“You never found Clover?” Cassie asks, sadly. “Or your mum?”
Luna opens her mouth to answer, but holds back. She doesn’t know where to start.
“I think it’s beautiful that you named your daughter after Clover,” Cassie says. “The likeness is stunning.”
“She’s not my daughter,” Luna says quietly.
“Who is she, then?”
Luna opens her mouth to lie, but despite herself, it all comes out—the phone call, the trip to the hospital in Inverness, fully expecting to be reunited with a twenty-nine-year-old woman.
Cassie looks stunned. She stands and paces, thinking it through. “That’s crazy,” she says. “And they let you take her?”
Luna explains about her worries that social services will yet come looking for her. She tells Cassie about her theory that Clover has some kind of age regression disease that has stopped her from growing, about the things that Clover has said that only Clover could have known: the Longing, Saffy, their mother painting the mural.
She tells Cassie about the glass in the food they ordered at the hotel. About Brodie chasing her.
Cassie cups her hands to her mouth. “Fuck, Luna. This happened tonight?”
Luna nods. “Right before I saw you in the car park.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? I’ve a crowbar in the boot of my car. I’d have gone after the bastard if you said . . .” She recovers. “Tell me you at least called the police?”
“I don’t trust anyone on this island,” Luna says firmly. “Except you.”
“I’ve heard about Brodie,” Cassie says after a long silence. “He’s been married a couple of times, had a long stint with drugs, fell on hard times.”
“Why would he say I’m meant to be dead, Cassie?” Luna asks. “What happened after I left Lòn Haven?”
Cassie blinks, thinking back. “It’s all a bit of a blur . . . Dad was so out of sorts after the accusation . . . and then Liv went missing and he spent a while looking for her. He took you to the police station, do you remember that?”
Luna shakes her head. “No, I didn’t know that.”
“He wouldn’t leave until social services were ferried out from Inverness. I remember him phoning them, even when we were in Auckland, to check up on you.” Cassie looks up. “He said you were in foster care. What was that like?”
“I’m still in touch with one of my foster mothers. Other than that, it was shit from start to finish.”
Cassie nods again, smiles. “You seem to have it together, though.”
Luna considers briefly telling Cassie about her wayward youth, her years as a shoplifter, desperate to be caught for something, for someone to tell her why she’d been abandoned by her mother.
“You remember the folktale about wildlings?” she says after a long pause.
“Remember?” Cassie says. “Of course I bloody remember. It was drilled into us before we could talk.”
Luna cocks her head. “You still believe it?”
Cassie gives a small laugh. “Are you joking?”
“If I told you that Clover has a burn on her hip, a set of numbers—what would you think?”
Cassie blinks. “I’d say that was very bloody unfortunate and you should make sure she sees a doctor . . .”
“And the fact that she’s still a seven-year-old?”
A pause. “Luna. She cannot be Clover.”