didn’t just vanish. Am I the only one who cares about our mother and is worried about her?’ Nobody answers. ‘Are we just not going to talk about it? I suppose that is what we normally do in this family, as though pretending something bad didn’t happen will mean it never did. I know what you’re all thinking, but Nancy wouldn’t do this.’
‘Do what?’ Trixie asks. She doesn’t know what really happened to her. She doesn’t even know that Dad is dead. As far as she knows, Nana had an accident and we’re all just waiting for the tide to go out.
‘Maybe we shouldn’t have this conversation in front of Trixie,’ I say.
But Lily ignores me. My sister is always a stranger to any point I try to make.
‘I’ve been thinking about everything that has happened tonight, and the only explanation is that someone else is here, at Seaglass,’ Lily says. ‘Someone else has been here the whole time, since before we arrived, waiting for us to go to bed and then picking us off one by one. Someone close to the family. Someone who knew about Nana’s eightieth birthday, and that we’d all be here to celebrate it.’
‘Everyone knew that Halloween was Nana’s birthday. She made us celebrate it every year,’ says Rose.
Conor nods. ‘And everyone knew that she believed it would be her last, because of that premonition by the palm reader in Timbuktu—’
‘Land’s End,’ Rose corrects.
‘Whatever. They said her eightieth birthday would be her last . . . which it was. She was literally found in a puddle of her own blood just after midnight.’
My niece starts to quietly cry.
‘I’m sorry, Trixie,’ Conor says. ‘That was very insensitive of me. This has been a terrible night for all of us, but you must be so upset about Nana and Frank.’
Trixie frowns. ‘What’s wrong with Grandad?’
‘Nothing,’ Lily lies. ‘He’s just very upset about Nana, so he’s having a lie-down.’
‘Is Nancy having a lie-down too?’ Trixie asks.
Nobody knows what to say, including me, but Lily isn’t the only one to think that Nancy isn’t responsible for any of the things that have happened here tonight. And she’s right to be worried about her. My mother can be many unpleasant things – sometimes all at once – but a killer isn’t one of them. I’m certain of that.
There is a picture on the mantelpiece above the fireplace, which I often find myself staring at. It’s of three generations of Darker family women: Nana, my mother, my sisters and me at Seaglass, posing like the happy family we rarely were, here in this room. I’m guessing it would have been 1983, when I was seven, because of the matching blue dresses my sisters and I are wearing. I remember the day Nancy and I went to town to buy them. I lied to my mother that day, and I don’t think she ever found out the truth.
The trouble with little white lies is that they sometimes grow up to become big dark ones.
Twenty-four
SEAGLASS – 1983
My mother always dressed up to go shopping; for her it was like putting on a show. I remember that she was in a good mood that day – it was a rare and therefore memorable thing. Nancy sang along to the car radio as we drove along the coastal road into town – completely out of tune – to a song called ‘Stayin’ Alive’。 She had a video of a film that had the same song in it, something about a man called John Travolta who had a fever on a Saturday night. Her favourite shop in the whole wide world was called Debenhams, and that was where we were headed.
We were at Seaglass for the Easter holidays, but Nana didn’t come with us. She hated all forms of shopping. ‘Material things only matter to material people,’ she would say. But Nancy loved to shop. The only problem with her spending habits and expensive taste was that we rarely had any money in those days. The divorce settlement was generous, but after paying the mortgage on our tiny house in London, and my sisters’ school fees, there was very little left over. Which was why the start of the sales was very important to Nancy. We had to get there on day one, as soon as the shop doors opened, even if that meant queuing. The only thing my mother loved more than shopping was believing that she had paid less for something than it was worth.
I loathed being dragged around department stores. They were too big and I was too small, and I was always afraid of getting lost. I preferred the smaller shops we used to visit on our old high street. I always loved Woolworths because of the pick ’n’ mix; the memory of all those cola bottles, cherry lips and flying saucers still makes me smile. Lily’s favourite shops were Our Price – where she went to buy the latest cassettes and music posters – and Tammy Girl and C&A, where she and Rose shopped for clothes. I always enjoyed our trips to Blockbuster Video – even if I was rarely allowed to choose which film we would rent – and visits to the little independent bookshop with Nana were my favourite outings. Buying books was the only form of shopping she ever enjoyed. It makes me sad to realize that none of those shops exist now. So many high streets are more like ghost towns these days.