The Island House

by Amanda Brittany

  Alice knows she has to keep her talking. ‘You pushed Christine down the stairs.’

  ‘That’s right. I wasn’t sure how Christine’s death would pan out. But it just sort of happened.’ Her lips curve into a cruel smile. ‘You fell asleep. If you hadn’t, Christine may still be with us. But once you were out for the count, it was easy to threaten Christine with a knife – tell her to get up – lead her out of the room. The woman almost pissed herself. Which is ironic really.’

  Alice stares, waiting for Faith to continue.

  ‘According to my mother’s diaries, Hugh used to piss himself in fear when Christine and her friends bullied him as a child.’ Faith screws up her face. ‘And the same woman, years later, swept me out of her shop like a piece of garbage when I was a child. If my mum hadn’t had to traipse all the way to Tesco, Hugh would never have found you.’

  ‘Did you kill Christine’s husband?’

  She nods. ‘I had to. I needed Christine alone. Vulnerable. Though I was disappointed to hear he would have died anyway.’

  Alice’s stomach knots painfully. She looks again at the puppets, takes in the neat stitching at the base of their ankles. She swallows hard. ‘Where are their feet?’

  ‘I cut them off. It stopped them from running away.’ Faith points at a saw hanging on the wall. ‘Did you know our grandpa used to use that to chop women into three pieces?’ Her gaze returns to Alice. A smile. ‘I’m so glad I found you again, Rosie – so, so glad. I just wish Mummy and Hugh were here to see us back together again.’

  Bile rises in Alice’s throat, threatening to choke her.

  ‘I read about your father’s death in the media,’ Faith goes on. ‘Saw the photographs of him. I knew it was Hugh immediately from the endless portraits my mother painted over the years. Those eyes, that sharp nose – they could have only belonged to Hugh Flynn.’ She tilts her head like a bird. ‘I remember those eyes from when I was a child. I’d so wanted him to look at me through them and be proud I was his daughter. But I know now why that never happened.’

  Thoughts of her father’s death flood Alice’s head. The moment the police came into her shop, told her the awful news.

  ‘And that’s how I discovered you too – from the pictures in the media. I knew it was you, Rosie.’

  ‘Did you kill my father?’

  Faith laughs, and shakes her head. ‘Good God, no – I loved him. You loved him. My mother loved him – why would I kill him?’

  ‘I don’t know, Faith.’ A tear rolls down her cheek. ‘Why would you do any of this?’

  She bites down hard on her lip, and then whispers, ‘I know who did kill him. And it was no accident.’

  The memory of losing her dad punches Alice’s heart afresh.

  ‘It was Tegan Matthews.’

  ‘Tegan?’ Alice’s mind flashes to the news report she saw earlier that evening in the TV lounge. Tegan was dead: police are treating her death as suspicious. ‘Tegan killed my dad?’

  Faith nods three times. ‘I heard her confessing to Leon in the pub in Whitby. I was standing at the bar. It was the day you met the delightful Mitch. Remember? You ran off when you saw Leon.’ She smiles. ‘And later I followed you.’

  ‘That was you?’ Alice recalls the car in the lay-by in Sparrow Lane, headlights on full beam. ‘You were the one freaking me out that night?’

  Faith nods. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you. I’d planned to tell you what I’d overheard. Then I saw Leon’s car, so I left.’

  ‘What did you hear?’

  ‘Tegan telling Leon that the hit and run was an accident, that she hadn’t meant to knock him down,’ Faith says, oblivious to the turmoil inside Alice’s head. Tegan knocked her father down. Leon knew and he never told her.

  ‘Tegan was crying her little eyes out, saying she couldn’t live with herself, and Leon was doing his best to console her. Not that she deserved his sympathy and understanding. He’s such a sausage though isn’t he? Leon. Shame about him really.’

  Alice looks towards the door. ‘What have you done to him, Faith? Where the hell is he?’

  Faith shakes her head. ‘I’d hoped he wouldn’t come with you to Flynn Hotel. Though now I think about it, he probably would have come searching for you if you didn’t return to your precious Whitby. He clearly loved you – so it’s all worked out for the best.’

  Loved. Past tense. The thought that Leon was hurt or worse swirls around her head. The idea of losing him is unbearable. This is her fault. If she hadn’t begged him to come, he would be OK. She lets out a sob.

  ‘Oh, please don’t cry,’ Faith says. ‘We’ll be happy here together, you’ll see.’

  ‘Somebody will look for me.’

  ‘Will they? I mean you haven’t got anyone but me, have you?’

  It’s true. How had she let that happen? How had she become an island? Alice looks again at the closed door, tears streaming down her cheeks, cold against her skin. She goes to rise, but Faith leans forward with a jolt, pushes her down.

  ‘Don’t you want to hear about Tegan? It’s too late for Leon.’

  Bile rises once more in Alice’s throat. She coughs, choking. But she doesn’t move.

  ‘That night, Tegan was spouting to Leon about how she’d chased after your father. Apparently he’d ended things with her and left. She got in her car, wanted to catch him up, beg him not to leave her. She pulled into Sparrow Lane. It was dark, she’d been drinking … she struck him … didn’t even get out of the car.’

  Alice covers her mouth with her hands, holding in a sob.

  ‘That’s at the very least manslaughter, don’t you agree?’

  Alice nods, feebly, imagining her father crushed against the tree.

  ‘And that’s why I killed her.’

  ‘You killed her?’ Alice pushes down a pang of what? Gratitude?

  ‘Oh come on, Alice, surely you saw that coming. She deserved it. She killed Hugh – my mother’s brother – your father. She needed to be punished.’ She pauses for a moment, letting her words sink in. ‘The news report you saw in the TV lounge, I’d recorded earlier. I was waiting for an opportunity for you to see it. I had thought you’d be pleased.’

  Alice rakes her fingers through her hair, catching a tangle and wincing.

  ‘Though I was grateful to Tegan for revealing your father’s true identity. If she hadn’t, I guess we wouldn’t be sitting here together now.’

  ‘Tegan told the media?’ It doesn’t come as a surprise; Alice expected as much.

  Faith nods. ‘Another little nugget I overheard that evening.’ She looks down at the plates, each with a fairy cake. ‘Eat your cake,’ she says. ‘Christine made it specially.’

  ‘Christine?’

  ‘Yes, though they were instructions from Cameron, of course. For someone who doesn’t exist, he was one bossy man.’ She laughs. ‘Kept Christine busy.’

  ‘Cameron isn’t real?’

  ‘Of course not. Think about it, Alice – I was the only one who saw the mysterious owner of Flynn Hotel. I made the website, the Instagram account, grabbed a few photographs from stock pictures to invent the man and his wife. It was easy really.’ She pauses, looks once more at the cake. ‘Eat up, Rosie. Don’t let the cake go dry.’

  ‘My name is Alice,’ she whispers.

  ‘No!’ Faith yells, startling Alice, and then much softer. ‘Your name is Rosie, and if you don’t eat some cake, I’m going to have to force you to.’

  Alice tries to get up, but Faith darts forward, holds the blade against Alice’s throat. ‘Take a bite,’ she says pressing the sponge against Alice’s lips with her free hand.

  Alice’s heart races as she opens her mouth, tears filling her eyes once more as the sweet taste of the pink icing makes her choke.

  Chapter 40

  1994

  Hugh

  ‘Daddy, please stop,’ Tiger cried, and Hugh released his grip on his sister’s neck.

  Verity bent over, holding her throat, choking. ‘Look closely
at the kid, Hugh,’ she said. ‘She’s your child. Yours and Pippa’s.’

  He froze for a moment. ‘What?’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ she said, straightening. ‘But yes, the girl is yours.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘She’s your daughter, Hugh.’ Verity puts both arms around Tiger, and pulled her close once more.

  Hugh shook his head, his body twitching with anxiety. ‘No, Tiger’s my daughter.’

  Verity shook her head. ‘You don’t get it do you?’

  ‘Get what, Verity?’ Confusion bounced through him, his heart thumping, unable to comprehend what his sister was telling him. He knew he should grab both children and run away from the place where poison oozed through the walls, and never come back – but he needed to know. He needed to know what secrets Verity had been keeping from him.

  ‘When I came back from Europe, I had a daughter. Her name was Faith. She was two months old.’ Verity’s eyes are glassy, a layer of tears on her lashes. She strokes Tiger’s hair. ‘This is Faith.’

  ‘What the …? I don’t understand. When? Who—’

  ‘I thought I’d actually fallen in love when I met her father, Mikolaj. That my life was changing for the better. And then he was gone.’

  Hugh dragged his fingers through his hair, eyes flashing from Verity to Tiger. ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I was abroad when I found out I was pregnant. You were here, wrapped in your own happiness with Pippa. I couldn’t turn to you, Hugh. I just couldn’t. And anyway, I planned to get rid of it at first.’

  ‘But you decided to keep it – her?’ Hugh looked at the child being held in a vice-like grip by Verity. Had the little girl he struggled to bond with never been his? Was she really Verity’s daughter?

  ‘As time went by, the harder it was to go through with an abortion. So I kept her.’ She stroked her hand over Tiger’s hair. ‘Best decision I ever made. Then, when you rejected your baby the day Pippa died, a child I knew you would eventually grow to love, I decided to make a swap.’

  ‘Christ, Verity.’ Hugh covered his mouth. ‘What the hell were you thinking?’

  ‘I wanted my baby to feel your love. It was easy to make you believe she was yours. You weren’t interested, barely looked at her when she was tiny. But I felt sure one day you would, and when you came to your senses, my child would be your child – and we could be a family.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I intended to get rid of your daughter, but it wasn’t as easy as that. I couldn’t bring myself to hurt her. So I kept her in the attic.’

  Guilt surged through Hugh. If he hadn’t left Verity to bail him out, just like he’d done his whole life, none of this would have happened. If the going got tough, if he couldn’t cope, there Verity would be – to the rescue – saving him, or picking up the pieces. But this time she’d gone too far. He’d gone too far.

  ‘I cared for your baby, Hugh. I’m not evil. I’m a good person. I went through the motions, kept her fed, changed her when she was a baby, even sung to her a couple of times, but she was surplus to requirements.’

  ‘Aunt Verity?’ Tiger looked up at her with watery eyes, and Verity stroked the child’s cheek, pushed back her dark hair.

  ‘You can call me Mummy now, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘And I can finally call you Faith.’ Verity turned her eyes back to her brother. ‘The perfect name, don’t you think? You’ve got to have faith, haven’t you?’

  Tears filled Hugh’s eyes. What had she done? What had he done?

  ‘To be honest, I never expected to feel anything when Faith was born. Nobody was more shocked by the overwhelming love that grew inside me for my daughter. And I wanted you to love her too, Hugh.’

  ‘I would have loved your child, Verity.’ He swiped his sleeve across his eyes.

  She shook her head. ‘No. Not in the same way I thought you would love your own daughter. I wanted you to be a father to her. I hoped, once you got over your terrible grief of losing Pippa, that your child – yours and Pippa’s – would become the most important thing in your life. I thought if I substituted her for my daughter, she would become the object of your love and affection. Something I’d accepted I could never be.’

  Hugh shook his head, the shock of what she was telling him bouncing around his head like a grenade waiting to go off. ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘All I wanted was for Faith to feel your love. But it never happened, did it? You’ve rarely wanted to see her over the years. That bond never came.’

  Hugh looked at the little girl who had called him Daddy for so long. Verity was right. There was never a bond between them, never that surge of love he had hoped he might feel for the daughter Pippa and he had made. He liked the kid, a cute little thing, but she could have been anybody’s child.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispered for the kid’s ears. ‘This was never about you, little one.’

  The child broke free of Verity, headed across the room and held her cuddly tiger up in the air. ‘This is for you,’ she said to the child in Hugh’s arms, but the little girl didn’t respond.

  ‘Thank you,’ Hugh said, taking it from her.

  ‘It will make her happy.’

  ‘I’m sure it will.’

  He turned to Verity once more. ‘You kept my little girl in the attic room, Verity. How could you do that?’ The words felt alien on his tongue, the shock, or perhaps a need to know, driving him on. Keeping him from showing the rage firing in his stomach. ‘Felix used to take me up there, Verity. Do you remember? Do you remember how scared I was, how I cried? How those puppets haunted me? How father threatened to slice me into three pieces? And then you do the same thing to my child.’

  ‘Not the same thing,’ she said, as though that made everything right. ‘And not at first – at first I had both babies with me always, but eventually, yes, I had to lock her away. I had no choice, Hugh. I was worried you’d come over to the house. And then, when Tiger started talking—’

  ‘Tiger? Tiger? She never was Tiger though, was she?’

  ‘Daddy! Please stop shouting.’ Faith had wandered towards the back door, as though she wanted to escape, alone and helpless, her little arms dangling by her sides – eyes too big for her face as she peered at Hugh from under her heavy fringe.

  ‘I’m so sorry, sweetheart, this isn’t your fault,’ he said, tears filling his eyes as he moved across the room towards her. But Verity got there first, closed her arms tightly around her once more. Hugh knew she would never let her go.

  ‘She’s my daughter,’ she yelled, and pulled open a kitchen drawer. She brought out a sheet of beige paper. ‘That’s what it says on here. Look.’ She waved a birth certificate in front of him. ‘Faith Flynn: Mother Verity Flynn. Father unknown. She’s not yours.’ She pointed at the child in his arms. ‘That’s your daughter.’

  Hugh stared deep into his sister’s eyes. He knew he must try for calm reasoning, for both the children’s sakes. ‘Let’s get help for this little one, hey, Verity?’ He needed to make his daughter safe. ‘Then we can work something out. The four of us.’

  ‘No! That thing in your arms is an impostor,’ Verity snapped. ‘She’s not part of the plan.’

  ‘What plan, Verity? What are you talking about? There is no plan.’

  ‘She lives in the attic, Hugh. She’s OK up there. It needs to be just you, Faith and me from now on. The way it was always meant to be. A perfect family.’

  ‘This is ridiculous, V. You’re sounding crazy.’

  ‘You have to stay, Hugh.’ She spun round, grabbed a knife from the kitchen side, and waved it at Hugh, her face flushed with anger.

  Chapter 41

  1994

  Hugh

  Within moments, Verity lowered her arm in defeat. She placed the knife on the kitchen worktop, and dashed her palm across her damp cheeks. ‘I just don’t want you to go,’ she said, her voice breaking. ‘Please stay.’

  ‘I can’t, V.’ He took a deep breath, the girl heavy in his arms. ‘I
have to get the kid help. You must see that.’

  ‘You will come back, won’t you?’ Verity said, as he turned and headed for the door. ‘Promise us that.’

  Hugh looked back over his shoulder, and into his sister’s pleading eyes. Her arms were limp by her sides, like a puppet without strings; tears glistened along her lashes and rolled down her plump cheeks. She was defeated, and Hugh hated that. His sister had always been the fighter. The strong, feisty young woman, who’d battled to keep him safe throughout his life, was now a wreck. Had he done that to her? Should he stay?

  ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘But I will be back.’ And at that moment, he believed his words. He had no intention of deserting the sister who’d protected him all his young life, or his niece. She and her daughter needed help as much as the girl in his arms, and he would get that for them. He would make things right. ‘I’ll bring help, Verity.’ He looked at the girl standing beside her. ‘Faith will need psychological help.’

  ‘No! She’s doing fine, Hugh.’

  ‘But you led her to believe I was her father, and she’s been playing in the attic with a child she thought was a puppet. She’ll need help, Verity, and I’ll get that for her.’

  ‘No, we’ll be OK, Hugh. We don’t need anyone here but us.’

  ‘And we should sell the house.’ His gaze roamed the kitchen. The place made his stomach heave. ‘We must all get away from the poison in these walls. I know you feel it too. The past is still here, haunting us.’ He shuddered. ‘Felix Flynn damaged both of us. We have to get away from here, for these kids’ sakes, if not for ours.’

  ‘But I like it here, Daddy,’ Faith said, and Hugh stared down at the child he now knew to be his niece. There was something chilling about the little girl’s voice – as though someone else was speaking for her. No, he was being ridiculous, overemotional. ‘I want to stay here forever and ever. I want you to stay too, Daddy.’