The Island House

by Amanda Brittany

  Warn her about what?

  She closes her eyes, searching her thoughts. She has always felt as though a part of her is missing, something lurking in the background that she has never been able to make sense of. She tried talking to her father about it many times – begging him to tell her more about who her mother was, what she was like, about their life before they came to Whitby – but he always shut her off, even got angry on occasions. In the end she stopped trying. Didn’t want to upset him. Or was it more than that? Maybe she’d backed down, too afraid to learn the truth.

  She forces herself out of bed, grabs her dressing gown, and makes her way downstairs.

  ‘Here you go, boy,’ Alice says, placing Henry’s food in front of him, her face contorting with tears. He sniffs it and returns to his basket. ‘You should eat, sweetheart.’ But she knows how he feels. She can’t face breakfast either.

  She makes a mug of coffee, lets Henry out into the tangled, frosty garden, before turning on her laptop. Everything about today feels slow, sluggish, as though she’s entered another dimension.

  It doesn’t take many clicks on her keyboard to find the news of her father’s death and his true identity has broken. Everyone seems to know now that E. H. Membrose – reclusive millionaire and bestselling author of Where Doves Fly and Raging Fires – was her father – Adam Hadley. It appears to be the most exciting news to break in the literary industry since Robert Galbraith turned out to be J.K. Rowling.

  Alice covers her mouth, trying to take in what she’s reading – seeing. Her father’s face is all over the internet; journalists excited – the secret author’s outing seeming on a par with discovering Lord Lucan’s whereabouts, or Jack the Ripper’s true identity.

  Her dad’s eyes – one green, one blue – stare out at her from her laptop screen. Every media giant is running the story; #membrose and #secretauthor are trending on Twitter.

  ‘Oh God,’ she whispers, her heart thudding as she notices reams of messages on her phone. She grabs a tissue, dabs her face.

  A newspaper clatters through the front door. She gets to her feet, makes her way into the hall. The front page covers the same news. Her father’s dark collar-length hair with just a sprinkling of grey, his sharp nose that reminded Alice of a ski slope, his chiselled jawline, his unusual eyes all now belong to the world. There are photos of her too. Recent ones of her walking through Whitby yesterday, her blonde hair poking out of the bottom of her woolly hat, her blue eyes bloodshot, cheeks blotchy. Everything her father hid for so long is on display – including her.

  Alice returns to the kitchen, throws the newspaper on the worktop, buries her head in her hands and sobs.

  So this is grief.

  Chapter 3

  February 2019

  Alice

  Alice has done little since her father died; even her shop remains closed. But she’s read that the funeral will help the healing process – that she might be able to start moving forward after today.

  She sits in the lounge at Butterfly Cottage waiting for the cars to arrive. Tears are there, unsteady behind her eyes, but she can’t afford to cry. If she starts, she will never stop.

  Her speech is folded next to her tissues in her black bag. She took ages preparing it – trying to find the right words to describe her father – her relationship with him. She hadn’t realised, until she tried to form those words, how dependent on him she’d been over the years. How desperately lonely she is now.

  He would have hated all this fuss. Her getting up in front of strangers and talking about him would have been his worst nightmare. In fact he once said, ‘Alice, if you ever find me slumped over my desk – dead – tell no one. Just bury me in the back garden, then carry on with whatever you were doing when you entered the room.’

  ‘Are you planning on dying any time soon?’ she said, matching his teasing smile. ‘Because if you are I’ll need to buy a black dress, and a decent spade from B&Q to clear away the weeds and nettles and dig a hole.’

  That was six months ago. At the time, Adam Hadley was a healthy man in his early fifties, considering his only exercise was walking Henry, and the fact he drank far too much red wine. His writing fuel, he called it. So, with recent events, it crosses Alice’s imaginative mind that perhaps he sensed, even knew, he wasn’t long for this world.

  The doorbell chimes. Henry barks, startling Alice from her thoughts. She isn’t expecting anyone. Wants to arrive at the funeral alone.

  She rises, pushing down a brief hope that it might be Leon. She has spoken to her ex a few times over the past few weeks. He said he was there for her, should she need him. She does need him, but has convinced herself that it’s the grief pushing her towards him. It wouldn’t be fair to use Leon as her support. He can’t be her shoulder to cry on. They want different things from life. He wants marriage, children. She could never see herself as a mother, and has serious commitment issues. He will be at the funeral though. He liked her dad. And she’s grateful for that.

  She peers through the side window. Tegan Matthews stands on the doorstep. A stunning-looking woman, with tight black curls springing from her head in all directions, and cheekbones that could slice your fingers off. She’s tall and strong – does kickboxing and wall climbing – and at thirty – the same age as Alice – she’s a leading literary agent with her own company, all due to spotting Alice’s father’s talent five years ago.

  Alice doesn’t want or need her here. But she can’t hide. The cars are due soon. She takes a deep breath and opens the door. Ice-cold air wafts into the hall.

  ‘How are you, sweetie?’ Tegan removes her dark sunglasses to reveal red eyes. ‘I thought you might need someone with you today.’ She tilts her head. ‘But I can go if—’

  ‘No, no it’s fine.’ She gestures for Tegan to enter the antique-filled hallway, and as Tegan steps in, Henry lumbers over, sniffs the woman’s crotch, looks up at her, tail down.

  Tegan grips the dresser next to her, her feet shuffling across the floor, away from the dog. ‘He knows I’m not a fan,’ she says through a tense smile. ‘I was attacked by a dog as a child.’

  Alice has heard this story before.

  ‘I can never quite relax around the creatures, though I’m sure Henry is a dear.’ She pauses, watching as the dog ambles back into the lounge and flops on his bed. ‘Anyway, how are you holding up, lovely?’ She touches Alice’s arm with the tips of her manicured fingers.

  ‘I’m just about OK.’ The words come out fractured. She is far from OK. ‘I’ll be glad when today is over.’

  They move into the lounge, and stand together, looking out of the window, waiting for the cars; Alice lost in thought, imagining going through her father’s things in the subsequent weeks, months, his dusty shelves crammed with books, his drawers full of part-written manuscripts. She’s dreading it, wonders if she’ll ever be up for the task.

  Strong-smelling lilies and white roses – a bouquet from Leon’s parents – stand in a vase on the table. It’s meant to give Alice peace. She caresses the petals with her fingertips. The gesture from the couple she grew so fond of during her time with Leon was a kind one, but she’s so far from peace right now, Google Maps couldn’t find it.

  Further vases of flowers and condolence cards clutter surfaces. The desk in the corner holds her father’s closed laptop, reams of paper, and Post-it Notes with jottings – ideas for future novels he will never get to write.

  Tegan picks up a condolence card with a dragonfly on the front. Opens it. Looks inside. ‘You’ve had a lot of support,’ she says. ‘Everyone loved your dad.’

  ‘Mmm, though I hardly know any of these people, and I’m pretty sure Dad didn’t either.’

  ‘Fans of his writing?’ She puts the card down.

  ‘Mostly. It’s so kind of them. But I wish the press hadn’t revealed the address of the cottage.’

  ‘I know. God knows who leaked it.’

  Alice turns and heads across the room. Picks up a card from amongst others on
an oak table. On the cover is a tiger, mouth open wide in a roar. ‘This one came this morning.’

  Tegan appears beside her, takes the card from her. ‘I’m so glad I’ve found you,’ she reads, furrowing her forehead. ‘That’s a bit odd.’

  ‘I know, right? Another fan, probably. Though it’s not exactly a sympathy card, and it’s not even signed.’

  Tegan puts down the card, and they return to the window, where silence stretches – tight – tense – lasting minute upon minute. Tegan pulls a cigarette packet from her bag, shakes one free, rolls it between her fingers, puts it back in the box. ‘What time is the car arriving?’

  ‘Not long now.’

  ‘I see the press are here.’

  ‘They’ve been driving me bloody crazy.’ Alice noticed them earlier creeping around, setting up cameras, staring in at her with beady eyes. They’ve been outside on and off since her father’s death. ‘If I ever find out who told them my dad’s identity, I will kill them.’

  ‘You’ll have to get in line behind me.’ There’s no strength in Tegan’s words or her attempt at a smile.

  So few people knew Adam Hadley was E. H. Membrose, and it’s hard to imagine any of them would tell the media.

  ‘They’re here.’ Alice pulls on her purple, ankle-length coat, and flicks her hair from the collar. ‘Let’s go, before I run and hide.’ She turns to Henry. ‘Be good, lovely boy.’

  He looks up at her for a moment, before flopping his head back down in his basket. He misses his owner as much as Alice misses her father. It has been a struggle to persuade him to even take a walk.

  Tegan grabs Alice’s hand as they head into the hallway; her fingers ice-cold. ‘I have your back, sweetie,’ she says, and throws open the front door to a flash of cameras. ‘We’ll get through this,’ she goes on, ushering Alice down the winding path towards the waiting shiny black car.

  ‘Did you know your father was Membrose?’ ‘Have you seen the films?’

  ‘Are you creative like your dad, Alice?’ ‘I hear Netflix are interested in making a series out of one of his books.’ ‘You’re an artist, aren’t you, Miss Hadley?’ ‘Gothic sculptures?’

  ‘Leave me alone,’ Alice cries, as she bends down to get into the back seat of the car, fighting back an army of tears behind her eyes.

  ‘We’ll get through this, Alice,’ Tegan repeats, before closing the door and dashing to the other side to get in.

  But Alice isn’t sure how she’ll cope.

  *

  The crematorium is rammed. Some people Alice recognises: her father’s publishers; his neighbours; Leon, but most she doesn’t know: strangers who knew her father through his words, sharing her grief.

  The man the celebrant describes is a stranger. Alice’s fault to some degree – she didn’t provide enough information for her to go on. Her father wouldn’t have wanted her to.

  And now she’s walking up to the podium on weak legs, gripping the speech she prepared in shaking hands.

  Her efforts start well, as she talks about her father’s brilliant sense of humour, his creativity, how she loved being home-educated by him, how he made learning so much fun. She doesn’t say that however much she loved him, she was often lonely – rattling around Butterfly Cottage playing make-believe with her dolls – while he was absorbed in his writing.

  ‘He wouldn’t let me read his novels in my early teens,’ she says. ‘“Far too dark,” he would say, totally unaware that I secretly read them under my duvet with a torch in the middle of the night, and scared myself silly.’ A tinkle of laughter fills the crematorium, giving Alice time to clear her throat and take a breath. ‘He was a wonderful man,’ she goes on. ‘And a good dad. I feel honoured and incredibly lucky to have been part of his world, when so few were invited in.’ The words she’s written blur through sudden tears. She knows she can’t go on. ‘I will miss him desperately,’ she says, picking up her scribbled notes, and returning to her seat.

  After the service, Tegan grips Alice’s arm, and leads her from the building to the sound of Cher’s ‘If I could turn back time’ – one of her father’s favourite songs.

  Outside, grey clouds skitter across the watery sun. Alice has organised a buffet at the local pub, but she can’t face it.

  ‘I need to disappear,’ she whispers, a tissue in shreds in her hand. ‘I can’t face all these people.’

  ‘Then go,’ Tegan says, her face wet with tears. ‘Everyone will understand.’

  I don’t really care if they don’t.

  She pulls free from Tegan, and runs across the lawn towards the waiting black car.

  ‘Take me to Butterfly Cottage, please,’ she says to the driver.

  As they pull away, tyres slow over cobbles, she glances out of the back window at the swarm of black exiting the crematorium.

  Leon is there; tall, handsome in a thigh-length black jacket over black jeans. He looks about him, dragging his fingers through his fair hair. She knows he’s searching for her, and places her hand on the window, splays her fingers, desperately needing him.

  They’d been together a year when everything fell apart three months ago. He was the best thing that had happened to her, yet she wrecked it. They’d met at the Literature Festival in Whitby. Leon hoped to get a publisher or an agent interested in his fantasy novel. Alice’s interest in the event was purely to hear her favourite authors speak. Her dad had instilled a passion in her for reading. Something they’d shared. He’d never go to events though. Rarely left the house.

  When it started to rain that day, she ended up in the bar, sitting next to Leon. For a long time after that, he joked that he’d picked her up at a bar. She supposed he had. They began talking. Him telling her about his book, and how, for now, he was a swimming instructor and lifeguard at the local pool. ‘Only until the millions roll in, you understand,’ he said, and laughed. And she told him about her shop in Whitby, how she was an artist – and he listened. If there’s such a thing as love at first sight, this was the closest she ever came to it.

  At first it had been perfect. Leon was optimistic, charming, fun. They were so happy. Eventually, he mentioned marriage, having a family, and she knew she wasn’t equipped. She adored children, but the thought of caring for a baby, a little boy or girl fully dependent on her, sent her into a cold panic. She couldn’t explain why, but she was afraid to commit. Her life hadn’t been normal growing up, and her father kept secrets – secrets about his past, the first seven years of her life. Secrets she suspected played a huge part in the woman she was now.

  Leon deserved better, someone who shared his dreams.

  As she watches from the funeral car, she spots Tegan dashing towards Leon. She takes him in her arms. When did they get so close? A memory flies in. ‘I’m thinking of changing my agent,’ her father said a week before he died. He never did explain why.

  Alice turns from the scene unfolding to face forward, the leather seat squeaking under her thighs. The car feels too big. Room enough for seven.

  A tear rolls down her cheek, and drips off her chin.

  She’s never felt so alone.

  Chapter 4

  Early October 2019

  Alice

  The envelope feels rough against Alice’s fingers. The handwriting is small and spiky, and addressed to Ms Alice Hadley at Butterfly Cottage, where she’s been living since her father’s death eight months ago. The postmark is Suffolk.

  The photograph inside is a black and white study of a Gothic building standing on a cliff edge, grand and imposing, with a steep, high roof rising to a point, and arched windows.

  She turns the photo over, her hands shaking. ‘Flynn House,’ she whispers, reading the words on the back. She knows this house. Has seen it before in recurring nightmares. Her heart hammers against her chest, as she searches the envelope for who sent it. But there’s nothing – only the photo.

  Her mind flits to ten years ago, when she made a sculpture of the haunting building that disturbed her dreams. Trying to make
sense of it through her art.

  ‘Get rid of it,’ her father yelled when he saw it, his eyes wild. She’d never seen him so upset. He left her in tears that day. Slamming his office door behind him.

  Later he apologised. Hugged her close. Told her he was having a bad day.

  ‘Why get so angry?’ she asked, wiping away her tears.

  ‘Leave it be, Alice. Please,’ was all he said. She never discovered why the house upset him so much.

  She recalls putting the sculpture in the loft, unable to throw it away at the time, and dashes up the stairs, discarding the photo. Henry lumbers behind, wagging his tail, giving a gruff bark, thinking it’s a game.

  But this is no game.

  She pulls down the loft ladder, takes a deep breath, and climbs the metal rungs.

  It’s not long before she’s lost in memories, pulling out her childhood books, Alice in Wonderland, Alice through the Looking Glass, pressing them against her nose, breathing them in, before flicking through the pages, imagining her father’s melodic tones as he read them to her at bedtime.

  She grabs a box of dolls, recalls giving them tea parties, chatting with them, as though they were real – her friends.

  Finally, tucked in the top of a plastic box full of exercise books, she finds Gothic House.

  There’s no doubting the sculpture and the photograph are the same house – the house from her recurring dreams. But Alice had made the clay model long ago, years before seeing the photo. Had her dreams been based on memories? This doesn’t make sense.

  She recalls again her father’s outburst when he saw it. He rarely got angry. Her head swims. Had Flynn House meant something to him? Had she been there at some point? There has always been something just out of sight niggling at her subconscious, and it seems even stronger now, since her dad died.