She remembers how it felt that night when she came here at ten years old, her heart filled with hope that she might discover one of her sisters, or both. That one of them might leap out and say Boo! And then they’d all go home and the anguish that their mother was suffering every second of every day would be forgotten.
It had been a dry, still night, and she’d been afraid. Any other time she wouldn’t have had the courage to be out on her own, much less venture into the Longing in the darkness. But the devastation of her sisters’ disappearances diminished every other emotion, and the world had narrowed to the sight of her mother’s gaunt, harrowed face. As though Liv’s soul had left her body and she was now shuffling around like a kind of hole with a human face. What Luna had wanted more than anything, more than a million Christmases all at once, was to see her sisters again. Even Saffy. And to see her mother smile once more.
She remembers that she went into the Longing. It was so dark inside that she’d wished she had thought to bring a torch. She’d leaned into the darkness and called her sisters’ names.
“Saffy? Clover?”
She’d listened hard. The sound of the sea washing the shore, the far blare of a ship’s horn. And then, a whisper.
She’d stiffened and listened again. This time, she’d located the source—the grille in the floor. Wind was rushing through it. Maybe that’s where Saffy had gone. She’d opened it and jumped down.
It was a long way down, and she’d hurt her knee. But once she was there, she’d found the cave was wider than she’d expected, and much longer, too. It was scary, like the mouth of an enormous crocodile. Lots of spiky things coming down from the ceiling like teeth and bigger ones rising up from the ground, sharp as knives.
“Saffy?” she’d called. “Are you here?”
Her fingers had reached for the wall to help steady herself as she made her way forward. A little farther ahead there seemed to be light trickling through an opening at the end, and she could see markings on the cave wall. A pattern of some kind. It was very big and deeply carved into the rock. She remembers thinking a giant must have done it, because the rock was so very hard against her fingertips and it would have taken a lot of strength to leave so much as a scratch. As she thinks of it now, the pattern looked very like the mural her mother had been painting. Interlocking triangles forming a star, with other squiggles and circles carved into the stone.
IV
They park up at the visitors’ center. The wind is howling and the temperature gauge reads four degrees Celsius—much too cold for a decent night’s sleep. Shivering, she steps outside to look for a blanket, or perhaps a jacket, in the boot of her car.
She’s about to step back inside when a woman approaches.
“Sorry,” the woman calls over the wind. “I’m afraid we’re closed. I have to lock up the car park for the night.”
Luna opens her mouth to explain, engulfed with shame.
“The ferries are canceled,” she says. “I . . . we have to sleep here until the morning.”
The woman’s face drops. Her eyes slide to Clover in the car. “You can’t stay in a hotel?”
“It’s a long story,” Luna says.
The woman fixes her with a searching stare. It makes Luna flinch with embarrassment. “I’m sorry, but I don’t suppose I know you?” she asks. “I think I recognize you. Your mum was painting the Longing?”
Luna stares, her eyes widening. The woman is faintly recognizable, with short blonde hair teased into a quiff and a septum piercing. She recognizes her eyes. The same laughing eyes.
“Cassie?”
V
Amy and I were married on a Tuesday, in the same church where our mothers were condemned to their deaths. Never did I believe that I could ever laugh and smile in that place to which I had returned in my nightmares many times over the years, but that day, I did.