‘We could’ve been,’ Merryn says, pulling her chair closer. ‘We should’ve been.’ She shakes her head. ‘You didn’t give me a chance. But we shared blood! Does that mean nothing to you?’
Amelia is struggling to find the words. The woman in front of her is clearly very ill. Delusional, among other things, and for all these years harbouring this strange, twisted obsession with a young girl she spent time with for one day – many years before. Yes, they shared a traumatic event together. But that can’t be what defines them both forever.
Merryn changes tack. ‘I know what you’re thinking. It was one day . . . how could we be friends? But it was a special day, Anne. We formed a bond. What happened that day set the course for both our lives, did it not?’
She can’t deny that. The number of times she’d wanted to tell her parents what had happened, and decided not to. She’d been petrified. Her parents weren’t harsh people, but they were law-abiding and they would have wanted to do the right thing – go to the police, tell the truth. But what might have happened to her? She’d read things, seen things on the news about children who do terrible things being taken away – put in care – and what might have been done to her there? Being away from her parents and friends? Being known as ‘the bad girl’ . . . ‘the evil girl’. The man from the boat was dead. Nothing was going to bring him back. She’d spent over twenty years trying to make up for it, and although she’d had to push her family away – to protect them from what she’d done – she’d managed to get on with her life. Somehow.
Stupidly, she’d assumed George – or Merryn, as she was calling herself – had done the same.
‘You don’t even know what happened to me,’ Merryn said. ‘Do you even care? It was fine for you. You just ran away, went home and pretended it didn’t happen—’
‘But I—’
‘Don’t interrupt me!’ Merryn jumps up from her chair and sweeps a hand across the table, knocking plates and glasses flying. ‘Look at all this. Look at all the lovely food I had made for you . . . and you didn’t eat a thing. Why? Why, Anne? I did this for you. I wanted you to enjoy the party.’
Amelia feels sick. She’s struggling to cope with Merryn’s flashing mood changes. ‘You killed all those people, Merryn. Those people had nothing to do with this . . . with us.’ She sighs. ‘With anything that happened.’
‘Do you know what Father did to me when he found out, Anne?’
Amelia says nothing. She doesn’t want to know, but she’s trapped her now, and she knows she’s not getting out of this place. She glances around at the staff still carrying out their duties. What stories do these people have? Because surely only people with everything to lose would be willing to knowingly participate in this whole sick charade.
Amelia
Merryn sits down again, her expression calm. ‘One of the fishermen found the boat, Anne. They told Father. They had to tell Father. He was in charge of everything, back then. He was born in this house, you know. Although it was very different at that time. A proper working house. His father was the Father, then. His mother lived with the other mothers, and they all shared the care of the children. They were self-sufficient, in every way. No one came onto the island. No one went away. But then the authorities on the mainland decided to send someone over. Said it was to check on the children.’ She picks up a strawberry and rolls it around in her hand, before popping it into her mouth. She chews with her mouth open, strawberry juice running down her chin.
Amelia looks away. She tries to catch the eye of one of the staff, but they keep their eyes fixed ahead. They won’t get involved with this.
‘Some of the children were quite . . . ill,’ Merryn continues. ‘I suppose you’d call them deformities, or disabilities. Some of the illnesses had been passed down over many generations of Fathers. And my Father’s Father . . . well, he was quite mad. Mine, despite his strict adherence to the rules, was mostly kind. To me, certainly. To some of the others, not so much. But when they found the boat man, they traced a path back until they found my den.’
‘How? He was lying at the bottom of the cliffs, next to his smashed boat . . . you didn’t even go near him. How could they have thought it was anything to do with you? Why didn’t you tell them about me?’
She waves a hand, dismissing Amelia’s questions. ‘No one knew anything about you. You were long gone.’
Amelia still doesn’t understand. But there’s something more pressing that she wants answered. ‘What did your father do to you?’
Merryn laughs, a sad, broken laugh. ‘He punished me, of course. Kept me locked up. Said he wanted to help me atone for my sin. For the only true sin that Father believed in was the taking of another’s life, and that, of course, is what I did. He’d decided that it was true, and there was no point in me denying it.’
‘But . . . no,’ Amelia says. ‘I pushed him. I left him.’
Merryn smiles. ‘Maybe it’d be easier if you just watch.’ She taps the side of her head and a screen appears behind her. She doesn’t turn round, but moves a little to the left, making sure that Amelia has a clear view.
The memory picks up where it left off in the other room. The last part that Amelia watched with James. Amelia as a girl, running down the hill back to the village, stumbling, half blinded by tears. Arriving at the shop, and hesitating . . . before she turns away, shoulders shaking with all the crying, and heads back to the beach.
‘I don’t understand,’ Amelia says. ‘How can you have my memory in here? I don’t have the tracker—’
Merryn shakes her head. ‘It’s not your perspective though, is it? You were being watched. I’ve already told you . . . Jago saw the whole thing, didn’t he?’
James. She still can’t take it in.
Then the view cuts back to the cliff. Strands of short, straggly hair flip against her face as the view pans around quickly. A hand pushes a couple of overgrown branches out of the way, before the view tilts down the cliff, right over the edge – showing now the thing that Amelia couldn’t have seen from her own vantage point back at the top. A steep, snaking path, overrun with grasses, all the way down to the rocks. A gull circles ahead, swoops down and opens its beak wide with that whooping warning cry.
This is George’s memory.
Amelia feels as if she’s experiencing this through a virtual reality simulator. She’s in George’s head, seeing through her eyes as she walks down the path, slowly, carefully, holding herself low, keeping close to the inside of the cliff face to keep out of the whirling wind.
She rounds the bend in the path and finds herself on the rocks, where she scrambles hand over foot, to reach the boat man, who is still half on, half off the flat rock. His hair moves gently with the waves, his hand draped over the rock, flipping upwards as the water clutches it, slapping back down as the waves diminish and retreat into the sea.
She makes it across the rocks to the man’s body. She bends over, the wind grabbing her hair again, whipping it across her face. She takes his hand and pulls, with some difficulty, flipping the man onto his back. She bends closer, puts an ear close to his face. And then the man’s hand moves. It reaches for her and she pulls away as his mouth opens in a cry. She falls back onto the flat rock, arms smacking down, breaking her fall as the man grabs at air, tries to turn himself over. Tries to grip onto the rock. The back of his head is dark and wet, with water and blood and matted hair. She crawls away, running her hands across the smaller rocks wedged into the shale at the foot of the cliff.