Dedicated to the memory of Pam Savage
“You have to be brutal, cut right back to the bone,” he says to the girl.
She’s hesitant, blades held close, but not making the cut. “Won’t it kill it?”
His hand covers hers, forces her to cut. “No. It’ll give it the chance to bloom.”
“Once upon a time, two girls went into the woods and only one came out…”
“No. I don’t like this story.”
“You have to listen, Tess. You have to get to the end of the story.”
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August 2008
“Can you take us through what happened after the wedding?”
There are two policemen in my room, one sitting by the bed in a crumpled shirt, one pacing the room, watching me. I’m in a private ward and there’s a uniformed officer outside—I saw him when the other two came in; he was talking to Dad and Julia. Dad was still wearing his suit, his jacket draped around Julia’s shoulders, white carnation drooping in the buttonhole. They both looked like they’d been crying and I wanted to call out that I was fine, but the pacing detective closed the door on them.
“I don’t remember,” I say, voice hoarse. My throat aches and my head is throbbing, the stitches tight and tender. It hurts to try to remember. It should have been such a happy day—for Dad and Julia, even if the rest of us weren’t feeling it.
“You went into the woods…” the sitting detective says. I don’t recall their names. They introduced themselves but I don’t remember.
My foot is bandaged and feels hot and swollen. Just a sprain, though, from the fall: I was lucky, they said.
“I was at the wedding, I drank too much champagne, and I went to lie down for a bit. I don’t remember anything after that.”
They’ve cleaned me up and stitched my head but there’s still dirt under my nails. Or is it dried blood? Oh God. Vomit rises, sour at the back of my throat. “Where’s Dad? I want to see my dad.” My voice breaks.
“He’s right outside, Tess. He’ll be in in a second. We’re trying to understand what you and your sister were doing in the woods near Dean House, some distance from your home. There are at least two hours unaccounted for, after anyone at the wedding last saw you and Arabella.”
Dean House: Bella and I were there, but that was last night—the night before the wedding. That night is all so clear. Not the wedding—pretty much everything about today is a blur, but last night…
Tess, wake up.
The voice makes me jump, but it’s not a whisper from the corner of the room, it’s an echo: Bella’s voice, the night before the wedding, pulling me from a dream of sex and Norse gods. The night before the wedding that we’d all been dreading. I had been sweating, skin damp and clinging to the sheet, the heatwave still going on. I wasn’t shivering like I am now. The storm didn’t break until the night of the wedding.
Bella was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt and I twisted to look at the clock, thinking I’d overslept and should already be at the hall, trussed up in my mint lace bridesmaid’s dress. But it was only four o’clock, still dark outside and hours from morning. I’d stayed up too late, trying to make inroads into the mountain of reading I had from school that had been gathering dust since the beginning of the summer holidays.
“Can’t you sleep again?” I pushed the sheets off me and sat up. All this, I remember, the crisp cotton of the sheet brushing against my legs, the groggy disorientation as I was pulled from sleep.
She shook her head. “I need to tell you something.”
“Go on then.”
“No—not here,” she said, pulling on my arm.
“Where are we going? We have to be up in four hours to get ready.”
“This can’t wait. Come on.”
I was thinking I was still in that dream as we walked up the lane in the middle of the night—Bella in shorts, me in my pajamas and flip-flops. I was thinking it was still a dream and, any minute, some Norse god would appear with Max’s face and sweep me off into the woods.
Max. Where is Max now?
The night air was thick and still. Hot, even at that hour. It felt wrong. Unusual for August: there should have been rain in the air, clouds to cover the stars and moon. The heat and dryness made it seem like I’d been transported somewhere else in my dreams, somewhere with warm seas, twisted olive trees, cicadas, and bright lizards swarming the walls.
Bella stopped by a crumbling, ivy-choked wall and turned back to look at me. She bent down, laced her hands together. “I’ll boost you over,” she whispered.
Dean House watched from behind the wall, windows black. My scalp prickled and I could feel the hairs rise as I figured out where we were. No way.
“Not scared, are you?” she said, a challenge in her voice.
I remember all this, I think, but I’m not sure I’m remembering it right. There’s a woodenness to the memory that makes me think I’m missing something. The dream I had seems more real than this.
“What is it?” the detective says, leaning forward. His hair is thinning on top; I can see the light from the fluorescent bulb shining on his scalp. “Have you remembered something?”
I shake my head. He doesn’t want to know about the day before the wedding. It’s not relevant. It’s not. Then why does my chest feel tight, full of fluttering fear? Why is the night at Dean House so vivid and the wedding a blank?
I look up at the detective. “I remember going upstairs and then I woke up in the ambulance.”
I pick at my nails—is it my blood? My hands are shaking.
I was scared. I didn’t want to go in there. Bella looked on the verge of tears and I wanted to be back in my bed.
The night grew quieter as we dropped into the garden. Even my breath, quick and panicked, sounded muffled. That house had always been the haunted house when we were little kids, daring each other to open the front gate and go up the path. I never did it. I’ve never been the brave kid. Then Julia and Greg Lewis bought it, and what was it then?
Bella marched away around the house and I hurried after her, tripping over tangled tree roots hidden in the weeds. I knew this garden well but it was the house I was afraid of. Bella didn’t stay in the garden, she went right to the front door and opened it. It wasn’t locked.
Wait, why wasn’t it locked?
I’m wondering now if any of it was real, or if it was all part of a dream—haven’t I had this dream before? The house, a rainy night…a scream hidden by the roar of a monsoon-like downpour?
“Bella, what are you doing?”
She glanced back at me and then stepped inside the house.
I can’t tell the detectives any of this; I don’t want to get my sister into trouble. I followed her up the dark hallway, hissing her name, flinching at every creak of the floorboards. What if someone was there? What if Greg came back and found us in his house? He could have had a heart attack.
Bella flitted like a ghost in front of me in her white T-shirt, disappearing through a door on the left. I glanced nervously up the stairs—what monster exactly did I think I’d find?—and followed my sister.