‘I eat them, you know, the birds. I kill them and cook them. What do you think of that?’
It’s the woman who had shown me her bloodied hands – an ancient little figure with a tiny, nipped-in waist and clouds of silvery hair like wire wool. Her skin looks like parchment. She is wearing a dirty apron and scuffed house slippers. One of her yellowing eyes is running thick tears.
‘I break their necks.’
She steps closer to me, and smiles. Her teeth are tobacco-coloured, soft-looking, pulpy.
‘I’m sorry about my dog—’
‘I know who you are,’ she whispers, coming close enough that I can smell cloves on her breath. ‘You’re a dead woman.’
I’ve managed to grab Blue by the scruff of the neck and am hauling him towards the door but when I look up I see there is someone blocking my way. Another woman, slightly younger, her face carefully made-up. She has her hair in a chignon but there are crescents of black beneath her fingernails and her lipstick is smudged, just the tiniest bit. I haul Blue to my side, hearing myself apologising again. She darts her eyes over me without smiling.
‘You’ll have to mind my mother-in-law,’ she says flatly. It’s hard to place her age. As she steps into the light I can see that she is older than I had previously thought, in her sixties at least. ‘She has good days and bad days. This is one of her bad days. We have more and more of those as she gets to the end. Come on, Beverley. You’re scaring Stella.’
I blink at the sound of my name.
‘Ellie?’ the little woman says to me, lifting one knuckled hand to my cheek. I back away. I don’t like to be touched. It makes me clench my teeth.
‘Not Ellie, no.’ The woman looks at me over her mother-in-law’s head.
‘How did you know my name?’
‘Oh, we all know who you are, Stella Wiseman. Since you moved into the cottage up there the town has talked of nothing else. A star, however faded, is still a star.’
‘Oh, well, I wouldn’t say—’
‘You know they say that the light you see is from stars which are already dead? That explains why it’s so cold.’
I am standing with Blue between my legs, holding him in place with my knees. She puts her hands on her mother-in-law’s shoulders and smiles.
‘I’m Penelope Dalton. This is Bev, but don’t bother introducing yourself, you’ll only have to do it again the next time you see her. How are you finding it up at Chy an Mor? It’s been a while since I’ve been up there.’
‘Yes, it—’
‘Of course you’re probably still settling in, aren’t you? It must be very boring for you here, with all of us old folk and nothing to do. I expect you’re desperate to get back to the city. You’re bleeding.’
I look down at my hand, where hair-thin scratches are already growing into welts dotted with blood, criss-crossing my pale skin.
‘Ellie,’ Beverley says to me again, lifting a finger, which shivers slightly. She points at my chest.
‘No—’ I begin, and Penelope cuts me off.
‘That’s the Nilsen house, isn’t it? The one you’re in. You’re with Marco, I suppose. Will he be joining you soon?’
‘He – uh . . . He has some work to finish abroad. Look, I really need to go.’
‘Of course. Come on, Mother, let her pass.’
‘You mustn’t worry about her,’ Beverley says to me quietly as I squeeze past. ‘She’s always been a bitch.’
Penelope barks a strangled laugh and squeezes Beverley’s shoulders. ‘Good God, are we going to be forced to do this in front of our guest? You’ll frighten her off! Come on,’ she says to me, ‘I’ll walk you to the door.’
As we go down the hallway I hear Beverley say something else, but I don’t quite catch it as the kitchen door closes on her. The last glimpse I have of her, she is standing beneath a hanging rack bristling with chickens, her sallow face hangdog and worried-looking. She is mouthing something at me, but the door closes before I can see what she is saying.
‘Dementia is very cruel,’ Penelope tells me. ‘Sometimes I wonder who suffers more. I do hope you aren’t struggling too much up there on your own. They say all these old places are full of ghosts.’
I am instantly cold.
She studies me carefully as she opens the front door. ‘It’s funny,’ she says, wrapping her cardigan around her bony shoulders, ‘I never thought of Marco as having a “type” but now I’ve seen you, well – maybe he does after all.’
While I stand there staring, wondering what she means, Blue squirming beside me, she closes the door.
I’ve arranged to meet Frankie for tea in the café. As I’m crossing the car park my phone rings in my pocket. I call Blue to heel and answer, turning my back to a wind which dusts fine grains of sand against my bare legs. The stinging sensation is almost pleasant.
‘Stella? It’s me, Marco. Can you hear me all right?’
‘You’re a bit fuzzy.’
‘I’m just at the airport. Heading back to London. I should be down with you by the weekend. I’m sorry it’s taken so long.’
‘I’m so pleased you called, I—’
‘Listen, I don’t have long. Are you okay? How’s the house?’
I hesitate. I don’t want to worry him. Everything’s fine, darling. I’ve started seeing shapes in the walls.
‘Not bad.’
‘Yeah? You still taking the pills?’
‘Sure!’ I say so brightly I have to grit my teeth. I’m sabotaging myself, flushed them all away. Buh-bye, sanity. ‘Up and down, you know? Peaks and troughs.’
‘You sound tense. Are you sure you’re all right? I shouldn’t have just left you.’
‘It’s fine, I promise. It’s good for me. This space. Like a retreat.’
‘Okay, baby girl. I have to go. It’s boiling here. I’d love to bring you one day, although we’d give the bullfighting a swerve. I’ll call you when I land, okay?’
‘Okay.’
He hangs up and I am left staring at my phone. Bullfighting? I think. Before, Marco had said he was in Zürich. Hadn’t he? That tangle of confusion knots tighter, making my skin itch. I scramble in my bag for a pen and a scrap of paper and write on the back of it ‘Zürich/Spain??’. My handwriting looks a little better, not spidery and shaky as it has been these last few weeks. I fold the paper and slip it inside my pocket and go and meet Frankie.
He listens as I tell him the story of the hand at the window and the strange woman I’d met in the ruined house.
‘Do you want to keep Blue for another night?’
‘Yes, I think I’d like that, I really would.’
‘Have you heard from the police? The coastguard? Anything on the news?’
I shake my head.
‘You still worried that someone’s been in your house?’
‘I’m more worried that – what if it’s in my head, Frankie?’ I feel absurdly close to tears. For the millionth time I wish I had my pills. ‘That’s what worries me. I’m hoping they’ll find a body just so I can be reassured that this person existed. Is that an awful thing to say? That I hope they find them dead?’